The Security Service of Ukraine has reported that the management of the Zaporizhia electrical equipment plant, which until November 2022 was owned by Russian oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin, was exposed for large-scale losses caused to the state budget of Ukraine.

"During 2018-2021, the top management of the plant organized a scheme for withdrawing budget funds into the shadows in the form of non-payment of land tax. The scheme caused damage to the state of more than UAH 43 million. Subsequently, the organizers of the scheme gradually transferred this amount to the accounts of Grigorishin's holding companies on the territory of Russia," the Security Service reported on its website on Friday.

According to the Security Service, to disguise illegal transactions, the offenders framed them as repayment of the plant's financial obligations to the companies of the Russian oligarch. "To implement the criminal scheme, the management of the Zaporizhia enterprise artificially lowered the coefficient for paying land tax. To do this, the defendants entered false information into the financial, economic and reporting documentation," the Security Service said.

The Security Service reported that after the scheme was exposed, even before the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, they initiated forensic economic examinations, the results of which confirmed the facts of the illegal activities of the defendants. Since 2022, according to the decision of the National Securities and the Stock Market Commission, the enterprise has become state-owned property for the period of martial law as a strategic industrial facility in Ukraine.

Based on the collected evidence, the financial director and chief accountant of the enterprise were notified of suspicion under Part 2 of Article 28, part 3 of Article 212 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (tax evasion committed by an official of an enterprise on a particularly large scale by prior conspiracy by a group of persons), as well as under Part 2 of Article 28, Part 1 of Article 366 of the Criminal Code (official forgery committed by prior conspiracy by a group of persons). The investigation to establish all the circumstances of the crime and bring the perpetrators to justice continues.

The Security Service does not provide the name of the enterprise, but the scope of activity and the mention of Grigorishin point to JSC Zaporozhtransformator (ZTR), the largest manufacturer of transformers in Ukraine, whose shares were alienated into state ownership on November 6, 2022, to the management of the Ministry of Defense.

The shareholders of Zaporozhtransformator at the end of 2021 were the Seventh and Fourth venture funds under the management of the AMC Svarog Asset Management, associated with Grigorishin. In the public register, according to the opendatabot resource, the beneficiary is Leonid Pivovarov (Switzerland). According to information in the ZTR tender documentation, on December 8, 2022, by order of the Minister of Defense, the supervisory board at the enterprise was completely replaced, and Ihor Kleiner, who had led it for many years before, was appointed to the position of director general.