The odious former director of the Velikobychkovo forestry, Yuriy Soima, who is involved in many corruption scandals and is associated with the “forest mafia”, claims to be the head of the Velikobychkovskiy branch of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine”.
Currently, the court is considering cases in which he is accused of embezzlement of public funds and forgery of documents.
According to media reports, criminal proceedings against Yury Soima were opened back in September 2021. In March 2022, employees of the State Bureau of Investigation Yuriy Soima were handed a suspicion. The court has defined for the Diet a measure of restraint in the form of house arrest.
The case against Soima was transferred to the Rakhovsky District Court, and Judge Elena Popova is considering them. Despite this, Yuriy Soima is a contender for the position of director of the Velikobychkovsky branch of the State Enterprise “Forests of Ukraine” and has already passed the first interview.
Earlier, the media reported that, starting in 2014, when Soim was appointed director of the Velikobychkovsky forestry enterprise, he began to “build a scheme for illegal logging and sale of forests.” In 2016, Soima became the protagonist of a journalistic investigation of the Pravda program on the ICTV channel on abuses in the forestry of Transcarpathia. In 2020, an investigation by the British non-governmental organization Earthsight came out, proving that the furniture giant IKEA used wood illegally mined in the Velikobychkovskiy forestry for its production.
According to media reports, in 2020, the State Forest Resources Agency decided to fire Yuri Seim as part of the “cleaning up the industry”. However, the leadership of the Rakhovsky district twice refused to agree on the decision of the State Agency to dismiss the Seimas. On February 12, 2020, the State Agency fired the Seim due to the expiration of the contract, but he managed to implement a scheme thanks to which he retained full control over the Velikobychkovskiy forestry enterprise.
The Seimas retroactively dismissed the head forest ranger of the leshoz, and immediately after the director’s dismissal, he took the vacant position of the head forest ranger. The order on the appointment of the Soima as chief forester was signed by the chief engineer of the enterprise, dependent on the Soima, which is a clear violation of the law.
Currently, when criminal cases against the Seimas are being considered in court, the media write that Yuriy Soima expects to avoid responsibility thanks to the support of influential people in the district and regional authorities. Soima himself is trying, using his influence in Veliky Bychkovo, to intimidate all possible witnesses.
Source: Fakty
