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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Of the 170 parliamentarians who receive compensation for renting housing in the capital, almost 120 declared millions in savings. And at least 25 of them also definitely have somewhere to live in Kyiv or in an elite suburb. This happens because the parliament apparatus calculates compensation without checking whether the deputy or their family owns housing in the capital.
This is stated in an investigation by Oleksandr Kurbatov for the program “Nashi Hroshi with Denys Bihus.”
Under the law that parliamentarians passed for themselves, those of them who do not own housing in the capital and within 30 kilometers around it are entitled to compensation from the budget. That is, from taxpayers’ money. Each month – 20 thousand hryvnias for renting an apartment or a hotel room at the Kyiv Hotel. For one day, 650 hryvnias are charged.
But among the recipients of such compensation are not only official millionaires, but also official owners of housing in the capital or in the 30-kilometer zone around Kyiv.
For example, the former regional party member and now member of the parliamentary group “Volia Narodu,” Ihor Molotok, who declared about 20 million hryvnias in savings with his family and personally owns a country estate in the village of Romankiv, near Kyiv. Despite this, he receives monthly budget compensation for housing rent.
In a comment to the program “Nashi Hroshi with Denys Bihus,” MP Molotok first tried to explain the compensation by saying his estate is too far from Kyiv. In fact, that real estate is located less than 30 kilometers from the Verkhovna Rada. So the housing compensation in his case is a direct violation of the law.
When journalists reminded him of this, Ihor Molotok mentioned renovations. Allegedly, he cannot use the house because of the repairs. This argument also does not hold up, because on workday mornings foreign cars are parked near his country house, and in Kyiv the deputy’s wife owns an apartment of one hundred fifty square meters.
Narodnyi Front member Volodymyr Shkvaryliuk also justifies receiving housing compensation by renovations in a Kyiv apartment with a market value of several million hryvnias. He and his wife bought that apartment in July 2016. Last year the Shkvaryliuk family added a new Mercedes and BMW to a garage that already had two Volvos and a Toyota. But Shkvaryliuk did not give up the monthly compensation, claiming the renovations in the apartment bought two years ago are still not finished.
Opposition Bloc member Dmytro Kolesnikov and his wife own two apartments totaling almost two hundred fifty square meters in a capital building near the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
“I live in Kryvyi Rih. I come to Kyiv and, as a member of parliament, I’m entitled to a hotel room,” explains Dmytro Kolesnikov about receiving compensation. But when he hears about the Kyiv apartments in the building near NABU, he hides in the corridors of the Verkhovna Rada, where journalists are not allowed.
One of the wealthiest deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, the former regional party member and now member of the Revival party Yevhen Heller, has an entire palace with its own park in Kozyn. Heller declared over 200 million hryvnias in savings. Yet his name appears monthly on the lists of deputies who receive compensation for renting housing in Kyiv.
The same pattern is followed by the owner of a Kyiv apartment Arkadiy Kornatskyi from BPP (he declared 57 million in savings). So does Oleksandr Presman, whose family’s wealth amounts to almost 80 million hryvnias, not counting the Maybach, Bentley, Porsche Cayenne, Range Rover, and, of course, the capital apartment.
Some deputies have prudently registered real estate in relatives’ names. For example, BPP MP Ruslan Demchak, who has 136 million hryvnias in savings, receives 20 thousand hryvnias in monthly housing compensation because formally only a small apartment in Vinnytsia region is registered to him. But the elegant estate outside Kyiv, with a pool and sports ground that Demchak uses, is registered to his father, a former physical education teacher.
The staff who service the country property confirm that MP Demchak lives in this house and that his car leaves from there in the morning.
Narodnyi Front member Maksym Polyakov, a figure in the “amber case” from “agent Kateryna,” also receives 20 thousand hryvnias in monthly compensation, allegedly because he does not have housing in the capital. “I have to receive it by law. I don’t have housing in Kyiv,” he says.
However, detectives of the Anti-Corruption Bureau established that MP Polyakov lives in a penthouse of 227 m2 in the Kyiv residential complex “Crystal Park.” Officially, it is Polyakov’s sister’s apartment. But the detectives found that the money to purchase the penthouse, which cost almost 11 million hryvnias, was received by Polyakov’s sister from Polyakov’s own assistant.
The security guard of “Crystal Park” did not deny to journalists that Polyakov uses those apartments.
Millionaire deputies who registered Kyiv apartments to their wives and other relatives and still receive compensation include: Vadym Nesterenko (BPP), Anton Kisse (Revival), Vitaliy Barvinenko (Revival), Stanislav Berezkin (parliamentary group “Volia Narodu”), Ihor Brychenko (Narodnyi Front), Oleksandr Dolzhenkov (Opposition Bloc), Yuriy Odarchenko (Batkivshchyna), Ivan Rybak (BPP), Vladyslav Sevriukov (BPP), Oleg Musiy (non-affiliated deputy).
The parliamentary apparatus that calculates the compensations does not even look for the real estate recorded in deputies’ publicly available declarations. The apparatus does not request lease agreements for the properties paid from the budget either. And in general they say that members of parliament are not obliged to report on the expenditure of compensation funds.
“Providing members of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine with certificates from a hotel or the owner of housing to report on spent funds, as well as conducting checks by the Administrative Department of the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, is not provided for by the Law of Ukraine ‘On the Status of a Member of Parliament,’” Petr Bodnar, First Deputy Head of the Apparatus of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, noted in a response to the program “Nashi Hroshi with Denys Bihus.”
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Парламентські мільйонери з житлом у столиці отримують компенсації, бо апарат Ради не перевіряє, чи мають вони власну нерухомість". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Bihus.Info.
