The National Police of Kyiv is investigating alleged abuses during the reconstruction of the street. Truskavetska and the road to Zhulyan

The National Police of Kyiv has started an investigation into possible budget manipulations during the reconstruction of Truskavetska Street and the construction of the road to Zhulyany airport. According to the investigation, at the center of the case are the clients of the works: the Kyiv Municipal Corporation "Kyivavtodor" and the utility company "Directorate of Construction of Road and Transport Facilities" (KP "DBSHTS").

Interestingly, the construction of an access road from Ave. Valery Lobanovskyi to Kyiv International Airport (Zhulyani) was supposed to be completed before the Euro 2012 matches were held in the capital, but it was turned into a "long-term construction" - the constructed sections of this road have been destroyed over the years and actually rebuilt. Since 2010, the relevant estimate has been increased 10 times to 2.3 billion hryvnias, so it seems that "road" utilities will repeatedly come under the spotlight of investigators.

Metropolitan law enforcement officers are studying the facts of possible embezzlement of budget funds during the reconstruction and construction of several Kyiv roads.

The corresponding investigation is carried out within the framework of criminal proceedings No. 42024102090000044 dated March 7, 2024, which was opened by the Solomyan Department of the National Police of Kyiv. The persons involved in this case are preliminarily charged with the commission of the crime provided for in part. 4 Art. 191 of the Criminal Code (CC) of Ukraine – appropriation, waste of property or possession of it by abuse of official position, committed in large quantities or under martial law.

As part of this proceeding, the law enforcement officers were interested in the implementation of two contracts executed by "KP Shlyakhbud Invest" LLC.

Yes, we are talking about the agreement dated February 17, 2022 regarding the reconstruction of the street. of Truskavetska (Darnytskyi district), which was concluded between the municipal corporation (CC) "Kyivavtodor" and the above-mentioned company. According to this contract, the cost of the works was to be 70.1 million hryvnias. According to the public procurement portal Prozorro, the implementation of the contract has already been completed, the contractor received 70.06 million hryvnias for it.

Already in the course of the investigation, the law enforcement officers learned that during the execution of these works, officials of LLC "KP Shlyakhbud Invest" probably took possession of budget funds by overestimating the cost of a number of materials used in the reconstruction. In particular, it is about "hot and warm, coarse-grained asphalt concrete mixtures", crushed stone, side stones, paving tiles, etc. According to the National Police, the general contractor purchased from a controlled company, the name of which is not specified in the court rulings on this case, and which, in turn, previously purchased these materials from other business entities at a lower price.

Reconstruction of the street of Truskavetska in 2023 (photo of Darnytska RDA)

In addition, the pre-trial investigation established that officials of Shlyakhbud Invest LLC, in order to increase expenses for the reconstruction of St. Truskavetska, the reporting documents indicated information about the use of construction equipment by another unnamed LLC, which has "transit-conversion features" (such companies are used for tax evasion, "laundering" of funds, etc.).

As for the second contract, it concerned the construction of an access road from Ave. Valery Lobanovskyi to the International Airport "Kyiv" (Zhulyani) in the Solomyansky District. This agreement was concluded between KP "Directorate of construction of road and transport facilities" ("DBSHTS") and KP "Shlyahbud Invest" LLC on October 9, 2023. The cost of the works under this agreement was to be 135.9 million hryvnias, the implementation of the agreement is ongoing. According to the investigation, during the implementation of this agreement, goods and material values ​​purchased at an inflated cost were also used.

Screenshot of the court decision on this investigation dated November 21, 2024

During this investigation, the law enforcement officers received several permits from the court to seize documents in various structures.

In particular, on June 6, 2024, the Solomyan District Court allowed National Police investigators and prosecutors access to documents stored in the office of one of the LLCs with which KP Shlyakhbud Invest LLC cooperated. It was about documents related to the cooperation of these companies - various contracts, goods and transport invoices, excise invoices, quality certificates for purchased goods and material values. And on November 21 last year, the same court granted permission to seize documents related to the construction of the road to Zhulyany airport, which are stored in the office of the KP "DBSHTS".

Eternal construction

The history of the new road to Zhulyany airport, which, let's recall, has not been functioning for almost three years, has been going on since at least January 2010 - when the capital authorities were going to build this transport artery in preparation for Euro-2012. In February 2011, the Kyiv City State Administration (KMDA) approved the project of the specified construction, according to which the new road should have a length of 4.3 km (2 lanes). The total cost of the works was then estimated at 224.07 million hryvnias.

However, after that, the total estimated cost was changed upwards three more times. So, in 2016, the total cost of construction more than doubled - to 531.54 million hryvnias, in 2017 - to 737.23 million hryvnias, and in 2023, this indicator has grown rapidly to 2.34 billion hryvnias.

Before Euro-2012, they did not have time to build the road that was supposed to decongest Sevastopol Square and Valery Lobanovsky Avenue. After that, different versions were heard from the capital authorities regarding the terms of completion of the works. Thus, in 2016, the KMDA stated that the construction of the road would be completed by the end of 2017, adding that the construction was hindered by the garages of the "Stoyanka-17" car enthusiasts' association, which occupied part of the road construction site. Later, the capital city hall promised a new road by the end of 2018.

At the same time, the metropolitan public previously had a number of complaints about the pace and quality of the relevant works. Thus, in the spring of 2019, the capital activist Pavlo Avdokushin reported that he had discovered one plot with a draft version, on which asphalt was still to be laid, and on the rest of the plots - a dirt road, where no work at all took place. And in February 2022, activists discovered that on the sections of this road, where asphalt was previously laid, many pits appeared, which actually absorbed the budget millions allocated for the specified construction.

Interestingly, back in 2019, the chairman of the board of directors of Kyiv International Airport, Denys Kostrzhevsky, expressed the opinion that if the construction of the road is not completed, due to precipitation, wind and temperature changes, the invested money - at that time 60% of the planned funding was used - will simply disappear .

At the end of 2024, the capital ordered the continuation of the construction of this road. The asking price was 1.47 billion hryvnias for 2.8 kilometers of the road, and the young consortium "Mostador Group", which was created by well-known contractors in the capital, was chosen as the executor of the works. The most interesting thing happened after the tender: after criticism about the expediency of such a construction, the capital authorities renounced such an idea and declared that in the current year there are no funds for this project and there will not be any, moreover, this road will not go to the airport at all, but past it .

What is known about those involved

According to the analytical system Youcontrol, Shlyakhbud Invest LLC was registered in January 2018 in Kyiv. Serhiy Lymarenko, who is registered in the village of Kantakuzivka, Cherkasy region, is indicated as its manager, founder and ultimate beneficiary.

This company is an active participant in tenders - mainly those organized by various structures subordinate to the capital city hall. Thus, according to the Clarity Project public procurement analytics database, KP Shlyahbud Invest LLC has a total of 11 contracts totaling 316.1 million hryvnias. In addition to "Kiyivavtodor" KP and "DBSHTS" KP, this company also provided its services to the municipal track and operation management of Podilskyi, Shevchenkivskyi, Svyatoshynskyi and Desnyanskyi districts of the capital and the specialized KP "Kyiv Crematorium".

At the same time, "KP Shlyahbud Invest" LLC is a member of the "Mostador Group" consortium, which also includes 5 other companies engaged in the repair and construction of roads and other infrastructure facilities on the order of communal and state structures from all over Ukraine. The most successful company of this consortium is Mostobudivelnyi zaghin No. 112 LLC, which has 114 contracts for a total amount of 4.6 billion hryvnias, including 7 contracts for 162.9 million with the capital KP "Kyivavtoshlyakhmist", 3 contracts for 99.1 million with KK "Kyivavtodor", etc.

We will remind that the repair, reconstruction and construction of roads and other transport arteries in the capital regularly cause complaints from law enforcement agencies.

Thus, the National Police is currently investigating the case of official negligence of the head of the "Kyivavtoshlyakhmist" KP Bohdan Kobernyuk (he was notified of the suspicion on March 15, 2024), due to which, according to the investigation, the city budget lost money during a series of works on bridges 3.5 million hryvnias. Recently, the court chose a preventive measure against Koberniuk in the form of a personal commitment, but refused the law enforcement officers to remove this "community worker" from his post. Keeping the suspect at his "post" was justified by his lawyers on the fact that such a critical infrastructure enterprise as "Kyivavtoshlyakhmist" would not be able to work without such a specialist.

In addition, in particular, law enforcement officers are currently investigating two criminal proceedings based on the fact of possible "budget cuts" during road repairs already during a full-scale war. According to the investigation, the officials of the "Kyivavtodor" CC, the KPs accountable to it, and the officials of the contracting companies, which are part of the "giants" of this market - the scandalously famous groups "Rostdorstroy" and "Onur" - are guilty of such "sins", according to the investigation. In this case, the law enforcement officers were interested in repairs on four capital streets, for which more than 243 million hryvnias were paid from the city budget of Kyiv. The amount of damages already established is at least 8.2 million hryvnias, in the future it may increase after the relevant examinations are conducted. Currently, it is already known that a number of persons involved in one of these cases have received suspicions. Among them is Oleksandr Fedorenko, general director of KK "Kyivavtodor" (in the collage).

In addition, the National Police is studying the facts of possible embezzlement of budget funds during the reconstruction of the Shulyavsky railway, the customer of which is KP "DBSHTS". The law enforcement officers have previously established that the contractor - LLC "Northern Ukrainian Construction Alliance" - transferred 67.9 million hryvnias received in June 2023 to the accounts of "fictitious" and "transit" enterprises. These funds were officially intended, in particular, for the payment of materials, but their recipients, according to the investigation, did not have the ability "to carry out the declared economic transactions."

At the same time, the capital's prosecutor's office is trying to legally terminate the subcontract for these works and collect 1.1 billion hryvnias from the above-mentioned LLC due to the fact that its competitor was a company related to it, which violated the terms of economic competition.

It should be noted that since May 19, 2020, KK "Kyivavtodor" has been managed by the aforementioned Oleksandr Fedorenko (until July 5, 2022, he headed it as acting general director). In turn, the KP "DBSHTS" will be headed by Roman Lisnevskyi from October 2022. He, in the capacity of "acting", as the first deputy director, managed this enterprise from April to November 2020. Both communal structures are subordinate to the Department of Transport Infrastructure of the KMDA, which will be headed by Ruslan Kandybor from September 1, 2021. From November 9, 2021, the activity of this structural division of the capital city hall will be personally supervised by the head of Kyiv, Vitaliy Klychko.