Customs officer and broker to face trial over ₴230k bribe

A customs officer and a customs broker will be tried in Ternopil.

They are suspected of transferring and receiving 230 thousand hryvnias of illegal gain.

This was reported by the Ternopil Regional Prosecutor's Office.

The broker transferred money to the employee's bank card so that he could quickly clear the goods according to his clients' customs declarations, without creating artificial obstacles by applying additional forms of customs control. Law enforcement officers recorded 20 episodes of receiving transfers

During the pre-trial investigation, it was established that the customs officer received an illegal benefit from a customs broker during customs clearance of goods imported into Ukraine between June 2022 and January 2023.

The total amount of ill-gotten gains was 230 thousand hryvnias.

Prosecutors have sent indictments to the court. The State Inspector of the Ternopil Customs Department is accused of receiving an unlawful benefit by an official, repeatedly, combined with extortion (Parts 1, 3 of Article 368 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine). The individual entrepreneur (customs broker) is accused of providing an unlawful benefit to an official, repeatedly (Parts 1, 2 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

We previously wrote that the Supreme Court stopped the confiscation of the assets of a Kyiv Customs official.

We also reported that the Court left the appeal against the sentence of the former deputy head of the Ternopil Regional Military Administration without action.