The Last Pioneers of Koncha-Zaspa

On the site of the former children’s camp in Koncha-Zaspa, under the guise of reconstruction, about fifty houses were built, whose owners turned out to include a former defense minister, a judge of the High Commercial Court of Ukraine, the daughter of a former Kyiv prosecutor, a member of parliament, and a number of other interesting people. On the documents they were recorded as exactly that — a children’s health complex.

On the site of the former children’s camp in Koncha-Zaspa, under the guise of reconstruction, about fifty houses were built, whose owners turned out to include a former defense minister, a judge of the High Commercial Court of Ukraine, the daughter of a former Kyiv prosecutor, a member of parliament, and a number of other interesting people. On the documents they were recorded as exactly that – a children’s health complex.

“Apartments in a pine forest” or “Business Plus class housing” — that is how this complex of houses in the recreational zone of Koncha-Zaspa is described on its own website. That’s now, but 15 years ago there was a children’s health camp of the Kyivrubber plant (VAT “Kyivhuma”) on this site. The plant sold the camp, and the new owner became an enterprise with a name similar to the plant’s — Closed Joint-Stock Company “Kyivhuma.” As co-founder and first director of the company Serhiy Shevchenko admits today, it was done so that it would be easier to register technical documentation for the land and to raise fewer questions from Kyiv City Council deputies.

“I don’t remember for how much, but it was 2001 year,” Shevchenko says. “There was an abandoned pioneer camp of the Chervonyi Humoovyk plant; it hadn’t been used for 10 years, people tried for a long time to sell it, and in the end I bought it. I made a reconstruction project of this pioneer camp into a family-type health complex with the construction of a school and kindergarten on its territory and houses for sale.”

They bought the camp, but more than 9 hectares of recreational land under it remained communal property, that is, owned by the city. So in 2003 the year ZAT “Kyivhuma” of Serhiy Shevchenko registered the land for lease. The lease agreement stated that the plot was provided “for the maintenance of a children’s health camp.” Soon the developer developed a reconstruction project for this camp — into a “family-type children’s health complex.” In 2004 the project received a positive state expert opinion, and in 2008 the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate (DABI) granted permission for construction works.

Only in the end they did not build a children’s health complex but a complex of about fifty private houses. The so-called “French town” (the name “stuck” because of a French architect) turned out to be twice as large as the plot Kyivhuma had leased, because the developers have now fenced off the adjacent 8 hectares of forest belonging to the Koncha-Zaspa forestry enterprise.

Shevchenko himself does not see violations on his part. He says they restored the fence on the site of the old pioneer camp; residential houses were neither planned nor, in his view, does the cottage town violate the law: “These are not ‘residential houses,’ this is non-residential stock; all houses according to the project are to be non-residential… The project was developed according to the requirements of the ‘recreation zone,’ non-residential premises. This project provides, besides the constructed houses, to make wells, to make firefighting ponds, to install hydrants on the territory, to make clear demarcation between buildings, the number of children’s playgrounds, etc. Therefore the project was implemented in accordance with the project we approved in the city. What everyone is now trying to make out of this project — I can’t influence that in any way.”

Volodymyr Prokopiv — until recently chair of the Land Commission and now secretary of the Kyiv City Council — explains: “The Kyiv City Council gave permission, made a decision to provide the plot with the land-use designation ‘for the operation and maintenance of a children’s camp.’ According to the State Land Cadastre, these are recreation lands, and you cannot build residential houses there. If there are to be residential houses, the land-use designation should be ‘for construction and operation of a residential house and outbuildings.’ These are fundamentally different things — between recreation lands and lands for public development.”

The developer does not give up — they built exactly what all the capital’s agencies allowed to be built:

S.S.: In our documents, what we registered for people, what people bought — non-residential premises, all the documents are the same.

N.G.: But you knew that people would buy them as residential?

S.S.: I knew nothing; some bought them to rent out, that’s their problem why they bought them. My task was to build — I built… Do you want pioneers to live there? There are no pioneers anymore, unfortunately or fortunately. Making a pioneer camp there — well, it’s a utopia nowadays. It doesn’t make sense in Koncha-Zaspa.”

So neither children nor health facilities. Private houses, which turned out to have very interesting owners. And almost each one has its own interesting story.

“Fitting the Unfittable.” General Valeriy Heletey

One of the first houses at the entrance belongs to the former defense minister and current head of the State Security Administration (UDO) — Valeriy Heletey.

According to the developer, Heletey wanted to settle here only after the town plan was approved. There were no free spots left, so they had to encroach on the forest-park area: “This house is located partly on Kyivhuma territory and partly on the forestry enterprise (Koncha-Zaspa forestry enterprise — ed.). Half the house here — half the house there. It turned out the house, as they say in Odesa, is ‘in between’.”

The court registry reveals something even more interesting. Heletey confirmed ownership of this house through a court lawsuit as late as in 2012, when he was no longer in public service but was working as Vice President of Avant-Bank, associated with former Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema. However, case materials show that the house was built much earlier — when Heletey was still in public service.

In October 2008 Valeriy Heletey, at that time head of the State Security Administration, received permission from Kyivhuma to build a house on the plot leased by the enterprise. An investment agreement was concluded then for an individual residential house with an estimated total area of 650 sq.m. The court decision also mentions the amount of investments needed to implement the project — 3,90 million hryvnias. But the developer didn’t have the money, and the head of the UDO built it with his own funds. Construction was completed in August 2009, barely a month after Heletey was dismissed from the UDO. Up until that moment Heletey had spent his life in public service; neither he, nor his wife, nor his two sons had business.

Another interesting detail: according to court documents, the Bureau of Technical Inventory issued a technical passport for a NON-residential building. It became residential only after the cited court decision.

Today the official honestly lists his 652 square meters in his declaration. Interestingly, he lists it specifically as a “residential house.” Without any child-recreation metaphors.

We tried to contact Valeriy Heletey to ask where a career official obtained the funds for such a house and whether its doubtful ‘in-between’ location gives him concern. But the UDO press service did not respond to our request for an interview.

“Daughters and Wives of Prosecutors.” Daria Chernovska

The only house on the territory with a separate private lake, according to a deed of gift from October 2013, is registered to Daria Chernovska, daughter of former Kyiv prosecutor Anatoliy Melnyk.

Melnyk served his whole life in the prosecutor’s offices. He was Pshonka’s deputy in the General Prosecutor’s Office in 2011, headed the city prosecutor’s office for a year, headed Luhansk regional prosecution for over a year, and from late 2012 to 2014. After Yanukovych’s fall, he resigned of his own accord.

Daria’s husband, Ihor Chernovsky, like her father, is a prosecutor and works in the Pechersk prosecutor’s office in the capital. His latest declaration for 2014 shows 60 thousand hryvnias of annual income, no real estate, and no money in accounts. He’s been at the Pechersk prosecutor’s office since at least 2012, and before that Ihor Chernovsky was registered as a sole proprietor doing “physical comfort services.” His family in Chernivtsi has had a construction business for 10 years (Private Enterprise “Eurofasadbud” belongs to the prosecutor’s father, Vasyl Chernovsky). But apparently the entrepreneurial activity didn’t go very well, if for the fourth year in a row Chernovsky prefers public service with its meager income.

Meanwhile, last year his wife became the owner of three premises totaling almost 360 square meters in the Novopecherski Lypky residential complex, a business-class residential complex in the center of Kyiv; today a square meter there costs 2 thousand dollars.

On the Instagram account of 25-year-old Daria over the last year are children and travels: Monte Carlo, Nice, Paris. Perhaps the explanation is that Daria turned out to be a successful businesswoman? The year before last, 24-year-old she found 7 million for a contribution to the charter capital of the car company LLC “Avtodrive-Alliance.”

We managed to contact Chernovska by phone; we wanted to clarify the origin of the property and the large sum in the charter capital of the private enterprise. But she refused to comment on real estate and business:

N.G.: Your ownership (of the house — ed.) is registered through a gift deed — who gifted you such a house?

D.C.: I will not answer such questions.

N.G.: Look, why I ask — your husband is a prosecutor and your father is also a prosecutor, so I’m interested where your family got such property.

D.C.: I will not answer such questions. If you are interested in other questions…

N.G.: Then tell me, please, about your company AvtoDriveAlliance — is that your business or perhaps someone in your family’s?

D.C.: Do svidannya, miss.”

“Cobblers Without Boots.” Judge Iryna Kondratova

A house of 593 square meters belongs to judge of the High Commercial Court Iryna Kondratova. Her father Dmytro Prytyka headed that same High Commercial Court for 15 years. Kondratova says she bought the house with funds from the sale of a share in a business she owned before becoming a judge. So there are no questions about financing. But did the judge know that according to the documents her house is a children’s health complex? She insists she did not, because when she invested in construction she did not see all the documents:

I.K.: Unfortunately, at that time we were not provided with all the documents.

N.G.: So you did not see the land lease agreement?

I.K.: No.

N.G.: Then how did you dare to invest in construction on land for which you had not seen the documents?

I.K.: Well, it happened that way. Because some of the documents we didn’t see, some were shown — some were not shown, they said one thing — Mr. Shevchenko spoke very well, and then nothing was signed — and it turned out differently (6.58).”

Kondratova calls herself a victim in this story and says they even had to finish construction with their own funds. Kondratova’s husband Kostyantyn also recalls that they received from the developer something quite different from what they expected: “By contract we should have had gas boilers, doors, windows; we had none of that, we finished it with our own money. So in fact we were sold brick with a foundation, bound with lime, cobbled together with that roof.”

And he shrugs — they got caught up with “Elita-Center,” he says.

“Expensive Roads.” MP Serhiy Labaziuk.

In the house of 650 square meters plans to move in MP Serhiy Labaziuk. He bought the estate in 2014, specifying in his declaration even the purchase price — 2,3 million hryvnias. And he listed it as a residential house. Although in the documents it’s a “residential building in a health complex.” We asked the MP whether such wording in the documents surprised him when he bought the property; Labaziuk replied that he saw nothing illegal about it: “No, I wasn’t surprised by such designation, because in our state there are many different forms of ownership, etc. So when I bought the property, I consulted beforehand, and this property is completely legal.”

Labaziuk is also known as a businessman. His family owns Private Enterprise “Agrarian Company 2004.” Despite the agrarian name and focus, the company has another line of business — road construction. And for years it has been winning construction tenders, having won at least 300 million in his native Khmelnytskyi region.

More than a third of that sum Labaziuk played out in a tender against a single competitor — PJSC “PivdenZakhidShlyakhBud” — the tender champion of the Yanukovych era, which in 2011–2013 years won tenders worth 3,5 billion. “In return” 337 million PZShB won while having only one competitor — that same “Agrarian Company” of Labaziuk. After Yanukovych fled, it turned out that PZShB’s loans were guaranteed by Tantalit, the family company of the former president.

Labaziuk’s profitable symbiosis ended only after Yanukovych fled the country. But now the MP not only does not admit tender rigging, he even claims grievances. Allegedly PZShB turned out to be a bad partner: “We did not enter tenders as a pair. To say we entered as a pair — you’d have to frankly say from your side that ‘you helped each other.’ I know the history of this enterprise a bit, because it actually caused a lot of problems and among other things didn’t settle with our company; I don’t remember what the debt was, there is a court decision.”

Although what Labaziuk is unhappy about is unclear — 117 million for road construction is also not small change.

“Gas Affairs.” Businessman Arsen Demchenko

The house of another businessman, Arsen Demchenko, was recently seized in the course of a criminal case. This story is also connected to public procurement. This time — Ukrtransgaz.

In 2009 Ukrtransgaz held a tender for conversion of a compressor station. It involved a significant sum — about 27 million hryvnias. Demchenko’s company — LLC NPV “Energogazprom” — won.

According to a court ruling on seizure of Demchenko’s property, for equipment — converters, a reactor, a transformer and spare parts — Ukrtransgaz paid the firm almost 24 million. According to the State Fiscal Service, in its accounting “Energogazprom” recorded a contract under which it purchased this equipment from LLC “Energo-Impex-Soft” for 18 million, but the latter did not deliver the equipment; it was actually purchased from another company — LLC “Maron” — for 2 million 160 thousand. That same company, according to the investigation, in turn ordered it from the manufacturer (“Kharkiv Electrical Switchgear Plant Eleteks-S”) for 2 million.

The criminal proceeding, however, was not initiated over that episode but over taxes. By recording 18 million in contract expenses with “Energo-Impex-Soft,” “Energogazprom” formed a tax credit of 3,15 million, thereby, according to the SFS, underpaying the state that amount in taxes.

Demchenko now calls the case “fabricated”: “The criminal proceeding has been going on for more than 5 years, and they twist me and squeeze me so that I give them a couple of kopecks. But I don’t do that — and they drag it out, and there’s nothing they can do. I go to interrogations, I go to court — no problem… The case can be closed without questions, but I don’t do that because I feel I am right.”

An interesting detail that may have affected success in business with Ukrtransgaz — Demchenko’s father, Mykola Demchenko, previously headed the Energy Department at that state company.

Other exhibits

This list of house owners, of course, is not exhaustive. Properties in the “French town” are also owned by:

– Nelya Trunova (360 square meters), wife of Vyacheslav Trunov, former deputy to Anatoliy Melnyk in the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, later Dnipro environmental prosecutor and prosecutor of Odesa region.

– Halyna Farnynnyk (550 square meters), wife of former head of the Main Investigation Department of the Interior Ministry Vasyl Farnynnyk.

– Olena Sheludchenko and Olha Troyan (two houses of 580 square meters each), respectively wife and daughter of the former head of NJSC Naftogaz Volodymyr Sheludchenko.

– Oleh Rafalsky (530 square meters), son of Oleh Rafalsky, former deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Serhiy Lyovochkin.

– Natalia Zaporozhan (580 square meters), wife of the rector of Odesa Medical Academy, Valeriy Zaporozhan.

Occupational justice

Today the developer of this camp of elite pioneers, Serhiy Shevchenko, complains that for the past several years he has not controlled either his construction or the company that ran it.

About six years ago, allegedly fearing raiding, Shevchenko put his ZAT “Kyivhuma” into bankruptcy, but couldn’t withdraw it afterwards: “An agreement was reached between the creditors and Kyivhuma that we would exit bankruptcy; we signed a settlement agreement… But then suddenly Kudlyak appeared. His court at the settlement stage appointed him the liquidator, although liquidation was not planned… Since then a war has continued between Kudlyak, those behind Kudlyak and our enterprise.”

But Shevchenko is not telling the whole story: his war has two fronts, and one of them is occupational. Back in 2008 the year, “Kyivhuma” was re-registered in Simferopol. The bankruptcy case was accordingly opened in a local court. And now the company is being taken out of bankruptcy there — in Russian courts of the occupied territory.

In 22 December 2015 the Arbitration Court of the Republic of Crimea adopted a decision