Former Ukrainian Health Minister Maksym Stepanov has been sent to trial over an alleged 500 million hryvnia corruption scheme involving official document manufacturing, anti-corruption authorities announced.
The indictment against Stepanov and a former department head at state enterprise Polygraph Combine Ukraine was submitted to court by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, according to a statement on the bureau's website.
Polygraph Combine Ukraine is the state enterprise responsible for printing official documents, including biometric passports, identity cards, and driver's licences. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau, known as NABU, investigates high level official corruption in Ukraine alongside the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, or SAP.
Hologram procurement scheme
Investigators allege that in 2013, while heading Polygraph Combine Ukraine, Stepanov purchased an Estonian company through front individuals. He then forced foreign partners to supply security holograms for passports, identity cards, and driver's licences through this intermediary firm.
The Estonian company purchased materials directly from a French manufacturer and resold them to the Ukrainian state enterprise at prices inflated four to six times. Prosecutors say participants in the scheme embezzled state funds amounting to approximately half a billion hryvnias.
NABU stated that Stepanov also patented intellectual property rights for protective design elements used in Ukrainian passports under the controlled company. As a result, citizens receiving official documents overpaid for procurement markups and paid personal royalties to the official for his claimed intellectual contribution.
Offshore laundering and daughter's account
Between 2018 and 2021, the Estonian company received approximately 7 million euros in royalty payments. Investigators say the suspect subsequently laundered the funds through controlled offshore companies, with 124,790 US dollars ending up in his daughter's bank account.
Four other individuals implicated in the case have already received guilty verdicts following plea bargain agreements. Their convictions resulted in almost 180 million hryvnias being paid into state revenue, nearly 6 million hryvnias directed to support the Defence Forces of Ukraine, and over 20 million hryvnias reimbursed to Polygraph Combine Ukraine.
Legal procedures are currently ongoing to return additional funds exceeding 50 million hryvnias from abroad, anti-corruption authorities said.
Defense denial and career timeline
Stepanov has denied all allegations regarding his leadership of Polygraph Combine Ukraine, describing the case as order-made and calling the suspicion complete nonsense. He stated that he never had any connection to the Estonian intermediary firm, adding that it was an exclusive distributor and that manufacturers had repeatedly refused his official requests to buy materials directly.
Stepanov served as Minister of Health in the government of Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal from March 30, 2020, to May 18, 2021. In July 2023, NABU named him as a suspect in the Polygraph Combine Ukraine investigation, and he was arrested in absentia in September of that year.
In 2025, prosecutors added a new suspicion alleging he received illegal benefits through copyrights on design elements of Ukrainian documents, including a stylized trident and map of Ukraine, as well as money laundering.
