By ANNA BABINETS, Slidstvo.info

It was a simple pay-to-play blueprint. There was no elaborate network of shell companies, no string of bank transfers in offshore jurisdictions. Just kickbacks in cash totaling nearly $1.5 million to get contracts for performing major repairs on Russian and Ukrainian made aircrafts.

But the scheme ended early in the morning of Jan. 26 this year when two Ukrainians, employed by the state-owned weapons trader Ukrspetsexport, got into a taxi in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. The cab whisked them away from the Ramada Plaza hotel to the airport. Just prior to boarding a Kyiv-bound plane, they were arrested by Kazakh security agents.

Six months later, a Kazakh military court found Oleksandr Shkolyarenko, 43, a department head at Ukrspetsexport, and Oleksandr Khruliov, 42, his deputy, guilty of bribery in two separate criminal cases and sentenced them to six and a half years each in a maximum security prison.

According to the verdicts, between 2011 and 2013 the two Ukrainian officials gave nearly $1.5 million in bribes to their Kazakh counterparts in exchange for lucrative contracts to repair Kazakh military aircraft in Ukraine. The court found that the contracts awarded to Ukraine’s state-owned company were worth nearly $40 million. On one of those occasions, $500,000 in bribes landed $4 million in contracts with Ukrspetsexport to repair aircraft belonging to the Kazakh border guard service. Later one of the aircraft crashed, killing 27 people.

The July verdicts by the Kazakh court represent the first proven case of bribery by Ukraine’s state officials involved in the weapons trade that ended in jail terms. Two verdicts, both in Russian and over 30 pages long, outline the crimes committed by the Ukrainians and their Kazakh counterparts and sheds more light on the methods used by Ukrspetsexport, authorized to act as the sole intermediary that sells Ukrainian weapons on foreign markets, and how its top used bribery as a tool to win contracts.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, in 2012 Ukraine was the world’s fourth biggest arms exporter trading, $1.3 billion worth of weapons. But not all of those trades are above board.  Between 1992 and 1998 alone, $32 billion worth of heavy weapons, small arms, ammunition and other military equipment is estimated to have disappeared from Ukraine’s post-Soviet stores, according to the Organized Crime Observatory, a Swiss-based non-profit.

Ukraine’s military business with Kazakhstan mainly consists of repairing the country’s Soviet and Ukrainian produced military equipment. Last year, Ukraine also sold six rocket launchers and 260 rifles to Kazakhstan.

Present from Ukraine

The night before their arrest, the two Ukrspetsexport officials seemed to be having fun, the verdict stated. They drank five or six bottles of vodka with their Kazakh accomplice, Gen. Almaz Asenov, who would later be given an 11-year prison sentence. It was around midnight when Asenov brought the Ukrainians back to the hotel, and one of them left a package in the car, referring to it as a “present” from Ukraine.

“When Shkolyarenko got into (the) car, I had no idea what was in the package… (I) thought that he doesn’t want to leave something in the hotel, so he brought it along,” testified Asenov.

The package contained $200,000 and it was just one installment in a series of bribes that Ukrspetsexport officials regularly handed out in Kazakhstan to ensure that local military aircraft would be repaired in Ukraine, according to court records.

Neither Ukrspetsexport, nor Ukraine’s foreign ministry or Kazakh law enforcement authorities would provide any comments to OCCRP regarding the case. “Providing information on the circumstances of committing crimes by Ukraine’s citizens is subject to limitations imposed by law on protection of personal data,” reads the foreign ministry’s response.

Yet, the verdict and records from court hearings OCCRP obtained from the Kazakh Supreme Court registry provides a clearer picture of what exactly happened in Kazakhstan. As of early November, those documents had been removed from the registry.

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