The head of the Ukrainian FA, Andriy Pavelko, has been notified by the Ukrainian police that he is a suspect in a corruption case regarding the establishment of a synthetic turf producing factory in the country.

According to English newspaper the Guardian, Pavelko was suspected of “taking possession of someone else’s property by abuse of his official position as an official, committed on a particularly large scale by prior collusion by a group of persons.”

In October 2018, Ukrainian investigative program Schemes revealed that in 2015, Pavelko created the Saudi-based company SDT to buy equipment for a factory that makes synthetic turf.

The Ukrainian Football Association then paid Pavelko’s company twice the market price to buy the equipment. According to Schemes, the Association overpaid more than USD 1 million.

Local media outlet Glavkom has reported that Denys Bugai, a lawyer acting for the UFA, told its reporters that, “While there had been overpayments to SDT, the money had been reclaimed by the football body.”

According to Bugai, “The UFA received from SDT the entire range of services it had ordered, built the first Ukrainian factory for the production of synthetic football turf, and, at the same time, settled an urgent debt issue with one of its ex-creditors. That is the absurdity of the version of the investigators and prosecutors.”