Billions of Lviv’s communal mafia
While Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi is proud that he has made the city a tourist Mecca, ordinary Lviv residents are plunged into communal hell every day.
Poor quality transport and constant increase in tariffs, dirty water at the price of spring water and the already regular embezzlement of expensive municipal property in the very center of Lviv are a common occurrence for the “city open to the world.”
UTILITIES - A TINY PIECE
LKP "Lvivelectrotras": kickbacks and "insiders"
Actors: former head Oleh Bereza, current head of Lvivelectrotrans Andriy Svyscho, deputy mayor of Lviv Hennadiy Vaskiv, deputy director of the department of housing and infrastructure Andriy Bilyi, deputy director of Lvivelectrotrans for enterprise security Vitaliy Baranskyi.
Perhaps the biggest corruption scandal associated with this enterprise is the purchase of 30 old German trams by Sadovyi officials in 2018, which were absolutely not adapted to Lviv realities. Lviv city authorities purchased German trams, which, allegedly, should be given to us at an incredibly favorable price - 18 thousand euros. However, due to the fact that they had to pay for delivery and customs clearance, as well as re-equipment, according to the head of the NGO "For Quality Transport" Svyatoslav Tovstyga, the final cost increased to almost 40 thousand euros per 1 tram.
At that time, public activists claimed that in this dubious scam, the then head of LKP "Lviveletrotrans" Oleh Bereza could have received a good kickback. Consequently, the regional prosecutor’s office entered information into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations on the fact of improper performance of official duties by officials of the Lviv City Council and LKP "Lviveletrotrans".
The Lvivelectrotrans trade union told the Vslukh news agency that the company artificially “inflates” its staff, while saving on the salaries of ordinary drivers.
Thus, at the instigation of the scandalous deputy of the LGS urban development department, Andriy Bilyi, three heads of the electric transport structure have already received a deputy each.
"Another "interesting" position appeared in the summer of 2019 - Deputy Director of Lvivelectrotrans for enterprise security, which was taken by Vitaliy Baranskyi! Why "interesting"? Because the head of the department - without a department!
We recently learned that Vitaliy Baranskyi is the godfather of Hennadiy Vaskiv , the deputy mayor for financial and economic issues. This already looks like a corporate raid," the trade union said.
LCP “Zbyranka”: making money from deaths
Characters: former corrupt leader: Vitaliy Puhach, Andriy Sadovyi
After the terrible fire at the Hrybovytske landfill, it became known that there were plenty of people willing to build the same landfill degassing system. The vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of the seventh convocation, Ruslan Koshulynskyi, immediately after the tragedy back in 2016 said that only one thing was required from the mayor - a letter in which he would not deny that the Swedish company was working at the landfill, but Sadovyi did not agree:
The reasons why no one was engaged in the reclamation of the Gribovitskaya dump are banal - income. As ecologist Marko Shpikula told the IA "Vslukh", a "live sorting line" was operating at Hrybovychi.
"People from the surrounding villages - Zbyranka and Hrybovichi - worked there, and homeless people were driven out. It was a crazy business. The farmers fed pigs and cattle with food waste. There were different "castes": some collected metal, others bottles, others paper. Obviously, the city council got something out of it," says Marko Spikula.
According to VGolos, in order to collect scrap metal or other secondary raw materials, farmers paid the LKP security guard 1,500 UAH for entry. Approximately 300 people worked at the dump around the clock. That is, only the employees of the Lviv City Council earned approximately 13.5 million UAH per month at the dump.
The Lviv City Council, of course, denied the existence of such schemes until in 2019 the SSU detained the then head of the Lviv State Enterprise "Zbyranka" Vitaliy Puhach for receiving only part of a bribe in the amount of 400 thousand UAH. He came up with a scheme for a non-existent purchase of lime for the reclamation of a landfill.
For 4 years after the tragedy, the Lviv City Council has been feeding Lviv residents with nothing but promises of “miracle gardens” on the site of the landfill
As for the landfill itself, the Lviv City Council has been feeding Lviv residents with promises of “miracle gardens” on the site of the landfill for 4 years now after the tragedy.
LKP "Lvivvodokanal": a corrupt official and tenders for 1 company
The characters: suspected of bribery, former head of the housing department of the Lviv City Council Yuriy Holets, deputy of the Lviv City Council Ostap Doskich and acting director of Lvivvodokanal Dmytro Vankovych.
Since February, the cost of 1 cubic meter of water in Lviv for ordinary consumers has increased by almost 5 hryvnias and will amount to 20.85 hryvnias. Judge for yourself whether there has been an improvement.
At the same time, Lvivvodokanal does not save on ordering services at all. Thus, according to the Center for Public Monitoring and Research , in June 2018, Lvivvodokanal concluded a street sewerage contract for UAH 13.2 million with PJSC Lviv Specialized Construction and Installation Department No. 1.
According to the Prozorro website , a company that offered to do the work for UAH 1.26 million cheaper also took part in the tender. But the LKP management decided not to save money and chose a more expensive tender contractor.
Why? It became clear from open registers that the former shareholder of the winning company, JSC "Lviv Specialized Construction and Installation Administration No. 1", was Lviv businessman Yuriy Doskich, whose son Ostap Doskich heads the commission on engineering, transport, communications and housing policy of the LGS . And the assistants of deputy Doskich - Oleksandr Romanyuk, Orislava Milyan and Iryna Sadova are close to the main shareholder of PJSC "Lviv Specialized Construction and Installation Administration No. 1" Vasyl Khavrak. Deputy Doskich himself has repeatedly demanded an increase in the amount of money for street sewerage.
The former head of the housing department of the Lviv City Council, Yuriy Holets, who is suspected of corruption, was also employed by the company "Lviv Specialized Construction and Installation Department No. 1". It was this official of the Lviv City Council who was accused of involvement in the Hrybovytska tragedy. At that time, he managed to avoid the sword of Themis, but already in November 2017, the SSU caught the official Sadovyi red-handed while receiving a bribe of 80 thousand UAH from an entrepreneur.
LKP "ATP-1": 19.5 million UAH of Lviv money for Russian Churkin
Actors: Mayor of Lviv Andriy Sadovyi, Deputy Director of the Department of Housing and Infrastructure Andriy Bilyi, Director of LKP "ATP-1" Orest Khamula, Director of the Legal Department of the Lviv City Council Helena Payonkevich.
The collaboration between officials of the Lviv City Council, the municipal enterprise ATP-1 and the odious Russian businessman Igor Churkin, who destroyed the Lviv LAZ plant, is called a scam worth millions. In gratitude for the "development areas," the Lviv City Council decided to pay the Russian businessman Churkin another 19 million UAH for the delivery of LAZ buses, which never went on the road due to a malfunction.
Since 2017, the Lviv City Council has been trying to give the Russian businessman almost UAH 20 million. However, active actions began when the odious Andriy Bilyi came to work at the Lviv City Council. After he went from being Sadovyi’s adviser to being the deputy director of the housing and infrastructure department, on October 5, 2018, immediately after the holidays, the deputies of the Lviv City Council were offered a resolution to sign a memorandum, according to which the municipal ATP-1 must give UAH 19.5 million of LAZ debts to the factoring company Optimum Factor, one of the owners of which is Taisiya Sanina, the wife of the owner of the bankrupt LAZ, Russian businessman Ihor Churkin.
Further, on October 19, 2018, the city mayor Andriy Sadovyi publicly stated that Lviv no longer had any other option but to pay for the previously purchased LAZ buses.
As a result, the Main Territorial Department of Justice in Lviv Oblast forcibly withdrew UAH 24.6 million from the account of LK ATP No. 1 in favor of the Financial Company Amadeus, which, at first glance, is not connected with Russian business and is only listed as the legal successor of Optimum Factor in court decisions.
According to the former chairman of the budget commission of the Lviv City Council, Yaromyr Samahalskyi, the legal department of the Lviv City Council headed by Helena Paionkevich could have filed a lawsuit against the decisions and defended the interests of the city. For this purpose, the deputies of the Lviv City Council at the session adopted the creation of a separate municipal enterprise ATP-2 , which was supposed to take over all the functions of its predecessor, preventing Churkin from making money on Lviv. However, "it didn’t work out."
And the whole thing may be that the father of the official Sadovyi Andriy Bilyi lives in occupied Crimea, where he actively cooperates with the separatists and has a business. He is also included in the Mirotvorets database. According to media reports, Bely’s father is probably a business partner of Churkin.
Lviv City Council deputy and Svoboda member Markiyan Lopachak publicly asked Sadovyi how much money he received for Lviv paying the representative of the aggressor country, Churkin.
"With your tacit consent, this money was transferred to Churkin’s shell company. Sooner or later, someone will have to go to jail for this," the deputy emphasized.
But he didn’t sit down. At least not yet.
LKP "Green City": a waste plant for oligarchs
Characters: Vadym Nozdrya, former head of the Lviv City Council
Another municipal scandal in the city was the construction of a waste plant. The mayor of Lviv promised to build it immediately after the Hrybovytska tragedy. But saying is not doing. Thus, the scandalously known in Lviv deputy of the Kyiv City Council from the Samopomich party, former head of the LKP Green City Vadym Nozdrya, despite the pickets of local residents, decided to build a waste plant at the emergency Lviv treatment facilities. Lviv has already taken out astronomical loans from banks for this.
Near the treatment facilities where Sadovyi plans to build a waste disposal plant, the Lviv City Council has already allocated a plot of land to oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s company DTEK
And that’s not all. It turns out that near the treatment facilities where Sadovyi plans to build a waste plant, the Lviv City Council has already allocated a land plot to oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s company DTEK.
"They plan to produce RDF fuel from waste in a few years. Akhmetov’s company on Plastova Street has already been allocated a 7-hectare plot of land. Apparently, the scheme will be as follows: the city council brings fuel to the waste plant, extracts it from it and sells it to Akhmetov’s company, which resells it to the population at exorbitant prices," said activist Rustam Kurbanov.
COMMUNAL LAND
Actors: Executive Committee of Lviv City Council: Sadovyi Andriy – Mayor of Lviv; Zabarylo Anatoliy – Secretary of Lviv City Council; Babak Serhiy – Deputy Mayor for Housing and Public Utilities, Freelance Advisor to the Mayor on Housing Infrastructure; Vaskiv Hennadiy – Deputy Mayor for Financial and Economic Issues; Zubach Lyubomyr – Deputy Mayor for Urban Development; Litvinyuk Marta – Manager of the Executive Committee of Lviv City Council; Moskalenko Andriy – Deputy Mayor for Development Issues; Marunyak Iryna – Deputy Mayor for Housing and Public Utilities Issues, Slichna Halyna – Deputy Mayor for Humanitarian Issues, Acting Director of the Department of Humanitarian Policy, Yuriy Kahitin - Head of the Main Directorate of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Lviv Oblast, Orest Pechenko - Co-founder of the NGO "People’s Self-Defense of Lviv Oblast", as well as heads of the land resources department, deputies from "Samopomich" in the Lviv Oblast.
While Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi solemnly declares that there is no land for ATO soldiers in Lviv, the communal mafia finds free land plots for Ukrainian oligarchs and developers. Here are several examples of "land miracles" named after the communal mafia Sadovyi.
Garages become hotels
Bad entrepreneurs buy unremarkable premises in Lviv, like garages. And then ask for additional land for their maintenance.
The story of the garage on Danylo Galitskyi Square is well known. First, the company "Ecopolis" rented a garage with an area of 11 square meters, and then asked for land "to service the garage." Thus, the total area became more than 47 square meters. Then, an announcement about the construction of a shopping center and a hotel appeared on the company’s website. However, after a loud scandal, information about the development disappeared. Although, if this elite land under the garage were sold, it would cost approximately 50 thousand dollars.
History from the street Karpintsa, 10
In May 2019, Lviv was rocked by a new high-profile land scandal: the executive committee of the Lviv City Council allocated an elite plot of land in the center of Lviv to an unknown entrepreneur for free, allegedly for the construction of cottages.
Then the ATO veterans came to the Lviv City Council, demanding that Sadovyi explain why land with an area of 10 acres and a value of no less than 100 thousand dollars was being given away for free to an unknown citizen, Lviv businessman Serhiy Bagriy, who, by the way, collected all the documentation in 9 days, which is almost a fantasy in our reality.
“The story about the garage that is around here is interesting. One of the non-residential premises in the adjacent territory was transferred to Lyudmila Dovbush free of charge in 2014 by a decision of the Frankivsk court and with the consent of the city council. At the same time, the court itself indicates that she does not have any documents for this premises. Before the court, it was a communal part of the Lviv State Communal Enterprise “Vuletske”, with an area of 94.6 square meters, and after it, it suddenly became... a garage. Among the people associated with the new owner - you won’t believe it - even members of the Lviv Executive Committee! Lyudmila Dovbush’s son is a lawyer, director of several firms owned by Orest Pechenko, a member of the Lviv City Council Executive Committee ”, said lawyer Vitaliy Bilovus, who investigated this case.
Land for Akhmetov
There is land in Lviv for odious oligarchs. Thus, in 2017, deputies of the Lviv City Council agreed to divide a land plot in the village of Soroki-Lvivskie, Pustomyty district, Lviv region, allocating a land plot to the company PJSC DTEK Zakhidenergo of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
MUNICIPAL PROPERTY: HOW TO "WHISTLE" MILLIONS
Actors: executive committee, municipal property management, investment and projects management.
There are more than two thousand premises in Lviv municipal property. 95% of them are rented and bring certain money to the city budget every month. The head of the Lviv Municipal Property Department is Inna Svystun, a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council from Samopomich.
Inna Svystun – “municipal cashier”
Inna Svystun, the head of the LGS municipal property department, is called the “municipal cashier” of Lviv by activists.
Scheme #1
Everyone remembers the so-called "scam of the century", when 40 premises were stolen from the city, according to Svistun herself. Thus, municipal property became private. However, Inna Svistun hid this from the deputies for a long time. Then, according to the calculations of public activist Oleh Dolinskyi, Lviv was robbed of 500 thousand dollars!
The scheme was roughly as follows: municipal property objects were hidden and were not put up for auction or leased. With the assistance of LKP (housing and maintenance offices-balance holders) and their absolute inaction, through fictitious companies this property was re-registered by "black registrars" to private companies.
In a comment to the VGolos news agency, the already mentioned deputy Markiyan Lopachak noted that “it would have been impossible to carry out such a scam without the LKP leaders.”
Scheme #2
In a commentary to the NTA TV channel, public activist Viktor Chornomorskyi spoke about another scheme: the tenant of communal property has the right to buy communal premises without an auction at a price determined by the "tame" experts of Sadovyi.
“The properties are sold for next to nothing and the money is distributed between his deputies from Samopomich and Andriy Sadovyi,” Chornomorsky said.
Scheme #3
In a commentary to the VGolos news agency, activist and former employee of the Lviv property management department Anatoliy Semenyuk spoke about another interesting sublease scheme, the intermediary of which is the LKP (housing and communal services).
"There is another well-known sublease scheme. This is when the Lviv City Council gives consent to some enterprise, usually a municipal enterprise, to lease this enterprise, and then to privatize it. This is a scheme for withdrawing property without competition. As a result, the price is twice as low when selling. Municipal property is subleased at paltry rental rates, and then for 10% of this rate - this is the initial price of the property sale"
"For example, a well-known public establishment - "Kopa Kofe" in the center of Lviv. The rental rate there is as much as... 5%. Given that all restaurants, according to state methods, should be calculated as 20% of the rental rate . Plus, there is a penny assessment: 1 thousand dollars per commercial square meter in the center of Lviv - this is ridiculous," emphasized Anatoliy Semenyuk.
The losses are astronomical, given the area, the reduced rental rate and the value of the property. And there are hundreds of such schemes
"The Ratusha cafe was transferred to the Ratusha-Service LKP, and this despite the fact that utility companies are prohibited from owning real estate with an area of more than 200 square meters. This cafe has an area of 600 square meters. The losses are astronomical, given the area, the reduced rental rate and the value of the property. And there are hundreds of such schemes. Now the housing offices are being liquidated. Their property will also be transferred to someone through a sublease structure," Semenyuk explained.
What does "carve-up" look like?
Hotel Astoriya
The former head of the municipal property department of the economic policy department of the Lviv City Council, Yevhen Klymovych, in 2007 agreed to transfer the premises on the street. The lucky owner of the elite premises was Sadovyi’s godfather, who, according to sources, financed the election campaign - Vitaliy Lomakovych.
Hotel "Lviv"
The same Klymovych in 2009 on behalf of the Lviv City Council sold the Lviv Hotel for 2 million dollars, which has a total area of 11 thousand square meters and is located in the center. That is, the hotel was valued at 181 dollars per square meter! And this is despite the fact that the minimum 1 square meter in the center of Lviv costs 1 thousand dollars.
Law enforcement officers opened a criminal case on this fact, but the community still knows nothing about its results.
"How did this happen? Very simply. After all, the main appraiser of the property of the Lviv community is actually the husband of Sadovy’s sister, Andriy Sarakhmanevych," the media reported.
Department store on Rynok Square
The privatization of the department store on Rynok Square was a brilliant scam. It was also carried out by Andriy Sarakhmanevych. As a result, the city received only 812 thousand dollars for almost 2000 square meters of commercial real estate in the very center of Lviv.
And this is despite the fact that by that time the market price of the building, according to experts, was no less than 5 million dollars. The owner was the husband of Andriy Sadovy’s godmother, Oleksiy Kurylyshyn.
Tram depot on Sakharov
In September 2018, with the active lobbying of Mayor Sadovyi, the Lviv City Council deputies from Samopomich transferred the rare tram depot on Sakharov to the Lem Station company. Moreover, the so-called investors received the elite area for free for an alleged investment project. However, it later turned out that there would be no project. A shopping and office center will be built on the site of the depot.
"The service premises of the tram depot will be revitalized during the implementation of the project, where investments will be attracted and an innovative and creative hub space for the public will be created. At the same time, the space around these buildings will be realized and the investor is tasked with implementing this project within 4 years," said then acting head of the investment and projects department of the Lviv City Council Roman Staretskyi.
Thus, the head of the UGP faction Taras Choliy noted back in 2018 that the mayor’s office held a competition without a competition, leasing the depot to the Lem Station company, which strangely did not have a single competitor. And the head of the LGS faction "Petro Poroshenko Bloc" Petro Adamik stated that the company, which the mayor’s office calls an "investor", does not have any funds to carry out the work and is preparing to take out a bank loan.
At the same time, according to Lviv public activists, the cost of selling such elite property would be approximately 6-10 million dollars.
According to the business service YouControl, the owners of Lamb Station LLC are six businessmen close to Sadovy: Mark Zarkhin, Oleh Dryn, Dmytro Kosaryev, Oleh Matsekh, Taras Kitsmey and Taras Dobryanskyi.
Free rent and the "Russian world"
It is easy to get free premises in the center of Lviv if you are close to Samopomich, or… really love the “Russian world”.
Thus, in 2019, the deputies of the Lviv City Council gave a 360 square meter space in the center of Lviv, on Mickiewicz Square, 6/7, for free rent. This space was received by the NGO "Institute of Education". The founders of the NGO are the deputies of Sadovyi, in particular, the Lviv deputy Yuriy Melnyk and former people’s deputies from Samopomich Oleh Lavryk, Oksana Syroid, Oleh Berezyuk, Ostap Protsyk (founder of the Lviv Media Forum).
Also, the LGS municipal property department approved the lease of premises on 4 Kyivska Street to the anti-Ukrainian "Organization of Veterans of Ukraine". ATO veteran Andriy Lybich emphasized that its long-term head Petro Tsybenko is a member of the banned Communist Party of Ukraine. He is known for the fact that, as a member of the Verkhovna Rada, he voted for the destruction of the Ukrainian language and asked the Poles to recognize that the "Volyn massacre" was a "genocide" organized by Ukrainians against the Poles. In Lviv, this Ukrainophobic organization is headed by Oleksandr Hrubyi. He "distinguished himself" by actively promoting anti-Ukrainian rhetoric in the city, in particular, he stated that the UPA collaborated with Hitler. Despite this, in 2006, Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi awarded Oleksandr Hrubyi with gratitude for "active public work". A telling fact, isn’t it?
How much was stolen?
Former Lviv official Anatoliy Semenyuk emphasized that the entire Lviv City Council, headed by Andriy Sadovyi, is actually involved in communal thefts in Lviv:
"The communal mafia of Lviv dates back to the Pora party, with which Sadovyi used to associate himself. In the previous term, the former head of the commission on communal property Kots and the former head of the communal property department Klymkovych, who was appointed to this position for the sake of the division, were engaged in the division of communal premises. Now this commission is headed by the deputy from Samopomich Olha Posipanko, and the communal property department is headed by Inna Svystun. Right now they are heading all the corruption schemes on communal property.
The method for calculating the rental value of state and municipal property in Lviv is different. In our case, this figure is underestimated by 3-4 times. Plus, the valuation of municipal property put up for auction is underestimated. For example, in 2017, the city earned only 11 million hryvnias on the rental of municipal property, which is extremely little, because in 2016 it was 44 million hryvnias. All these amounts can be multiplied by at least 3 to get the figure of revenues that the city could actually receive. Then multiply by all of Sadovyi’s terms - this will be the amount of damage. That is, it will reach about a billion hryvnias on just one rental!"
Of course, this is far from a complete list of Sadovyi’s merits to the city of the Lion. Therefore, we will not put a period and, as they say, "to be continued". Definitely.
Comment for "Vgolos"
Markiyan Lopachak, deputy of the Lviv City Council:
The problem of efficiency and, above all, legality of the management of communal property of the Lviv community is systemic and has been going on since the beginning of Sadovyi’s first term in 2006-2010. A long list is being compiled - the sale of the Lviv hotel and the department store "on the Market" at reduced prices, benefits of 27 million hryvnia for the Leopolis hotel for the annexation of communal premises, the so-called "scam of the century", due to which the city lost more than 10 thousand square meters of premises, the premises on Mickiewicz Square 6/7, almost completely occupied by those associated with the Samopomich party...
From the last one - these are many questions regarding the large-scale reorganization of former housing offices - many of them have been liquidated, consolidated, the process of transferring property to legal successors is extremely non-transparent and has great risks that many premises valuable to the community and here have a chance to leave the city’s ownership. We have addressed and will address law enforcement agencies to each fact and will respond publicly - regarding the "Scam of the Century" and the department store "Na Rynku", as far as I know, criminal proceedings are still ongoing, the appraiser of the department store, close to the family of the city mayor, was even taken into custody. We will closely monitor that none of the illegal steps go unpunished.
24 February 2020 ã., 21:00
