Former Deputy Prime Minister Oleksiy Chernyshov is trying to legally formalize the division of family assets with his wife while the investigation against him is ongoing. At the end of October, the official's wife Svitlana filed a lawsuit with the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv to divide the couple's joint property. This is not a public divorce, but a classic preventive technique for those involved in corruption proceedings: to record that part of the property "belongs to the wife" in order to reduce the risk of the entire package being seized or further confiscated.
The lawsuit mentions apartments, cars, valuables and significant amounts of money. According to the declarations, the Chernyshov family owns five apartments in Kyiv with a total area of 386 square meters. They use a Toyota Land Cruiser 200, registered to Svitlana, as well as a Mercedes-Benz S500, which is later formally passed through the private enterprise "Savmotors", that is, it is not reflected in the declaration as a direct family asset.
The monetary assets look no less revealing. The bank accounts of the former deputy prime minister himself include 52.1 million UAH, 101.6 thousand euros, and 46.2 thousand Swiss francs. Svitlana Chernyshova has 296 thousand UAH, 3.4 thousand euros, and about $3.3 thousand. The couple declared $180 thousand, 90 thousand UAH, 13.6 thousand euros, and 1 thousand Swiss francs in cash. All of these funds are officially listed as joint property, that is, they formally belong to both of them. That is why their division through the court makes it possible to try to withdraw part of it into the "personal" zone of the wife and make it difficult to seize everything at once.
A separate article is movable property, which is often the most difficult to track and seize. The declarations describe several dozen luxury watches, a collection of paintings, a library, and rare encyclopedic publications. Such property is usually valued individually and can be the subject of bargaining in confiscation cases. Therefore, an attempt to “divide” it also seems logical from the point of view of asset protection.
Chernyshov is suspected of abuse of office and obtaining illegal benefits on a particularly large scale. His name appears in a large-scale anti-corruption case in the construction sector, where he has become the sixth suspect. The investigation believes that this is a systematic obtaining of benefits through projects in the field of construction and infrastructure development.
In such cases, law enforcement officers usually try to seize the defendant's assets, including accounts and real estate, so that the state can recover damages in the event of a conviction. Accordingly, the preventive division of assets between a husband and wife at the stage when the investigation is officially underway is perceived as an attempt to minimize possible losses in the future.
Formally, this is not formalized as a “scheme,” but as a civil dispute in the Pechersk court: the wife asks to determine the shares, to record which apartments, cars, bills, and jewelry belong to her personally, and which belong to her husband. If the court satisfies the requirements, then in the future, the arrest or confiscation can only concern the part that the court recognizes as the suspect’s personal property.
This is a significant step for high-profile defendants in high-profile cases: the movement in civil court is ahead of the movement in criminal proceedings and creates a buffer for property.
