Prosecutor: €450,000 profits in Slava Ukraini case would have been better used as aid
Embezzlement charges brought against former Eesti 200 MP Johanna-Maria Lehtme do not carry any claim that no humanitarian aid had been sent to Ukraine from the NGO Lehtme was involved with, State Prosecutor Sigrid Nurm said, though added that €450,000 that ended up as company profits could instead have gone as greater aid to Ukraine.
Lehtme has exercised her legal right not to give any statements in the ongoing proceedings in Estonia. Proceedings have also been ongoing in Ukraine.
Nurm said that, on the basis of evidence gathered so far, once the organization had been created, its humanitarian aid work for the people of Ukraine began with intensity. Initially, Lehtme and Slava Ukraini cooperated in Ukraine via the NGO All for Victory, but in 2022 this was replaced — at Lehtme's behest — by a company IC Construction, and transactions made with it included a markup.
"This is not in itself blameworthy economically, as a business entity is supposed to make a profit," Nurm told "Uudis+." "Certainly, however, we can reproach Johanna-Maria Lehtme given that as of today is that by replacing the charitable organization and continuing to do the same things via IC Construction, and seeing its markup, she should have, by the standards of any good board member, made better use of donors' money," Nurm added.
Nurm stressed that the prosecutor's office is not charging Lehtme with failing to use the donations for the humanitarian aid they were intended, but that about €450,000 went on profits to companies, which would not have happened if cooperation with the NGO had continued as it started.
"The embezzlement aspect concerns one contract, which is a logistics contract, and the sum of damages €44,000. Through the proceedings we have established that the logistics services were provided by volunteers who in fact received no pay, and through this, the money was, to our current knowledge, redirected to cover operating costs, salaries, office expenses, and other expenses of All for Victory and IC Construction," the state prosecutor said. Invoices submitted have been compared with the actual purchase prices through the case.
Ukrainian law enforcement authorities last year halted the pretrial investigation into the possible misappropriation of donated funds collected in Estonia by the NGO Slava Ukraini, because the main suspect, the head of NGO All for Victory, Hennadi Vaskiv, had left the country.
According to Nurm, Estonian criminal proceedings concern only Lehtme's actions as head of the NGO and Slava Ukraini as the wronged party.
Proceedings are going on in Ukraine too.
"Everything that has happened with the money after that and where it has gone to relates to the Ukrainian proceedings. We have not received any hints or evidence that Johanna-Maria Lehtme has received any criminal proceeds from this scheme. We consider this damage to have been passed on to third parties, and Ukraine is dealing with that," Nurm went on.
Slava Ukraini has opted to forgo filing a claim to recover the money, as the organization is currently in the process of liquidation, Nurm said.
"It is important to make a distinction here — we are talking today about the damage caused to the legal entity, the NGO Slava Ukraini," and that damage resulted from the breach of duty of care by the board member. We cannot state that none of these aid projects materialized, or that no humanitarian aid was sent to Ukraine. It certainly was. Our reproach today is simply that, with the approximately €450,000, it would have been possible to provide more aid rather than directing it into the profit of some business entity," she continued.
The Prosecutor General's Office began criminal proceedings related to Lehtme, who won a Riigikogu seat at the March 2023 elections, in May of that year. Nurm noted that when talking about the length of the proceedings, it must be grasped that this was not carried out only on Estonian territory, and that a large part of the evidence-collecting took place in Ukraine, and was conducted by Ukrainian colleagues.
Furthermore, all Ukrainian-language evidence has had to be translated, processed, and collated with documents collected in Estonia. "One must also take into account that our cooperation partner is a country currently at war," Nurm noted.
The prosecutor's office has had healthy cooperation with the Ukrainian side, Nurm added, and Ukraine itself has invested significant resources into the investigation.
Lehtme has refused to give statements in the proceedings, according to the state prosecutor. Nurm added Lehtme is exercising a right to do so, and so this cannot be held against her in itself.
The Office of the Prosecutor General has filed charges against Johanna-Maria Lehtme, co-founder of the NGO Slava Ukraini, for breach of trust and embezzlement following a two-year investigation into the charity's handling of over €6 million raised after Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Lehtme had been made Citizen of the Year 2022 and won a Riigikogu seat the following year after a campaign which directly referenced her aid to Ukraine.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte, Barbara Oja
Source: "Uudis+"
