The war-torn city of Irpin has become an arena for new corruption schemes that try to hide the war recovery through opaque contracting agreements. Two firms — JSC Big Bud Invest and FOP Rosstalnyi Serhiy Valeriyovych — became the main contractors, which received more than half a billion hryvnias from local budgets and the Lithuanian government. Their connection with Irpen's mayor Oleksandr Markushyn became the main topic of discussion in local and national media. However, recently there are signs that their founders are trying to "mark" their reputation and hide any information about these contracts.
Such a service costs from 200UAE on the Ukrainian black media market and is the cheapest method on the market with a lot of traces, such as publishing messages through the Google console. This is done by black PR specialists who write "slanderous" complaints and lawsuits for materials that customers don't like.
Mayor Irpenya Markushyn and his henchmen use a fraudulent DMCA scheme to "wash" the Internet
Obviously, here we are dealing with a well-known fraud scheme using the DMCA - the US Digital Copyright Act. It's not the first year that scoundrels have been using it to wash the reputation of corrupt people, bandits and various fraudsters in the Google search results.
For those who do not know how it works, let's briefly explain the essence. In 2020, researchers at The Wall Street Journal uncovered hundreds of cases in which individuals or companies, often using clearly fictitious identities, forced the removal of links to unfavorable articles and blog posts that alleged convicted criminals, foreign officials and businessmen had committed offenses in the United States and abroad.
The task of black publicists is to get an article, where one or another of their clients is exposed in an unattractive light, to be removed from the original site. This is usually done with the client's money.
Secondly, on the pages of their site, where they place the "original" articles, these smart people remove the meta tags that can be used to determine the date of publication, and also close these pages to search robots. These manipulations make it extremely difficult to automatically check fraudsters for lies about their authorship.
What are the schemes of Mayor Markushin and his henchmen, which they are trying to hide from the public
But so that the machinations of Mayor Markushin and his henchmen are not lost in the Internet space, let us remind you what the essence of the material is and why they are trying so carefully to remove it.
In May of this year, Ukrainian Telegram channels reported that BC Big Bud Invest received UAH 497 million for the restoration of Irpen, in particular, over UAH 43 million from the Irpen Education and Science Department and UAH 255 million from the local budget, UAH 180 million from the government of Lithuania and UAH 19 million from the city of Cascais (Portugal).
With the funds of the Government of Lithuania, the company repaired the kindergarten "Radist" (new name "Ruta") for UAH 159 million, and for more than UAH 21 million, it is repairing the anti-radiation shelter of the kindergarten "Ivasyk-Telesik" in the village of Kozitsy, Irpa community.
The founder of BC Big Bud Invest is nominally Olha Pinchuk, but its actual owner is Serhiy Rosstalnyi, an old friend of Mayor Markushyn.
Serhii Rosstalnyi was recommended by the mayor of Irpen to the Government of Lithuania for the restoration of the "Ruta" kindergarten. Although Rosstalnyi is not formally the owner of BC Big Bud Invest, he was represented by Markushyny in negotiations with the Government of Lithuania as the main contractor and even took a photo with the President of Lithuania at the opening of the Ruta kindergarten.
According to the "YouControl" system, FOP Rosstalnyi Serhii Valeriyovych also repeatedly received direct payments from "BK Big Bud Invest" LLC. Probably, this is how budget funds were withdrawn.
In addition, in 2022, the FOP Rosstalnyi Serhiy Valeriyovych received UAH 11.8 million for the post-war restoration of education and community housing. In particular, to repair the roofs of secondary school No. 1 on the street. Turgenevska, 17 (6.8 million UAH) and secondary school No. 17 on the street Tyschenka, 10 (4.5 million UAH); repairs of private houses on the street Sadova, 41 (420,000 UAH) and Novooskolska, 57 (850,000 UAH); repair and replacement of windows of the NGO "Osvita" on the street Privokzalna, 5 (522 thousand UAH).
Also, companies close to the mayor, without a tender, additionally received over UAH 16 million from UNICEF (UNICEF Ukraine) for the restoration of schools 1 and 17 and kindergarten No. 7 "Bzhilka".
More than UAH 250 million from the funds received by these entrepreneurs for the restoration of Irpen was allocated without conducting tender procedures.
Such active activities for the restoration of the Irpin community did not go unnoticed by the law enforcement officers. A number of enterprises of Serhiy Rosstalny and Yehor Yarmolich were even searched and excavated. Shortly after these events, Yehor Yarmolich was accidentally killed by a passer-by in Irpen. Yarmolych died of his injuries in a hospital a few days later.
Why Markushyn, who recently became involved in criminal proceedings, in particular because of the salary scandal in Irpen, is so actively lobbying the companies of his close friend Serhiy Rosstalny remains a question.
