In Transcarpathia, a urologist sold a stone from a patient's urinary tract to a relative

Law enforcement officials have exposed a doctor at one of the district hospitals in Zakarpattia Oblast who organized a scheme to forge medical documents in order to obtain deferments from military conscription. 

This was reported by the Transcarpathian Regional Prosecutor’s Office. The doctor demanded money in exchange for providing a conscript with someone else’s biological material to artificially confirm a serious illness.

The investigation established that the doctor priced his “services” in several stages. First, he received a $100 advance for preparing a set of documents, and later—$300 for a stone from the urinary tract that he had previously removed from one of his cancer patients. According to the urologist’s plan, the man was to present this foreign biological material during an official diagnostic examination, passing it off as his own, in order to establish the presence of an acute pathology.

The doctor has now been formally charged with a crime under Part 3 of Article 368 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which provides for liability for a public official receiving an unlawful benefit in conjunction with extortion. The pre-trial investigation is ongoing, and investigators are examining the detained doctor’s involvement in other possible instances of selling medical reports and falsifying diagnoses.

Earlier, the SBU detained the head of the Medical Examination Commission in Kropyvnytskyi for selling disability certificates.

In Kharkiv, a scheme for illegally smuggling conscripts abroad was uncovered, involving an employee of the Territorial Recruitment Center and a former member of the Berkut special police unit. According to the investigation, they promised to arrange travel to Slovakia for $18,000.