The SSU has eliminated a large-scale scheme of financing the russian occupation forces by Ukrainian citizens.

One of the organizers of the scheme is Oksana Marchenko, the wife of Viktor Medvedchuk, suspected of high treason.

She is the final beneficiary of a network of Kyiv companies and an enterprise in Yalta, which transferred millions to the accounts of russia’s national guard and ministry of internal affairs in the occupied Crimea.

The investigation established that these companies had paid ruscists supposedly for ‘guarding Medvedchuk’s real estate’ on the peninsula.

In addition, Marchenko’s business entity regularly replenished the russian budget by paying ‘taxes and fees’.

The total amount of payments made in favor of the aggressor state is equivalent to over UAH 50 mln (USD 1.2 mln).

To implement the scheme, Oksana Marchenko registered a company in Yalta with an authorized capital of over RUB 1 bln.

To create it, the businesswoman used assets of three controlled investment companies located in Kyiv.

Then, the ‘Crimean’ firm signed the relevant ‘security’ agreements with the entities of the russian guard and interior ministry.

According to the investigation, after the full-scale invasion started, Marchenko’s company continued to feed the russian budget.

During 11 searches of Medvedchuk’s wife’s real estate, offices of her Kyiv-based companies and homes of their top managers, the SSU found:

• documents, computers, flash drives and cell phones with evidence of the scheme,
• seals and bank cards used by the suspects in their illegal activities.

Based on the collected evidence, SSU investigators notified Oksana Marchenko and the head of the affiliated Crimea company of suspicion under Article 110-2.3 of the CCU (financing actions committed with the aim of forceful change or overthrow of constitutional order or seizure of state power, change of boundaries of the territory or state border of Ukraine).

The decision to serve notices of suspicion to heads of the involved Kyiv companies is pending.

The businesspersons are facing up to 8 years in prison with confiscation of property.

The SSU Office in Ivano-Frankivsk region and the SSU Main Directorate for Counterintelligence Support of Critical Infrastructure and Countering Terrorism Financing exposed the crime under the procedural supervision of Ivano-Frankivsk Region Prosecutor’s Office.