While Marganets suffers daily from Russian shelling, and its residents live without water, electricity, and constant anxiety, the city's mayor, Gennady Borovik, has organized a warm scheme for himself and his entourage - literally. This became known from an investigation by NGL.media.
The utility company "Utilities Complex", created to provide heat to schools, kindergartens and hospitals, has concluded contracts worth 123 million hryvnias in a year and a half. More than 112 million of them went to just four entrepreneurs. All of them are directly related to Borovik himself, his family or business.
After the private company “Aps Power Technology” – the heat supplier in Marganka – went bankrupt, the city council quickly bought out its boiler houses and transferred them to the newly created KP. The head was appointed… the former director of the bankrupt enterprise. Thus began a new scheme.
The first purchases were impressive. The company paid much more for pellets – biofuel made from sunflower husks, bran and wood – than neighboring communities. In 2023 – 8.2 million hryvnias more expensive, in 2024 – more than 35 million more. The real market price of a ton of pellets is from 4,500 to 6,400 hryvnias. In Marganka, Kombinat calmly paid 10–12 thousand.
The sole proprietors who received these orders are like carbon copies: created shortly before the signing of the contracts, without experience, with addresses and phone numbers that lead to businesses or the mayor's family. One of the entrepreneurs is the director of a children's creative center, a subordinate of the mayor. Her pellets are stored at a feed mill owned by Borovyk himself. Another is an accountant at the same mill. Another is the wife of the mayor's business partner. And the last one indicated Borovyk's son-in-law's number as a contact when registering the sole proprietorship.
Independent journalists from NGL.media exposed the scheme, and the State Audit Service drew attention to the situation. After the start of the audit, the utility urgently rewrote the agreements, reducing the amounts by 29 million. The explanation was “price fluctuations”. In the documents, the date of the “reduction” was the day after the signing of the initial agreements. Everything looks like an attempt to avoid responsibility after the exposure.
Mayor Borovik does not respond to journalists' inquiries. Instead, his subordinates talk about "concern for local entrepreneurs" and "quality pellets.".
But in a front-line city, where communal heat is a matter of survival, such “concern” has a completely different flavor: the smell of profit during war.
