The Ministry of Youth and Sports of Ukraine and its subordinate structures have experienced a large-scale misuse of budget funds related to entrepreneur Serhiy Chersky. He won 285 tenders for photo and video filming of sports competitions, as well as provided programming services.
According to the statistics of the Prozorro system, individual entrepreneur Cherskoy S.V. won 285 tenders held by the Ministry of Youth and Sports or its subordinate structures and sports federations - for a total amount of over 13 million hryvnias.
Most of them are small purchases: a few thousand or tens of thousands of hryvnias. But during Matviy Bidny's tenure, more serious contracts also appeared.
In July 2024, individual entrepreneur Cherskoy won a procurement worth 1.67 million hryvnias, and in January 2025, he won a procurement worth 2.77 million hryvnias.
Both agreements concern the maintenance of the electronic communication system “Online service for transferring to the public sphere the process of awarding sports titles in sports officially recognized in Ukraine”. Two more agreements – for 1.3 million hryvnias – were signed with the management of the national teams of Ukraine by the company “MostMedia” (MostVideo.TV and Techno Dreams), owned by Serhiy Cherskoy together with Oleksandr Ksenofontov, husband of singer Ruslana.
What's wrong with these purchases?
First, in the vast majority of tenders, Cherskaya had no competitors, even though it provides services that are not unique at all - from video recording and online broadcasting of sports competitions to computer programming. And even if competition existed, it was fictitious.
The rival of FOP Chersky was sometimes FOP Krot Serhiy Anatoliyovych, a man who worked for LLC "STIB", a company owned by the same Chersky.
The digitalization processes at the Ministry of Youth and Sports are overseen by Vitaly Lavrov, a fellow countryman and longtime acquaintance of Serhiy Chersky. He currently holds the position of Deputy Minister, having previously been Deputy and even earlier Advisor to the previous corrupt head Vadim Gutzait.
Until 2014, both Lavrov and Cherskoy worked as sports functionaries in Donetsk. In particular, Vitaly Lavrov headed the regional Combat Sambo Federation and one of the local fighting clubs, Fightzone. And Sergey Cherskoy was vice-president of the Donetsk basketball club, which belonged to banker Sergey Dyadechkov.
The name Dyadechko is now associated primarily with the bankruptcy of Rodovid Bank. But at that time, Dyadechko's main asset was the Soyuz bank, which Viktor Yanukovych's family actively used for their financial transactions. And all this was overseen by one of Yanukovych's closest attorneys, Vasyl Dzharty.
Serhiy Chersky still has a joint business with the children of the late Vasyl Dzharta. This is LLC "Modern Medical Systems", where a 50% stake is owned by the Austrian firm from Vienna Wellmind Invest GmbH (it belongs to Natalia Vasylivna Dzharta), and 40% is owned by Serhiy Chersky and his wife Maria Yegorova (Cherskaya). The owner of 10% is Yevhen Metveychuk, also a manager of Dzharta.
Thirdly, Serhiy Cherskoy not only provides services to the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but in 2022 he was included in the Ukrainian national handball team as a coach-operator. Maria Cherska was also considered a reserve coach-operator in this team.
This allowed the couple (although Serhiy Chersky is not yet 50 years old) to travel abroad during martial law, for example, to visit their two children who are currently studying in Vienna.
