The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutorʼs Office (SAP) reported that they had uncovered a large-scale corruption scheme in the construction sector involving high-ranking Ukrainian officials.
This was reported by the NABU press service.
Suspicions of abuse of office, receiving and giving bribes were announced by:
- former State Secretary of the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine, current member of the Board of NJSC “Naftogaz” of Ukraine;
- former advisor to the Minister of the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development of Ukraine;
- former director of a state-owned enterprise;
- to the developer (scheme organizer);
- an employee of a construction company.
NABU and SAP do not name names, but Babelʼs sources in law enforcement agencies confirmed that they are Vasyl Volodin (member of the board of “Naftogaz” of Ukraine) and Maksym Horbatyuk (former adviser to the minister).
The investigation revealed that the developer had devised a scheme to illegally obtain land in Kyiv for the construction of a residential complex. He contacted high-ranking officials from the Ministry of Regional Development, who helped transfer the land to a state-owned enterprise. This enterprise then illegally concluded agreements with the “right” construction company.
Under these contracts, the developer was to transfer a part of the future apartments to the state — depending on the value of the land. In order to give as few apartments as possible, the value of the plot was deliberately lowered by almost five times. The difference between this assessment and the market value exceeded a billion hryvnias. This is the amount by which the state would have received fewer apartments if the contracts had been fulfilled. However, the plot was arrested at the request of the NABU and the SAP.
In response for the help, the developer sold apartments to high-ranking officials and people associated with them at significant discounts — 1000-8000 hryvnias per square meter, although the real market price of such housing is almost 30 000 hryvnias per square meter. The total amount of ill-gotten gains from this amounted to 16.8 million hryvnias. Some of these apartments were also seized.
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