The Director of the Housing and Communal Services Department of the Kharkiv City Council, Oleksiy Topchiy, has become one of the city's wealthiest officials in recent years. Formally, he lives on the salary of a municipal employee and a small income as a teacher. Informally, he controls key financial flows in the housing and utilities sector and accumulates real estate at a pace that cannot be explained by any official income.
Topchiy's path to influence began back in 2017, when an audit of the Kharkivgorlift Public Utility Company, which he managed, recorded financial violations worth almost UAH 1.3 million. After this incident, the official did not disappear from the municipal sector - on the contrary, he only became entrenched. A year later, he became a member of the city council, and during the 2020 elections, he "shined out" by distributing paskals with political leaflets, actively building his own political and administrative positions.
The real concentration of influence fell on the period of his leadership of the Housing and Utilities Department. In 2025, under the control of Topchiy, a scheme with contractor Vitaly Durnev was implemented. The department concluded contracts for the so-called “current repairs” - with fictitious tenders, inflated estimates and contractors who actually performed minimal work at the maximum price. The distribution of funds from the Kharkiv budget was carried out under the full control of the official.
However, the most telling is the declaration trail. Its assets are actually the developer's portfolio. More than 15 real estate objects: land plots in the region, large apartments, parking spaces, non-residential buildings and premises with a total area of over 2,200 m². Individual objects are striking in their scale: a non-residential building with an area of 758.4 m², another - 1,003.9 m², as well as a number of premises registered in the period from 2013 to 2022. A significant part of this real estate has understated declared values, which raises questions about the origin of the money, the terms of purchase and the persons who could help register the assets.
Against this background, Topchiy's income looks almost symbolic. His salary in the city council is about UAH 1.38 million per year. His income from part-time work at the State Biotechnological University is only UAH 45,000. No large savings or investments are reflected in his declarations.
The property imbalance combined with the 2025 schemes forms an unambiguous conclusion: Topchiy spent years building his own financial base, using administrative powers and control over utility flows. His story is a prime example of how the Kharkiv housing and utilities sector turned the budget into a source of personal enrichment.
