Kyiv City Council Secretary Bondarenko resigns — he is a witness in the case of seizure of capital land

Volodymyr Bondarenko is leaving the post of Secretary of the Kyiv City Council — he is acting as a witness in a case of corruption in the land and budget sectors of the capital.

This was reported by Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko and Suspilne Kyiv.

At an extraordinary meeting of the Kyiv City Council on April 8, based on the results of a secret vote on the early termination of Bondarenkoʼs powers, they were unable to remove him: 34 deputies voted in favor, 23 against, and 38 abstained. 61 votes are required for resignation.

After that, Bondarenko wrote a resignation letter and called on the deputies to support it. From the rostrum, he thanked for the trust and stated that he “never held on to the chair.” The deputies supported his statement with 81 votes.

Previously, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko suspended Bondarenko from chairing meetings. Volodymyr Bondarenko has been the secretary of the Kyiv City Council since December 2020.

What preceded

On February 6, law enforcement officers exposed a criminal organization led by a former deputy of the Kyiv City Council (KCC). The investigation did not name him, but a number of media outlets claimed that he was Denys Komarnytskyi, the leader of the “Leonid Chernovetskyi Bloc” faction in the Kyiv City Council from 2008 to 2010.

Other suspects include:

• Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration;
• Chairman and member of the KCC Standing Commission on Architecture, Urban Planning and Land Relations;
• current deputies of the KCC;
• First Deputy and Deputy Director of Municipal Enterprises;
• four citizens whose positions are not reported by law enforcement agencies.

The defendants in the case are suspected of seizing valuable capital land for development and fully influencing the local authoritiesʼ decisions on granting land rights. The scheme consisted in the defendants looking for promising land plots and registering ownership rights to non-existent houses allegedly on these territories for fictitious persons. Then they submitted applications to the City Council to grant them ownership rights to land plots for servicing these structures — this way they avoided bidding.

According to the investigation, during 2023-2024, the defendants illegally removed land in the city center worth 11.6 million hryvnias from the property of the territorial community of Kyiv.

Seven officials involved in the case were dismissed from the Kyiv City State Administration on April 3. The full list of names and positions is here.

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