The construction company "Kalmius", which appeared just a month before the tenders, received three large state contracts from the Zaporizhzhia Regional Military Administration for a total amount of almost 660 million hryvnias. As journalists from the international detective agency ABSOLUTION found out, the company may be connected to People's Deputy Serhiy Minko.
The company was registered on March 7, 2025 in the village of Petropavlivska Borshchahivka near Kyiv with a symbolic authorized capital of 5 thousand hryvnias. At the time of the first contract, Kalmius had only one employee - director and owner Danylo Sandyrev, a former specialist in the installation of saunas and fireplaces. The company had no experience in participating in large-scale construction projects.
However, Sandyrev had something else - connections. In 2021, he worked on a SPA complex in Primorsk, at the Priboy recreation center, associated with People's Deputy Gennady Kasai. Then, according to journalists, he established contacts with the team of Ivan Fedorov - at that time the mayor of Melitopol, and now the head of the Zaporizhzhia OVA.
Fedorov is a political ally of Serhiy Minko, his predecessor as mayor of Melitopol and a current MP from the Dovira parliamentary group. After moving to Kyiv in 2022, Minko's influence in Melitopol did not decrease. It was during this period, according to investigators, that the Minko family rented an estate in the suburbs of Kyiv, where they again used Sandyrev's services.
Kalmius won all three tenders without competition. The only confirmation of experience was a subcontract agreement with LLC “Positive Company” for 23 million hryvnias, dated from the moment when the company existed for only three days. At that time, it had neither financial statements nor personnel potential. Despite this, the Zaporizhzhia OVA did not see any violations.
Company Pozitiv LLC, in turn, belongs to Maksym Gaidai, a former manager of a window shop in Zaporizhzhia. In open registers, the company was previously linked to Mykola Bely, a city council member from the EU. In April 2025, the Antimonopoly Committee banned Pozitiv from participating in government tenders for three years for violating competition.
While the State Audit Service is monitoring these tenders, MP Serhiy Minko is demonstrating his updated car fleet: he arrives at the parliamentary session in a brand new 2022 BMW X7, which cost at least $90,000 in the spring of 2024. The car is not listed in the MP's declaration.
This story is yet another example of the lack of transparency in public procurement, where newly created companies with dubious backgrounds receive hundreds of millions in budget funds in a matter of days — and all this against the backdrop of political connections and the tacit consent of the authorities.
