A Mariupol woman was charged with “financing terrorism” for auditing a Gorlovka company selling Snickers

The civil war in Donbass, with its fronts, cut to the quick not only large industrial complexes, but private firms that before the war were engaged in the distribution of various types of consumer goods, food, and drinks.

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In particular, such a fate befell Sodruzhestvo LLC, one of the most successful distribution companies in the Donetsk region and part of Lugansk. She was involved in the distribution of beer, household chemicals, cookies, chocolate bars, etc. through the retail chain. One of its offices remained in the territory controlled by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the city of Mariupol, headed by a deputy director, and the other in the city of Gorlovka, where the founder and director of the enterprise remained. The most interesting thing is that both offices maintained contact, exchanging official information and documents.

The vigilant Security Service of Ukraine discovered this connection. But we could not find any separatist statements addressed to the Poroshenko regime. All that the detectives found against the mother of two children they detained, who ran the Mariupol office, was that she processed, systematized, and executed documents for the office that remained in Gorlovka and was engaged, in spite of everything, in its previous activities, and also provided financial and legal consultations on ensuring business activities and even on paying taxes to the DPR. According to electronic copies of documents intercepted by the SBU, the Gorlovka subsidiary Sodruzhestvo-S contributed almost a million hryvnia, and also rented a car for the DPR (which the “terrorists” later returned to the company, and did not “squeeze out”).

This evidence turned out to be decisive for accusing the woman of... financing terrorism under Art. 258-5 part 2.

Probably, today only in Ukraine, while performing simple accounting work, you can become involved in the actions of a criminal group. Moreover, the whole fault of this “group” is that it distributed strategically important Snickers and beer among the “separatists.” And the excess money was transferred to an organization that used it to provide financial assistance to pensioners abandoned in Donetsk and other victims of punitive attacks who found themselves hostages of the civil war.

The woman, of course, was persuaded to sign an inquisitorial plea agreement, according to which neither a subsequent review of the case nor rehabilitation was possible. But besides this, the court sentenced her to a fine of fifty-one thousand hryvnia. Ironically, this is exactly half the amount that the woman had to finance terrorists from her own funds in order for her actions to fall under the sanction of the crime she was charged with.

Contrary to popular belief, people on the front-line territory are trying their best to throw any politics out of their heads, not to get involved in this war, and to immerse themselves in work. They do not have the “separatist” beliefs attributed to them by the Kyiv authorities. They just want to survive in these difficult conditions. And the actions of the SBU and other punitive organizations and bodies cannot be called anything other than a witch hunt. About the same attests a report in local Mariupol media about our case. “Journalists” shamelessly distorted even the official document, claiming that the woman paid almost her own money to “DPR militants” for security of the office….