Officials at Kyiv Armor Repair Plant appropriated a T-72 tank owned by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry and tried to sell seven more of such tanks, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office said.

Checks carried out at the plant by military prosecutors for the Ukrainian central region revealed that one missing T-72 tank was owned by the defense ministry and stored at the plant, spokesman for the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office Yuriy Boichenko said at a briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday.

"The officials of this enterprise, abusing the powers of their office in the period from 2013 through 2014, appropriated the T-72 tank, thus causing nearly 200,000 hryvnias in losses to the state," Boichenko said.

It was also found that there were attempts at the same plant to take possession of other defense ministry's property, he said.

Officials at the armor repair plant "conducted refurbishment and pre-sale preparation for yet another seven T-72 tanks worth in total one and a half million hryvnias," the spokesman said.

The company's officials were planning to sell the military hardware on the foreign market, he added.

"Information about these criminal offenses was entered in the Register of Pre-trial Investigation under Article 15 part three and Article 91 part five of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, i.e. attempt to misappropriate and misappropriation through abuse of office," Boichenko said.

T-72 was the main Soviet combat tank. It entered service in the USSR Armed Forces in 1973.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry said T-72 tanks are not in service in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.