Jan. 29 (UPI) — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky published a declaration of his personal finances for 2021 and 2022 amid mounting corruption scandals threatening to embroil his government.
The war appears to have impacted the finances of the president and his family members significantly with their combined 2022 income plunging to $97,800 from $280,000 in 2021 and $597,000 in 2020, mainly due to reduced income from rental properties, according to a statement from his office Sunday.
The remainder of the family’s income is from salaries and bank interest with some one-off items from the sale of their holdings of domestic government bonds.
Zelensky made his finances public hours after Ukraine’s Security Service announced it had uncovered an arms procurement corruption racket involving the theft of 100,000 mortar shells worth tens of millions of dollars.
The SBU said its investigation had “exposed officials of the Ministry of Defense and managers of defense contractor Lviv Arsenal, who stole nearly $40 million in the purchase of shells.”
Both former and current high-ranking officials from the Defense Ministry, as well as heads of associated companies, are implicated with five individuals served with “notices of suspicion” and one suspect arrested while trying to flee the country.
The SBU alleges advance payment for a munitions contract with Lviv Arsenal was made in August 2022, with some of the funds transferred to overseas accounts, but the order was never delivered.
The news came as three Inspectors General from the Defense Department, State Department and USAID arrived in Kyiv to check on how the Ukrainian government is spending U.S. taxpayer funds amid a stalled $60 billion funding package that is being held up in Congress.
Welcoming them back, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink said in a post on X that their meetings with “implementers, partners and the Ukrainian government support oversight and accountability for U.S. assistance to Ukraine.”
Sunday’s developments come as Ukraine attempts to build upon last month’s historic decision by European Union leaders to open membership talks with Kyiv — but which will require Kyiv to implement anti-corruption measures and expedite reforms in other key areas including governance, public administration and rule of law.
In September, Zelensky fired his entire defense cabinet ahead of a trip to the U.N. General Assembly and Washington to seek more support for his country’s fight to expel Russian occupying forces.
Those dismissed included deputy defense ministers Hanna Maliar, Volodymyr Havrylov, Rostyslav Zamlynskyi, Denys Sharapov, Andrii Shevchenko and Vitalii Deineha.
