Law enforcement has completed the investigation and submitted the case to court. The offender is in custody and faces a lengthy prison sentence.
During the investigation, it was found that a 34-year-old resident of Kharkiv region, acting in collusion with an unidentified person, helped facilitate a resident of Odesa who wanted to bypass border checks for $8000, agreeing to transport him from Odesa to the border.
According to the criminals' scheme, on the agreed day, the suspect arrived in Odesa in his vehicle, where he met the 'client' and drove him to a border locality. The passenger paid the driver $1000. From the final point, the 'traveler' was supposed to cross the border on foot, avoiding border patrols, and then settle the payment for the 'services'.
However, law enforcement stopped the transporter halfway. The police apprehended him and seized the illegally obtained money, the vehicle, and mobile phones containing information of interest to the investigation. The court imposed a freeze on all seized assets at the request of the investigators.
The court chose a pre-trial measure of detention with the possibility of bail set at 242,240 UAH, which the accused did not utilize.
"We conducted the investigation and gathered enough evidence to charge the suspect with illegal transportation of persons across the state border of Ukraine. Such a crime is punishable by up to nine years in prison with asset confiscation. Materials relating to the unidentified accomplice have been separated into a separate proceeding," stated senior investigator Yevheniy Panasyuk.
The measures to uncover and document the crime were carried out by investigators from police department No. 1 of the Odesa district police in conjunction with border guards, under the procedural guidance of the Hadyzhyn District Prosecutor's Office of Odesa.