The deputy mayor of Kyiv and deputies of the Kyiv City Council were under investigation for illegal appropriation of land
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) announced a large-scale operation aimed at exposing corruption in the land and budget spheres of Kyiv. About this informs NABU press office.
Law enforcement officers discovered a criminal organization that illegally took possession of the capital’s land for development and fully controlled the adoption of decisions by local authorities regarding the granting of land rights.
“Among the suspects: ex-deputy of the KMR (Kyiv City Council), head of a criminal organization; deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration; chairman and member of the KMR standing commission on architecture, urban planning and land relations, current deputies of the KMR; first deputy and deputy director of communal enterprises; four other persons.” – says the message.
It is also reported that seven members of the criminal organization have been detained, but their identities have not been specified. The names of the suspects are not disclosed, but it is noted that the leader of the group is a “media-known” person. In particular, he had a “significant influence” on the processes in the KMDA and the Kyiv City Council. It is about the appointment of loyal officials, the dismissal of controlled employees, as well as the distribution of budget funds in the interests of a criminal organization.
“Members of the criminal organization found promising plots of land and registered the ownership rights to structures that never existed on these plots for persons under their control. Later, they submitted applications to the city council to grant them ownership rights to plots of land for the maintenance of these structures, which made it possible to avoid auctions.”, – the NABU notes.
According to the agency, in 2023-2024, a criminal organization illegally seized a plot of land in the city center worth 11.6 million hryvnias from the property of the territorial community of Kyiv, causing corresponding losses. At the same time, thanks to the operative actions of the law enforcement officers, it was possible to prevent the illegal acquisition of six more land plots in the capital with a total value of 83.7 million hryvnias.
Names are not being released. However, for information of the Anti-Corruption Center, searches, in particular, took place at Kyiv businessman Denys Komarnytskyi. Among those involved in the case are Petro Olenych, deputy of Vitaliy Klychka, Mykhailo Terentiev, head of the land commission of the Kyiv City Council, and Olena Marchenko, a member of the same commission.
Komarnytskyi has already reacted to information about him in the media and today’s searches, pointing to a “systemic campaign directed not only against me, but also to discredit the Kyiv city government and its representatives.”
We will remind that Denys Komarnytskyi headed the “Block of Leonid Chernovetskyi” faction in the Kyiv City Council from 2008 to 2010. After the parliamentary elections of 2019, according to the media, he received the status of “watcher of Kyiv”. His name has repeatedly appeared in scandals related to opaque buildings and the distribution of city resources.
Companies associated with Komarnytskyi regularly won large contracts for the construction and reconstruction of facilities from Kyiv’s utility companies. In particular, he was the beneficiary of the company-general contractor for the construction of the Podilsk bridge crossing, the estimated cost of which, according to the decision of the Kyiv City Council, increased from 11.2 billion hryvnias to 19.9 billion hryvnias.
People’s deputy Geo Leros declaredthat through the mediation of People’s Deputy from “Servant of the People” Mykola Tyshchenko and Denys Komarnytskyi, the Office of the President systematically received “foreign currency funds” from the capital’s budget.
