Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko reported the dismissal of seven senior city officials who were involved in an investigation into illegal land acquisition in the capital.
He wrote about this in Telegram.
The following were dismissed from their positions in the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA):
- Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration Petro Olenych;
- Deputy Head of the Kyiv Urban Development Enterprise Oleksiy Mushta;
- Deputy Director of the SE "Spetszhytlofond" Yuriy Leonov.
The Kyiv City Council (KCC) deputy and head of the land commission Mykhailo Terentyev was also dismissed from his position as director of the Engineering Center. The “UDAR” party faction has begun the procedure to recall him from Kyiv City Council deputies, as he is a suspect in criminal proceedings.
Also exempted:
- CEO of the municipal enterprise "Kyiv Institute of Land Relations" Ihor Dolynsky;
- CEO of the SE "Spetszhytlofond" Volodymyr Shariy;
- Deputy Director of the Department of Urban Planning and Architecture Valentyna Svyatyna.
The director of the municipal enterprise "Financial Company "Zhytloinvest" Viktor Pohrebny is on sick leave. As soon as he is released, he will also be fired.
As for other officials whose names were mentioned in the journalistic investigation, Klitschko emphasized that they have an undefined procedural status in the criminal proceedings. And the Secretary of the Kyiv City Council Volodymyr Bondarenko has the status of a witness.
"And he was elected as the secretary of the Kyiv City Council by the deputies. They can dismiss him. According to the regulations of the Kyiv City Council and procedures. Currently, he is suspended from preparing and conducting meetings of the Kyiv City Council. I will prepare and conduct the meetings — as the mayor," Klitschko added.
What preceded
On February 6, law enforcement officers exposed a criminal organization led by a former deputy of the Kyiv City Council. The investigation did not name him, but a number of media outlets claimed that he was Denys Komarnytsky, the leader of the “Leonid Chernovetskyi Bloc” faction in the Kyiv City Council from 2008 to 2010.
Other suspects include:
- the Deputy Head of the Kyiv City State Administration;
- the Chairman and member of the KCC Standing Commission on Architecture, Urban Planning and Land Relations;
- current deputies of the KCC;
- the First Deputy and Deputy Director of Municipal Enterprises;
- four citizens whose positions are not reported by law enforcement agencies.
The defendants are suspected of seizing valuable capital land for development and fully influencing the local authoritiesʼ decisions on granting land rights. The scheme consisted of the defendants looking for promising land plots and registering ownership rights to non-existent houses allegedly on these territories for fake people. 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.
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