Land deals and sand from the cemetery in Ukrainka: How Mayor Turenko’s company is linked to the construction of the upmarket ‘Dynasty’ cottage estate in Kozyn

Land deals and sand from the cemetery in Ukrainka: How Mayor Turenko’s company is linked to the construction of the upmarket ‘Dynasty’ cottage estate in Kozyn

Sand from the cemetery in the city of Ukrainka near Kyiv, which was illegally extracted and used for the construction of the cottage town “Dynasty” in Kozyn, was transported by equipment belonging to Mayor Oleksandr Turenko. He recently received a suspicion notice over land schemes and embezzlement of budget funds.

This is reported in an investigation by Bihus.Info.

In the summer of 2022, the Ukrainka City Council signed a contract for the improvement of the city cemetery with a private contractor. The work used equipment belonging to the city mayor, Oleksandr Turenko. At the same time, law enforcement began investigating the illegal extraction and removal of sand from the cemetery. It turned out that the “mayor’s” equipment delivered the sand to the construction site of the “Dynasty” cottage town, which, according to the investigation, was being built for the inner circle of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In July 2022, investigators seized the equipment registration log from the construction site and obtained video footage confirming the delivery of sand by a dump truck owned by Turenko.

Interestingly, the Turenko family has long-standing ties with the family of former head of the Presidential Office Andriy Yermak, for whom, according to the investigation, one of the houses in “Dynasty” was being built. Back in 2010, Yermak transferred one of his companies to Turenko’s wife, Larysa.

For the episode involving the illegal extraction of sand, Turenko faced no liability. Instead, a few weeks ago he was served with a suspicion notice for land appropriation and embezzlement of budget funds. The total damage is estimated at over UAH 75 million. According to the investigation, Turenko may have organized a scheme to register plots as private property, some of which were later sold to third parties. For the most expensive plots on the banks of the Stuhna River and in the forest area, a separate scheme was allegedly used involving the artificial replacement of coordinates, making less valuable land appear far more expensive in the documents.

The court imposed on Turenko a preventive measure in the form of bail of almost UAH 20 million, and also ordered him to surrender his foreign passport and restricted his contacts with witnesses. The mayor himself and his lawyer consider the suspicion to be unfounded.