SBU investigates attempted sabotage via attempt to privatise state aircraft in Zaporizhzhia

After media reports emerged regarding an attempt to illegally remove a large quantity of aviation equipment from state ownership, inconvenient references began disappearing from the internet. The Security Service of Ukraine classified these actions as an attempted act of sabotage.

Attempt to seize strategic assets

According to the SBU press service, commercial entities attempted to take possession of the assets of the State Educational and Production Institution of Aviation Profile "Zaporizhzhia Flight Training Centre named after Aviation Marshal O.I. Pokryshkin". To this end, the perpetrators approached the court, providing forged documents, demanding recognition of ownership rights to the centre's assets and an obligation to return them.

Despite the fact that the owner of the enterprise is the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine, and no legal relations existed between it and the commercial entities, the court ruled in favour of the plaintiffs. As a result of this decision, 158 aircraft, with a total market value exceeding 50 million UAH, as well as the airport runway, which was planned to be demolished, were to end up in the hands of private individuals.

Details of the court case

In September, the Industrial District Court of the city of Dnipro issued a default judgment transferring the assets of the "ZCLP" to commercial entities. The case materials indicate that in December 2013, LLC "Bankometal" concluded a storage agreement for assets at one of the warehouses in Dnipro with an unnamed individual. However, this individual violated the terms of the contract by transferring the assets to the "ZCLP" for storage, and subsequently refused to return them along with the title documents.

The court recognised the firm's ownership rights to the disputed assets and ordered their retrieval from the possession of the unnamed individual and the flight centre. The list of assets they attempted to remove included:

• 9,000 airport slabs PAG-14;
• 86 L-29 aircraft;
• 5 Yak-55 aircraft;
• one Yak-18T;
• one An-24 RT;
• two "Wilga-35";
• 19 An-2T 1G aircraft;
• seven Yak-42 aircraft.

Investigators opened a criminal case under Article 15 (attempt) in conjunction with Article 113 (sabotage) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

Political background of the figures involved

The unchanged owner of LLC "Bankometal" is Putintsev Serhiy Borysovych. In the 2014 snap parliamentary elections, he ran on the list of the "Ukraine – a United Country" party under number 66, indicating his position as chief specialist of "Bankometal" in his application. Putintsev's contact details also appeared in an announcement for training in aviation specialties at the Kryvyi Rih College of the National Aviation University, which was organised by the Internal Peacekeeping Contingent of Ukraine.

The director of "Bankometal" is listed as Falyeyev Volodymyr Vitaliyovych. He also participated in the 2014 parliamentary elections, running on the list of the "Ukraine – a United Country" party under number 32. At that time, he was indicated as the head of LLC "Irian", owned by Potapova Iryna Fedorivna.

Potapova Iryna Fedorivna, acting as the head of the NGO "All-Ukrainian Centre 'Public Initiative and Human Rights Protection'", signed an appeal to President Petro Poroshenko demanding the cessation of hostilities and the achievement of peace. The organiser of this appeal was the "Ukrainian Choice" movement of Viktor Medvedchuk, the godfather of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The list of the "Ukraine – a United Country" party in the 2014 elections was headed by Maksym Muzyka, Danylo Yanivskyi, Oleksiy Mochanov, Serhiy Ismagilov, Hryhoriy Tuka, Dmytro Stus, and others.

Context: previous abuses

As previously reported, in the summer of 2015, two former heads of the Flight Training Centre named after Aviation Marshal O.I. Pokryshkin received sentences for the embezzlement of aviation equipment. Another head is under investigation.