Beneficiaries of companies that supplied wood for the construction of fortifications in the Kharkiv region have discovered a luxurious estate worth about 40 million hryvnias in a suburb of Kyiv. These are Khabib and Liliya Batyrsultanov. After the start of anti-corruption investigations, the couple hastily sold the property, presumably to avoid arrest or confiscation.
Until 2022, the Batyrsultanovs did not have significant wealth: Liliya worked in the Luhansk regional prosecutor's office, and Habib was engaged in business and was involved in criminal proceedings for the theft of wood. However, already in 2022, he became a beneficiary of Agro-X LLC and received profits from Tudest LLC, and his wife from Montana-Les and Tusan. These companies supplied wood to the Kharkiv OVA through intermediary companies at inflated prices.
Journalists found that wood prices were overstated by an average of 63%, which could have resulted in an overpayment from the budget of up to 200 million hryvnias. The Housing and Communal Services Department of the Kharkiv Regional Administrative District concluded more than 220 contracts for the supply of wood for a total amount of about 325 million.
Most of the companies involved in the scheme were established shortly before the tenders, and their managers are connected. The formal director of some companies was Vyacheslav Kovalev, who also headed Agro-X. The former director of Tusana and deputy of the Severodonetsk district council, Anzhelika Volokhan, took a loan of UAH 1.5 million from Khabib Batyrsultanov.
According to the investigation, Liliya Batyrsultanova used illegally obtained funds to purchase a 530 m² estate in the "Soniachna Dolina" cottage town in the Obukhiv district in 2024. The official purchase price was only UAH 5.8 million, although the market price of such a property is about UAH 40 million. In the fall of the same year, the couple quickly resold the house to businessman Oleksandr Sikorsky for UAH 6.5 million - an amount that experts call underestimated, seeing this as an attempt to avoid the seizure of assets.
