Auditors of the State Audit Service (SAS) have found that the management of the state-owned special enterprise Northern Forest used cars intended for the protection of the nature reserve and forest fund in the 30-kilometer exclusion zone of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant for their own travels in Ukraine.
This was reported by the SAS.
The inspectors said that in 2021, 5 all-terrain forest patrol vehicles with fire equipment worth more than UAH 9 million were purchased for the Northern Pushcha State Enterprise for budgetary funds. The new special vehicles were immediately handed over to the company's management. The SAS noted that no agreements on financial responsibility for the safety of the vehicles had been signed.
But instead of patrolling the 30-kilometer exclusion zone of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant, officials used the special vehicles for their own needs to travel around Ukraine.
And one of the cars, worth almost UAH 1 million, disappeared altogether.
Due to the lack of administrative documents regarding official trips, special vehicles with firefighting equipment were operated outside the territory they were supposed to patrol for a long time. The auditors stated that the data on the travel documents for the use of the car do not correspond to the indicators of the speedometers.
"Using a special vehicle or other property of any state enterprise for other purposes is first of all a serious violation of the law. Financial discipline and effective use of the funds allocated by the state from the budget are key signs of quality management at the enterprise under any economic conditions, in particular during the war, when every hryvnia helps Ukraine survive," said Alla Basalayeva, head of the State Audit Service of Ukraine.
The inspection materials were handed over by DAS specialists to law enforcement agencies to compensate for the damages and bring the culprits to justice.
Almost every month, we inform about violations of environmental legislation in the exclusion zone of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. See for yourself:
- in February EcoPolitic reported that the environmental prosecutor's office is investigating the felling of 200 century-old oaks in the Chornobyl Reserve, in which officials from the state-owned enterprise "Northern Forest" may be involved;
- in March, we reported that the raid group during the first unscheduled inspection of the Chernobyl zone discovered more than 500 stumps of cut trees and plowing of land for agricultural works in the radiation-ecological biosphere reserve;
- in April EcoPolitics informed about detection of 12 illegal logging in the Chernobyl zone;
- in June, we reported that the total amount of losses discovered by the auditors at the "Northern Pushcha" DSP reached a staggering figure of 264 million hryvnias.
