Procurement of electricity at an overstated price: an ex-official of the education department will stand trial

 An ex-official of the education department of one of the local councils in the Chernivtsi region will stand trial on charges of embezzlement of budget funds on an especially large scale. Detectives of the Territorial Office of the ESBU in the Chernivtsi region completed the pretrial investigation and sent the indictment to court.

The investigation established that in 2021, the Education Department agreed with a supplier for the procurement of electricity worth over 11.7 million UAH.

Subsequently, the supplier proposed to increase the price of electricity. For this purpose, he provided documents that were supposed to confirm the price increase in the market. However, these documents did not contain data on price dynamics and did not confirm that the cost of electricity had actually risen.

Despite this, the official approved and signed an additional agreement by which the price of electricity was increased from 1.9 to 3.81 UAH per kWh, and the volume of procurement was correspondingly reduced.

As a result, over 1.3 million UAH of budget funds were groundlessly transferred to the supplier.

The indictment has been sent to court under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – embezzlement of property through abuse of official position on an especially large scale.

Operational support – Department of Strategic Investigations in the Chernivtsi region of the DSI of the National Police of Ukraine.

Procedural guidance – Chernivtsi Regional Prosecutor's Office.

According to Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is considered innocent of committing a crime and cannot be subjected to criminal punishment until their guilt is proven in accordance with the law and established by a court verdict.