The head of the tax service of the Sumy Oblast and deputy from the «Servant of the People» party, Olena Khotenko, found herself at the center of a scandal due to financial transactions with her 12-year-old son. In 2018, Khotenko borrowed 2.8 million hryvnias from her son, who was in the seventh grade at that time, and still has not returned the debt. This was reported by Martyna Bohuslavets, head of the anti-corruption center «Mezha», in her columns on «Ukrainian Pravda».
Olena Khotenko’s declaration states that this loan remains unpaid. The most impressive thing is the fact that her 12-year-old son lent her the money. As Bohuslavets notes, «the question of how a seventh-grader could give his mother such a significant sum remains open.»
Today, Khotenko’s son is already a «successful 18-year-old FOP» who, according to his mother’s declaration, earned 3 million hryvnias in 2023.
In 2016, Olena Khotenko did not declare the part of the house in the Rivne region that belonged to her husband. At that time, she held the position of deputy head of the tax service of the Zaporizhia region. As Bohuslavets notes, such «forgetfulness» often occurs among officials to avoid the attention of law enforcement officers regarding the origin of funds.
It is interesting that part of the house belonged to Khotenko’s mother, a Russian citizen Lyudmila Timofeenko. Last year, she gave this part to her daughter, but the value of the property was understated in the declaration. The market value of the house of 550 square meters is estimated at at least 10.8 million hryvnias, while the declaration shows only 30 thousand hryvnias.
In May 2022, in the third month of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Olena Khotenko received two apartments as a gift from her mother. And here, too, the real estate value was underestimated. For example, an apartment in Rivne, located in the city center, was declared for 50 thousand hryvnias, while the market price of such housing at that time was at least 672 thousand hryvnias.
