Corruption in Sumy region: What is the Head of the Regional Tax Office Olena Khotenko hiding

Borrow almost 3 million hryvnias from her 12-year-old son. Receive two apartments and a part of a house as a gift with a clearly underestimated value from her Russian mother. Ukrainian tax officials’ declarations are increasingly becoming like a collection of anecdotes. But we are not the ones laughing, they are—the owners of expensive property, registered for pennies or not declared at all.

Meet Olena Khotenko, the acting head of the Main Department of the State Tax Service in the Sumy region. She managed to acquire an apartment in Kyiv at the price of one square meter. And not just an apartment, and not just in Kyiv.

Who is Olena Khotenko?

Olena Khotenko is not just an ordinary tax official. She is also a deputy, a volunteer, and an expert on fiscal policies. Here she inspects accessibility in Rivne, there she coordinates the families of missing persons. In the morning she is with the "Servant of the People," in the evening she is a director of an NGO. Khotenko’s credentials can be listed for a very long time.

Since August 2024, the "servant" from the Rivne City Council has been heading the tax department of the Sumy region. What unusual things have we found in her declarations that may indicate a significant underestimation of property value acquired during the full-scale invasion?

Almost 3 million from a 12-year-old son

In last year’s declaration, Khotenko still has a loan of 2.8 million UAH. The most interesting thing is that this money was loaned to her by her 12-year-old son in 2018. The question of the capability of a 7th grader to lend his mother such an amount remains open.

Now, the son is a successful 18-year-old self-employed entrepreneur who, according to his mother’s declaration, earned 3 million UAH last year.

Olena Khotenko with the "lender" in 2018

"Forgot" to declare her husband’s assets

In 2016, Khotenko did not declare her husband’s property—a part of a house in the Rivne region.

It is evident that while serving as the deputy head of the tax department in the Zaporizhzhya region, Khotenko "forgot" about the house with a total area of 550 squares. Such inaccuracies are often made by officials to avoid attracting the attention of law enforcement regarding the origins of funds for such property.

It is unlikely that the tax officer was unaware of her husband’s house, especially since half of that house belonged to her mother, Russian citizen Lyudmila Timofeyenko. By the way, it was this half that the mother gifted to her daughter last year.

Interestingly, Khotenko declares the entire house as her property, albeit with a 50-square-meter smaller area. In reality, half of the house belongs to her former husband, Andriy Khotenko, with whom Olena separated in 2019.

Again, the property’s value is clearly undervalued—only 30 thousand UAH. Meanwhile, the real market price of the house is at least 10.8 million UAH. After all, the cost per square meter of housing in the Rivne region starts at 600 dollars (about 24 thousand UAH).

Gifts from the mother

In the third month of the full-scale invasion, Khotenko received two apartments as gifts from her Russian citizen mother. Again, the real estate price is clearly undervalued. The declared value of the apartment in Rivne is 50 thousand UAH.

Similar housing—a few minutes from the embankment, in the very center of the city—measuring almost 38 square meters was worth at least 672 thousand UAH on the market at that time (23,000 dollars at that time). This exceeds the declared sum by more than 13 times.

It gets even more interesting. A few days after obtaining the apartment in Rivne, the tax official "servant" received another gift—an apartment in Kyiv with an area of 46 squares. And again, the appraised value is laughable—100 thousand UAH, while the market value was at least 870 thousand UAH.

For Khotenko, one declared square meter in the capital cost about 70 dollars. According to real estate experts, even considering the conditions in which the market in Kyiv found itself after the end of the battles for the capital, the value of the gift declared is not consistent with its real price.

 

Avoiding lustration, NABU, and getting promoted

In 2015, there was an attempt to lustrate Olena Khotenko. However, the official had already "established" herself sufficiently in civil service by then—she contested the order of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine on her dismissal in court and was reinstated as the deputy head of the Main Department of the State Fiscal Service in the Zaporizhzhya region.

Just as with lustration, Khotenko was also "spared" in 2021—when the National Agency on Corruption Prevention discovered signs of "deliberate submission of false information in declarations" on the part of the deputy. Three years after materials were sent to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, instead of facing criminal charges, Khotenko was promoted.

Tax official Khotenko is a striking example of manual political appointments where selection among one’s own works. Only the transparent competitions for top positions with a detailed check of property and lifestyle before appointments, which are already familiar to us, can break this practice. Otherwise, those officials who escaped lustration yesterday will manage the key governmental bodies tomorrow.

Author: Martyna Bohuslavets

Source: UP