The NABU and the SAPO have reported that, in the Printing Plant case, €3.377 million will be transferred from a French company to Ukraine’s state budget. The agreement with the company was concluded by the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office on July 8 and approved by a Paris court on September 3.
The investigation was conducted by a joint investigative team from Ukraine, France, and Estonia under the coordination of Eurojust.
According to the investigation, former director of the state-owned Printing Plant and later Minister of Health of Ukraine, Maksym Stepanov, during the period when the scheme was in place, demanded that the French company re-register copyrights for security elements of Ukrainian documents to an Estonian firm under his control. That company subsequently received royalties even after his resignation, with part of the funds transferred to Stepanov’s daughter’s account. Investigators also established that he was involved in inflating the prices of hologram supplies by four to six times.