NABU completes probe into UAH 776 million loss of state grain

Ukraine's National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) have completed their investigation into the loss of grain worth UAH 776 million by the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine, NABU said on 29 October.

NABU's statement says the corporation's management signed four foreign trade contracts with a non-resident company in 2021 for the supply of feed maize. The contracts required full payment before ownership passed, but the original bills of lading for the cargo ended up with the buying company, which let it unload the vessels and dispose of grain that had not been paid for. To hide this and create a false impression of control over the goods, copies of the bills of lading with forged signatures and seals were kept at the corporation, the bureau said. The state corporation lost almost 106,000 tonnes of grain.

The bureau says the organisers laundered the proceeds from selling the grain by moving them repeatedly between banks to mix them with legal income and by buying raw materials and property for companies under their control. It published the update under the tag "materials opened" and posted the same summary on its Telegram channel.

NABU and SAPO announced the case in April, when they served notices of suspicion on five members of what the April statement called an organised group: a former chair of the corporation's management board, a former director of its trading department, the director and ultimate beneficial owner of the non-resident company, a confidant of that company's representative, and an accomplice. NABU gave the legal classification as Part 5 of Article 191, Part 3 of Article 209 and Part 3 of Article 358 of the Criminal Code; Babel's report described the suspicions as embezzlement, money laundering and document forgery. Neither statement names the suspects or the foreign company, and both state that a person is presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court verdict.

A bill of lading is both the sea transport document and the title to the cargo, and the bureau notes that the goods cannot be collected at the port of arrival without the original. The case adds to the bureau's work on state companies' trading, after the Ukrnafta fuel diversion case and the procurement cases from drones to subway cars.