Arrested Ukrainian military commissar kept over a million dollars in cash
The warring country continues to arrest those who are trying to avoid the front.
Conscripts in Ukraine are trying to avoid mobilization into the Armed Forces in various ways so as not to die at the front. Many military commissars are not against indicating the reason for exemption from the army in their military ID for a certain amount. This time, the head of the Boryspil TCC - the territorial recruitment center - broke the record for the amount of the bribe. He demanded 37 thousand dollars from draft dodgers.
An unprecedented amount of bribe appears in the case of one of the Ukrainian military commissars. Employees of the Security Service of Ukraine caught a corrupt official at the local military registration and enlistment office, who provided services for evading service for 37 thousand dollars. In total, the head of the military registration and enlistment office and his assistant collected more than a million dollars in total.
—They took 37 thousand dollars from the draft dodger - a record amount that had not previously appeared in the media. During the searches, they confiscated more than 1.2 million dollars, which they hid at home under the floor and behind the wall paneling, - reports the Ukrainian publication "Strana".
In Ukraine, by a court decision, the former head of the Rivne regional territorial recruitment center, Serhiy Lutsyuk, was sent to a pre-trial detention center. He was accused of assisting in evading military service.
The adoption of the law on tightening mobilization, as well as the rules for mandatory presentation of military registration documents for crossing the border, which came into force on July 17, changed the situation on the market for providing services for the departure of military-liable men abroad, writes ctrana.news.
If at the beginning of the war the most common way to leave was on the basis of documents about unfitness for military service due to illness or through the "Road" system, now both of these ways, although they are in effect, are extremely complicated and expensive.
The fee for a full package of documents giving the right to a "white ticket" in large cities already reaches 20 thousand (and there are no guarantees that there will be a result). And even after receiving such a package, it is not a fact that they will let you go abroad, since border guards often simply say that something is missing and send you back.
The "Road" system has also been "tightened", greatly "thinning out" the number of companies that provide such services. Offers under "Road" still come across, as well as cases of leaving under this scheme, but today they are quite rare. Most often, we are talking about real drivers who simply decide that they do not want to return to Ukraine from another trip, and present the employer with a fait accompli: this happened especially often in May, immediately before and immediately after the law on mobilization came into force.
Other semi-legal loopholes, such as the registration of fictitious guardianship over a disabled person or marriage to a mother of many children, have also been largely covered up. Even when the documents are in order and there are no formal grounds for prohibiting departure, border guards always have the opportunity to refuse the person leaving under the vague wording of "insufficient documents".
The system of departure "on call from above" (if the necessary documents for departure are available) still works smoothly, but it is available to few.
This is precisely why the demand for services for completely illegal border crossing outside legal checkpoints has sharply increased. The scale of the growth in popularity of such options is best illustrated by the prices for such services: "budget" options for walking on the provided map in the fall of 2023 could be found for 1-2 thousand dollars, and a relatively comfortable option for traveling by car was offered for 3-5. Already in the spring, "walking tours" rose in price to 3-5 thousand, and "car tours" - to 5-8.
Today, such prices do not exist on the market at all: the price for the simplest crossing, which involves an independent trip to the specified point, a 15-20 kilometer walk to this point and a border crossing starts at 7-8 thousand, and the average price on the market at the time of writing this material was considered to be 10-12 thousand dollars per person. This price usually includes relatively comfortable delivery to the border area bypassing checkpoints, a walk across the border and a meeting on the other side. However, there are also very exotic options, such as crossing the border on boats, boats and other watercraft, and so on.
If we take into account that we are talking about at least hundreds of people per day, then we are talking about an entire industry with a market volume of tens of millions of dollars monthly.
At the same time, even at such prices, demand greatly exceeds supply: the waiting time in line to leave after making an advance payment is often about a month or more.
There are also plenty of people who want to make money on the rush demand.
Social networks are literally full of ads about organizing "tour trips", including from outright scammers who simply collect advances from a certain number of people, after which they disappear from contact.
However, this is not the worst outcome: it is much more dangerous to run into an "unqualified travel agent", whose trip will end in detention by border guards or the SBU.
Often, residents of border villages engage in this kind of activity, collecting entire caravans of potential illegals via the Internet - like a group of as many as 100 people that was detained on June 25 in the Odessa region. There are even rumors that sometimes secret service employees are behind the organization of such caravans, but so far there is no reliable confirmation of such rumors.
Also, such schemes are quite easily exposed by law enforcement agencies - they can act through "dummy" persons who pretend to want to go abroad, and then give away the whole operation.
Therefore, the most common advice from "experienced" ones for those who want to cross the border is not to look for "travel agents" through ads, but to get their coordinates from friends who have already successfully crossed the border illegally.
Naturally, in the context of mass illegal border crossings, the role of border guards in corruption schemes has increased, since it depends on them how successful this crossing will be.
Dozens of court cases in the open register of court decisions testify to the participation of border guards in the illegal transportation of people across the cordon. The country has found out how the employees of the State Border Service of Ukraine make money on evaders.
According to information from Strana's sources in the State Border Service of Ukraine, since the beginning of the war, several business schemes have emerged at the border crossing.