Drone company owner arrested on corruption charges
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court has ordered Vladyslav Marchenko, owner of Acopter UAV manufacturer, into pre-trial detention on corruption charges related to procurement of drones and electronic warfare systems.
As reported by the Anti-corruption Action Centre (AntAC) NGO on Aug. 4, the court also set a UAH15 million ($360,000) bail for Marchenko.
AntAC also noted that Marchenko is under investigation in a separate case concerning the repairs at the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv. One of Okhmatdyt buildings was destroyed in a Russian missile strike last summer.
Marchenko is linked to Bud-Technologies, the firm that won the bid to rebuild the hospital in 2024. The company submitted a proposal valued at UAH307 million ($7.4 million), one of the most expensive bids among 14 companies reviewed by the journalists at Nashi Hroshi.
Without naming any suspects, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) recently announced that several officials were exposed for taking bribes during the procurement of UAVs and electronic warfare systems for the Ukrainian military. According to investigators, the scheme involved awarding state contracts at inflated prices—with markups of up to 30 percent—that suppliers later returned to the implicated officials as kickbacks.
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