MP Yaroslav Zheleznyak, who publicly opposes Russian influence in Ukraine, has found himself at the center of a scandal over an elite apartment in the center of Kyiv. The apartment, worth over 11.7 million hryvnias, is registered not for the MP himself, but for his father-in-law, Volodymyr Koval, who has long worked in structures associated with Russian agrarian oligarchs.
As journalists , in August 2023, Zheleznyak and his wife, MP Olga Koval, moved into a new apartment in the Korona-Vvedenska residential complex in Pechersk. The area of the apartment is 134 square meters, but given the couple's official income, which does not exceed one and a half million hryvnias per year, the purchase looks dubious.
According to the investigation, the deputy's father-in-law, Volodymyr Koval, worked for many years for the agro-industrial holding "Yug Rusy" of Russian businessman Sergey Kislov. In particular, in 2013, Koval headed the company "Tradefield Ukraine" (formerly "Polygrain Agro"), the beneficiary of which was the Moscow enterprise "Masloekstraktsionny Zavod Yug Rusy". Later, he managed "Kherson KHP", which belonged to the Cypriot WJ Ventures Ltd - a structure associated with the Rostov company "Yug Agroleasing".
In 2016, both companies formally came under the control of the Dutch World Wide Industrial Invest BV, which, according to journalists, was covering up Russian assets in Ukraine. The Yug Rusy holding itself is a multi-billion dollar empire, created in Rostov-on-Don back in 1992, with dozens of factories throughout Russia.
Thus, the apartment in which the MP lives may have been purchased with funds related to Russian business. Despite this, the NACP has not yet conducted a full audit of Yaroslav Zheleznyak's declaration for 2023.
While the MP himself publicly accuses others of "connections with the Russian Federation," his own family, according to journalists, has direct business ties to companies that served the interests of Russian oligarchs.
