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On the day of the dismissal of the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration, Valentin Reznichenko, the remaining funds of the regional budget amounted to a mere 13.4 million UAH. The creditor debt for protected items was -37.6 million UAH. By the end of the year, a "budget hole" of 239.5 million UAH is expected. Of the 30 billion UAH invested in infrastructure projects and over 100 billion UAH in contractor revenues, the lion's share was absorbed by structures close to the governor and his advisor. It did not go without individuals who are wanted by Interpol...
The now former head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration (DOGA), Valentin Reznichenko, has not commented on his resignation in any way. For him, as usual, Yuri Holik — the former non-staff advisor — spoke and wrote on Facebook. On the first day of his boss's resignation, he announced a flashmob — "200 objects built by us".
Governor Reznichenko did indeed build a lot (because it was profitable). According to Holik, capital investments reached 30 billion UAH — an absolute record for all the years of Ukraine's independence.
At the same time, there was a clear inconsistency in the other figures. Thus, Holik, in his speech to the audience at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, claimed that the development budget of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast had grown from 622 million UAH to 8.4 billion UAH over four years — i.e. almost 20 times.
The governor refuted his advisor: according to him, the revenue part of the regional budget for 2019 was 18.4 billion UAH, and for development only 3.5 billion UAH was planned.
On June 25, Holik stated that "16,000 entrepreneurs from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast work in the ProZorro system; over 4 years they earned more than 130 billion UAH.
A week later, he writes on Facebook: over 4 years, more than 15,000 entrepreneurs from Dnipropetrovsk Oblast earned 120 billion UAH with the help of ProZorro. Where are the other thousand entrepreneurs and 10 billion UAH? A slight discrepancy?
Reznichenko is even more modest in his estimates. According to his version, entrepreneurs in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast earned no more than 60 billion UAH in the electronic public procurement system ProZorro.
Tender favourites wanted by Interpol
Having failed to establish exactly how much the "private sector" received from DOGA — 60 billion UAH, 120 billion UAH, or 130 billion UAH — let us move on to the question: who are these lucky ones? Almost all the "tender favourites" are listed in the criminal case No. 120180400000000232 regarding the misappropriation of funds of budgetary organisations by officials:
LLC "Stroyinvest Engineering"
LLC "Group Capital Stroy"
LLC "Alias-Company"
LLC "Mistokombud"
LLC "Ukr-Remmontazh"
LLC "AVS Build Service"
LLC "Kommunalshchik"
LLC "Dniprospetsliftservice".
The companies from this list, "Stroymax-Company" and "Mistokombud", built kindergartens to "European standards" for 73.5 million UAH in Obukhivka and Podhorodne, which were ceremonially opened at the end of October 2018 and urgently closed four months later when melting snow leaked through the poor-quality roof and children nearly died from an electrical short circuit (in Obukhivka).
And "Budinvest Engineering" managed to carry out a major repair of about 8 km of the rural road Malozakharyno-Bohate-Solnechnoye for 61.2 million UAH. Why so expensive? Well, if you buy bitumen twice as expensive as in the neighbouring Luhansk Oblast, it is not surprising.
The next order alone amounted to 109.94 million UAH. In a short time, the company received half a billion hryvnias just for roads from the regional administration. Not to mention other construction, services for maintaining in-house heating and water supply networks, and cleaning of residential areas in settlements of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.
At the same time, according to the registry of court decisions as of 25 February 2019, "Mistokombud" was involved in 105 cases from the field of criminal proceedings, and "Budmax-Company" in 127. Already in the liquidation stage after the scandal with the kindergartens, LLC "Mistokombud " won a tender worth 135.8 million UAH for the restoration of the hydrological regime of rivers and protection from flooding.
The poor reputation of the companies, it seems, did not bother the regional governor. Yes, what is the reputation of the firms. Look at who their real owners are! According to the facts of case No. 120180400000000232, which the Main Directorate of the National Police in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has been working on for over a year, "outsider" participants in tenders were deliberately rejected to award contracts to the companies listed above, linked to two citizens of Ukraine, Israel, and the USA simultaneously — the brothers Vladimir and Leonid Dubinsky.
They returned to Ukraine from the USA, fleeing case No. JCP4618 in the Supreme Court of California (a housing scam à la "Elita Center") and, while being wanted by Interpol, became the best friends of DOGA. They camouflaged their firms: for example, LLC "Budinvest Engineering" was re-registered from US citizen Arkadiy Leonid Masarsky (a broker from California, where the Dubinskys operated) to director Dmytro Lytnarovich. And they started winning tenders one after another.
Even media loyal to the former governor complained that "despite the desire for reform and a new approach to work, Dnipro OGA still could not get rid of the habit of 'pushing through' the firms of deputies, officials, and their children". They returned to Ukraine from the USA, fleeing case No. JCP4618 in the Supreme Court of California (a housing scam à la "Elita Center") and, while being wanted by Interpol, became the best friends of DOGA. They camouflaged their firms: for example, LLC "Budinvest Engineering" was re-registered from US citizen Arkadiy Leonid Masarsky (a broker from California, where the Dubinskys operated) to director Dmytro Lytnarovich. And they started winning tenders one after another.
What about the children of officials? It is all much simpler: the entire business community of Dnipro is aware that the Dubinskys are Reznichenko and Holik. It is said that in the last month of their rule, 70-80% of the budget money was sent to "their own people".
Forced budget scheming
In addition to schools, kindergartens, medical institutions, and other social facilities built for exorbitant money, the "team of creators" from DOGA built and repaired 500 local roads, the "Dnipro-Zaporizhzhia" highway, and began work on the highway to Kyiv, which they promise to complete in the next four years.
The key word in Reznichenko and Holik's stories about their infrastructure achievements is "started". They started now, but they expect to finish in a few years. A very cunning model. Tenders were conducted in such a way that works were procured for 3.5 years in advance. In fact, a financial pyramid was created based on kickbacks, about which "citizen journalists" write a lot. If you want to be paid for services rendered or works performed — pay a kickback. The size of the kickback is known throughout the region — it is from 10 to 40% of the cost of goods, works, or services".
At the same time, local roads should be repaired by local authorities. As Holik noted in one of his interviews: "there are roads within settlements for which the council of these cities is responsible. Roughly speaking, the mayor of Nikopol is responsible for the roads of Nikopol".
But Yuri Holik developed and implemented his own innovative scheme for extracting money from territories. Taking advantage of the provision of the Budget Code that the regional state administration can act as the customer for the major repair of roads in settlements and between villages, the OGA daily very precisely determined the financial resources available in the budgets of the territorial communities (OTG) of cities and districts. After that, by force, the mayors of cities and heads of OTGs were coerced into transferring these funds from their accounts to the regional budget.
For several years, the local self-government bodies of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast had no opportunity to independently conduct tenders and determine contractors for projects. A financial pyramid was formed, within which the development budget exceeded the annual regional budget by 3-4 times.
Why was such a pyramid needed, you ask?
1. To deceive deputies when voting for the budget, claiming that infrastructure facilities would be built in their constituencies.
2. To deceive the heads of OTGs and mayors, claiming that facilities would be built for them, and under this pretext to "raise" their money into the regional budget.
3. To ensure their company with won tenders for three years in advance through an absolutely regulated ProZorro procedure.
4. And finally, to create a deficit of real money and pay other contractors only for kickbacks.
Release the money — you immediately receive a kickback. No kickback — no money. In any case, there are many times more such objects than there is money.
A separate topic for the OGA was state-significance road projects. They managed to absorb them through Kyiv and the administration of President Petro Poroshenko. Valentin Reznichenko once named his patron — Deputy Head Vitaliy Kovalchuk. Thanks to his connection, the governor did not greatly observe propriety with state-wide budgetary resources, pulling the blanket of large-scale road works onto his regional road fund.
A few questions to the ex-partner of Kurchenko
Here it is necessary to explain who Reznichenko and Holik are and how they appeared in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration. Valentin Reznichenko worked as a top manager of the media empire of Boris Lohkin's UMH since 1996 — as the latter admitted, his distant relative. Yuri Holik, a native of Luhansk, was his deputy.
In the investigation by the Prosecutor General's Office (PGO) into the sale by Boris Lohkin's offshore company Integrity International Holdings Ltd of its media holding UMH to Sergey Kurchenko's offshore company Trejoli Business Ltd, Reznichenko appears as a co-owner of Integrity. Together with him, shareholders of the radio stations at different times were Hennadiy Boholiubov, Hryhoriy Surkis, and Petro Poroshenko.
Reznichenko worked at UMH until May 2014, becoming a partner of Kurchenko for a while. And this, let us remind you, was the most intense time of the occupation of Crimea and Donbas. Then Lohkin led him through state positions: general director of the state radio frequency centre, governor of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, and finally, head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration (Ihor Kolomoysky had to be moved aside).
On 26 May 2015, Valentin Reznichenko entered his new office, and already on 1 April, Yuri Holik settled into the neighbouring office of the first deputy — an advisor on a voluntary basis. A person without status who, for four years, decided all key issues in the region, spoke on behalf of the governor, and travelled in a Toyota Land Cruiser 2017, registered to a certain Konstantin Meshalkin. After Holik's departure, traces of audio-video recording equipment and mobile communication jamming devices were found in his office: makeshift tools for conducting negotiations on tenders.
By the way, Valentin Reznichenko also "gave himself away" with cars. Becoming governor, he added a Mercedes S350 to his 2014 Range Rover and 2007 Range Rover Sport (one of which was stolen in 2016, but was quickly found, after which cooperation with the Interpol-wanted Dubinsky brothers became even more active, - author's note), on plates... Hyundai Accent, with an owner named Petro Kaluga. By the way, one of the jeeps is registered to a person named Yuriy Yakymets.
In addition to cars, he acquired securities of LLC CUA "Financial Asset" worth 857 million UAH and PJSC "Aqua Digital" worth 6.5 million UAH at the start of his governorship in 2015. Perhaps, in this form, Kurchenko settled with the already acting governor for Lohkin's offshore, where he acted as a co-founder?
In any case, our hero never explained the origin of these purchases. And no one tried to ask him — neither the PGO nor the SBU. They really should have inquired. There are many questions, in general.
1) What links the former governor to the ex-Regional Party member Tatiana Bakhteeva and the sons of the "chief surgeon of the Donetsk separatists" Emil Fistal? Why did the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration purchase medicines and consumables from them for 50 million UAH last year? Moreover, this came to light during another scandal over the lack of medicines in the region's medical institutions.
2) Where did the budget money for the largest flagpole in Ukraine in the centre of Dnipro go? If members of Reznichenko's team "chipped in" with their personal funds for it, as Holik claims, then, first of all, where did he get the money — he has not officially worked anywhere for the last four years, and secondly, where did the 22,446,880 UAH allocated in the regional budget go? This question has already been put to the law enforcement agencies. And this is far from everything one would like to ask the "most successful governor of Ukraine".
To be continued..
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