Oleksandr Zvezdin, an official at the Ministry of Community and Territorial Development, who heads the department for cooperation with donor institutions of the investment policy department, has found himself in the spotlight due to dubious “gifts” from his closest relatives. Apartments, land plots, and expensive cars are all presented as gifts from his mother or father-in-law, while the official’s official income does not explain such luxuries.
Back in 2017, Zvezdin purchased several real estate objects in the temporarily occupied territory of Luhansk - two land plots and a house with a total value of about 274 thousand hryvnias. At the same time, in the Kyiv region, he received land with an area of 1,000 sq. m for 29 thousand. The official did not indicate the source of funds in his declarations.
In 2022, his wife Yulia registered ownership of an apartment in Vyshgorod worth over 1.2 million hryvnias – a “gift” from her father.
In September 2023, the official himself received a brand new Skoda Octavia from his mother, Galina Zvezdina, for 1 million hryvnias. Interestingly, immediately after that, the mother purchased a Jaguar XF (2016) for 450 thousand hryvnias, which is actually used by her son.
In 2024, Zvezdin bought a BMW 320I (2024 model) for 1.6 million UAH - while the market price of such a model ranges between 2 and 2.5 million. In the same year, he gave away his Nissan Juke (2017), valuing it at 500 thousand UAH.
According to the declaration, in 2024, Oleksandr Zvezdin received 776 thousand hryvnias in salary from the ministry and 1.3 million from the sale of a BMW 330I (2020). His wife earned 4.8 million hryvnias from the pharmaceutical business and another 460 thousand from the sale of movable property.
The family's savings are impressive: Yulia keeps $103,000, 30,000 euros, over half a million hryvnias in accounts, and has a cryptocurrency portfolio worth 150,000 hryvnias. Zvezdin himself declared only 30,000 hryvnias and $2,400 in cash, but at the same time lent his mother $75,000.
Oleksandr Zvezdin has been working at the Ministry of Regional Development since 2023. Before that, he was an assistant judge at the Vyshgorod District Court, worked at the State Fiscal Service and the Supreme Court. He is the brother of Igor Zvezdin, head of the National Police's Corruption Prevention Department.
Their father, Valeriy Zvezdin, owns real estate in Kyiv and Vyshgorod, purchased, according to him, with money earned in Russia.
Thus, the official's family has built a scheme where expensive assets are presented as gifts from close relatives, which allows them to avoid questions about the real origin of the money.
