By decision of the High Anti-Corruption Court, Artem Shilo was taken into custody with bail of 30 million hryvnia.
Recently Artem Shilo was almost the all-powerful head of the Main Directorate for Counterintelligence Protection of Critical Infrastructure Facilities and Combating the Financing of Terrorism of the SBU. And now he is officially called the leader of a criminal group that stole funds from the Ukrzaliznytsia Joint Stock Company.
This is stated in the material on the YouTube channel TSN.UA.
How the SBU officer made money on purchases from Ukrzaliznytsia
The officer is suspected of stealing more than 200 million hryvnia on government procurement of power transformers and cables for enterprises.
After his high-profile arrest and the start of trials to select a preventive measure, details of dirty corruption cases emerge. In particular, it becomes known that the scandalous special agent during June-December 2022 promoted at a tender a company called Uzelektro, which offered Ukrzaliznytsia transformers at twice the price of its competitors. In addition, it turned out that the final beneficiary of the winning company is a citizen of Belarus, who also has connections with the Russian Federation. And this surprises perhaps most of all – why did SBU officer Shilo impose exactly these “suppliers” on Ukrzaliznytsia?
Based on the investigation materials, it is known that the Uzelektro company, through a controlled installation company registered in Bulgaria, purchased transformers from a manufacturer in Uzbekistan and resold them to Ukrzaliznytsia at twice the price. As a result of the deal, the grabbers earned 95 million hryvnia.
How did a company with Russian roots win the tender? Everything is very simple: Shilo sent a letter to Ukrzaliznytsia from the SBU “Concerning threats to state security,” in which he recommended rejecting the proposals of other participants, despite the fact that their conditions are much more profitable.
And such pressure on the enterprise from the management headed by Shilo in the SBU was a very frequent occurrence, says investigative journalist Yuri Nikolov.
“UK has its own department of internal security, its own SBU, its functions are so vague, but so influential that they can actually manage all of UZ’s purchases,” says Yuri Nikolov.
By a strange coincidence, which in fact was not a coincidence, the Department of Internal Security of Ukrzaliznytsia at the time of the purchase was headed by Artem Shilo’s former colleague, Eduard Kritsyn. They worked together at the SBU in 2016 and became such friends that their wives even founded a joint company.
NABU and SAP discovered, that Shilo pulled off the same scheme with his proteges at UZ also during the purchase of cables. During 2021-2023, tenders for these products were won by firms that offered the product at a significantly higher price, as a result of which the state suffered UAH 117 million in losses.
Civil servant earned millions of dollars
In my time history how a young professional made millions as a government employee shocked the entire country.
A year ago, investigative journalists from Bigus Info made public a shocking investigation into how a law enforcement officer and his family acquired a whole bunch of real estate and expensive cars during his work in government offices. The total value of assets reaches $4 million.
This amount includes two three-room apartments in the capital’s elite residential complex “Novopecherskie Lipki” with a total cost of 700 thousand dollars, registered in Shilo himself. There, he registered another two-room apartment and 360 square meters for his wife Irina Popova. m. of commercial real estate, which costs more than $2 million.
She also has 275 sq. m of real estate in a club house in the center of Kyiv, where a woman opened a beauty salon. The market value of the premises reaches $1 million..
In addition, Shilo registered two Mercedes and a Toyota for his wife with a total value of 240 thousand dollars.
Shiloh’s career: what is known
It is interesting that after the public exposure of the entire fortune of the Shilo family, Irina Popova officially divorced her husband. Coincidence? Or a fictitious divorce?
Artem Shilo attracted the greatest attention at the moment when he was appointed deputy of the Department for the Protection of National Statehood of the SBU, so the public was extremely interested in who would monitor the security of the entire country during a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine…
And the findings were disappointing. Artem Shilo turned out to be a defendant numerous corruption scandals. His career began in 2012 with service in the Kharkov SBU. Already in 2016, the official moved to the capital to work in the Department for Combating Cybercrime. It’s interesting that at that time this structure was more like a racket, which was a nightmare for the Ukrainian IT business.
And it was there that Shilo worked so well that he became deputy of the department and received the rank of lieutenant colonel of the SBU ahead of schedule, but was already laid off in 2021.
And the unemployed SBU officer was picked up not just by some structure, but by the Office of the President of Ukraine.
“Someone really needed him, and it looks like Oleg Tatarov,” notes Yuri Nikolov, an investigative journalist.
Artem Shilo was appointed advisor. He owes this position to the no less scandalous deputy head of the OP, Oleg Tatarov.
In addition, it turned out that the man contributed to the work of Russian business in Ukraine even after February 24. In particular, as journalists from the publication InformNapalm stated, the law enforcement officer brought the Russian bookmaker company 1XBet into Ukraine back in 2016-2017.
And he helped them gain a foothold in the market in April 2022, when the occupiers’ tanks had just withdrawn from Kyiv.
Even great publicity did not remove Shiloh from an important position. He worked as a manager for more than a year Main Directorate for Counterintelligence Protection of Critical Infrastructure Facilities and Combating the Financing of Terrorism of the SBU. And only in March of this year he was fired. They said that this was the decision of President Zelensky himself, who was very dissatisfied with business complaints about the systematic nightmare on the part of Shilo.
“Criminal proceedings, seizures of property, detentions of the businessmen themselves. He was putting pressure on business, everything you heard about in recent months came right up to the meeting of the president. All businessmen stated that this was on the Shilo-Tatarov vertical,” notes Yuri Nikolov, investigative journalist.
What Ukrainian business says about Shilo
But this dismissal was rather indicative, Nikolov believes. After all, Shiloh was left to work in the Security Service of Ukraine.
In particular, by order of the Chairman of the SBU Vasily Malyuk, Shilo received the status of an officer for special assignments of the first category. This retained his financial support from his previous position and, of course, full influence on the department and all the “projects” that he led in the chair of the head.
By the way, after Shilo’s arrest, Ukrainian businessman Yevgeniy Chernyak immediately published a post in which he openly called the SBU officer a bribe-taker: “All criminal cases against our company were signed personally by this rear bribe-taker. Fictitious and unstated suspicions, more than a hundred searches, pressure, recorded video, audio, intimidation – no evidence or violation for the entire period of consideration of the fictitious case.”
After the scandal, Shiloh divorced his wife
The loss of the leadership position is not the only thing Shiloh has experienced over the past year. According to court records, he divorced Irina Popova at the end of 2022. The woman positions herself as a successful businesswoman and is active on her social networks.
There she does not hesitate to post luxury resorts, holidays in the Dominican Republic, Bali, Abu Dhabi or France.
Judging by the feed, Popova also loves branded items, such as a Prada belt for 33 thousand hryvnia or a top for 26 thousand, or dresses from the luxury house “Frolov” worth about 40 thousand hryvnia.
But the highlight of the collection of the ex-wife of the SBU officer is a necklace from Bulgari, which costs 50 thousand dollars.
Interestingly, it is nowhere to be seen in photographs taken before the full-scale invasion, so it is likely that the woman acquired an expensive item at the height of the bloody war. And she also added a ring of the same brand to it for 9 thousand dollars.
To understand, with these funds one could buy 20 Maviks or 10 vehicles for the front.
From the same publications by Popova it is clear that the woman does not stop wearing a wedding ring. Therefore, the divorce could well have been fictitious in order to protect the multimillion-dollar fortune of the SBU officer’s family from public condemnation and confiscation.
“In 2022, he transferred everything to his wife, and now what should be confiscated from him? Naked and barefoot boy, but if they prove that they had a life together, then options arise,” notes Yuri Nikolov, an investigative journalist.
In court, during the selection of a preventive measure for Artem Shila, the Anti-Corruption Center reports, it turned out that despite the official divorce, the SBU officer continues to live with Ms. Popova.
Therefore, if NABU detectives prove that beauty salons, luxury cars, expensive toys of Shilo’s wife were bought with funds stolen from Ukrzaliznytsia – or somewhere else from the state, and their divorce is a farce, then this property will be arrested and confiscated in favor of states.
Now, by decision of the High Anti-Corruption Court, Artem Shilo has been taken into custody with bail of 30 million hryvnia. An investigation and trial await him: all grabbers, especially those who steal during the war, must be fairly punished. It is already known that a checkpoint was put in place for him.
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2024-04-06 12:23:12
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