Police claims a scheme to issue false medical exemptions operated in Kiev and 11 regions
Ukrainian police and Security Service (SBU) said on Tuesday they had discovered a widespread conspiracy in 11 regions and the capital to issue fraudulent medical exemption certificates to men seeking to avoid mobilization.
The Prosecutor-General’s Office announced that 100 offices and residences in Kiev, Kiev Region, Odessa, Transcarpathia, Poltava, Vinnitsa, Cherkasy, Chernigov, Lviv, Zhytomyr, and Ivano-Frankovsk had been searched as part of the investigation into the scheme.
Prosecutors say that officials of regional recruitment centers teamed up with members of military-medical commissions to create “a scheme for issuing certificates declaring men unfit for military service due to their health” and had them removed from the draft register.
The conspirators allegedly charged an average of $6,000 dollars for the “service” and their customers did not even show up for their medical exams, based on the absence of any electronic medical records, the prosecutors said. The recipients then used these fraudulent medical exemptions to travel outside Ukraine.
During the searches of doctors’ offices, recruitment centers and residences of suspected draft dodgers, the police seized “medical records, logs of registration of medical findings, patient certificates, [and] other medical and accounting documents.”
The entire conspiracy was allegedly “mediated by third parties,” who remained unnamed.
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