Under the procedural guidance of the Specialized Environmental Prosecutor's Office of the Office of the Prosecutor General, the pre-trial investigation has been completed, and an indictment has been sent to court regarding three employees of one of the branches of the State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine" in the Zhytomyr region.

They are accused of an attempted unlawful acquisition of property through abuse of office (Part 3 of Article 15, Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).

According to the investigation, the forestry engineers were part of the commission that allocated areas for main use logging. During the measurements, they intentionally understated the thickness and height of the trees to reduce the volume of valuable timber in the reports.

Based on such data, the enterprise received a logging ticket for an area of 2.4 hectares, where the actual volume of merchantable oak timber was understated by 183 cubic meters – this amounts to over 4.5 million hryvnias.

Law enforcement agencies uncovered the illegal actions of the officials, which made it impossible to complete the initiated logging and acquire the timber.

The pre-trial investigation was conducted by the Main Investigative Department of the State Bureau of Investigations, with operational support from the Cyber Police Department of the National Police of Ukraine, with the assistance of the Internal Security Department of the State Enterprise "Forests of Ukraine".

Note: according to Article 62 of the Constitution of Ukraine, a person is presumed innocent of committing a crime and cannot be subjected to criminal punishment until their guilt is proven in a lawful manner and established by a guilty verdict of the court.