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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
"Master" Has Started to Fear the Case
Law enforcement interest in Vyacheslav Mishalov's schemes could trigger a large-scale redistribution of spheres of influence in Dnipro.
As OLIGARKH has already reported, in less than two years the companies linked to Dnipro City Council secretary Vyacheslav Mishalov and his father, Master group founder Dmytro Mishalov, won Dnipro city council and regional state administration tenders totaling nearly 500 million hryvnias. This drew increased attention to them from civic activists, entrepreneurs, and law enforcement agencies. The first conclusions about the scandal involving the Dnipro City Council secretary were unfavorable to him — Vyacheslav Mishalov has already been disavowed by his colleagues in the Self Reliance party. After reviewing information about the activities of party members in the Dnipro City Council, the working group led by Verkhovna Rada vice-speaker Oksana Syroyid concluded that it "contradicts the party's principles, statutes, and programmatic goals." As a result, the Self Reliance executive committee recommended that Vyacheslav Mishalov voluntarily resign from the secretary position, and that the head of the city's Self Reliance organization, Artem Khmelnykov, relinquish his duties as chair of the city council budget committee and surrender his party membership card.
Photo — Vyacheslav Mishalov
Earlier, in mid-March, Self Reliance executive committee chair and Member of Parliament Oleh Lavryk sent an appeal to NABU head Artem Sytnyk asking him to verify media reports about abuse of office for personal and family interests by Dnipro City Council secretary Vyacheslav Mishalov. The party obstruction that followed in early April could indicate that these facts did indeed occur.
Photo — Oleh Lavryk
The departure of two Self Reliance representatives from key positions in the Dnipro City Council would automatically mean a reshuffle of positions and spheres of influence in the mayor's office. Although it is easy to predict Mishalov's and Khmelnykov's reluctance to give up their entrenched seats, which could result in prolonged legal battles over the matter.
An initiative group made up of local deputies, civic activists, and ATO participants has already taken up the task of "shaking" the situation by demanding the resignations of Vyacheslav Mishalov and Artem Khmelnykov from their council positions. One of the leading roles in this "anti-Mishalov" coalition has been assumed by city council deputy from the civic organization Hromadska Syla, Kateryna Zbarska. Before Mishalov's appointment as city council secretary at the beginning of last year, Hromadska Syla founder Zahid Krasnov had been a contender for the post. Now he has a chance to push for a re-election of the council speaker and take the seat. At the same time, Hromadska Syla is undermining the Self Reliance brand in the region, positioning it as a "party of corrupt officials." To free the secretary and budget committee chair positions as quickly as possible, members of the civic group demanded that Self Reliance leader Andriy Sadovyi take direct part in removing Mishalov and Khmelnykov, and that law enforcement agencies open personal criminal cases against them.
Photo — Andriy Sadovyi
"It is no secret that Self Reliance representatives Khmelnykov and Mishalov siphoned more than half a billion hryvnias of public funds from the city budget into their pockets. Over the course of a year, the firm owned by the city council secretary's father, Vyacheslav Mishalov, won tenders in virtually every area. How did this happen? All tenders were tailored precisely to firms close to Mishalov, while other participants were filtered out on formal grounds. Moreover, a number of programs were invented for majority deputies, who appropriated public funds in exchange for the "needed" votes in the session hall. Mishalov and Khmelnykov alone laundered projects for the reconstruction of the New Bridge (82 mln hryvnias), the reconstruction of Naberezhna Pobedy, the maintenance of the municipal enterprise Inforada (8 mln hryvnias), a video surveillance system in schools (23 mln hryvnias), an informatization program (43 mln hryvnias), the installation of city surveillance cameras (38 mln hryvnias), the "My Yard" program (25 mln hryvnias), and this list can go on endlessly. Khmelnykov, as head of the budget committee, ensured the "correct" voting on all necessary issues, as well as the approval of all required documents," Kateryna Zbarska said at the press conference convened to announce the creation of the civic group demanding Vyacheslav Mishalov's resignation.
Photo — Borys Filatov
The activists also demanded that Mayor Borys Filatov disassociate himself from the speaker and the head of the budget committee and convene an extraordinary city council session where their re-election could be decided. No response has followed yet. But faced with the choice of whom to see as the city's second person — Mishalov or Krasnov — it can be assumed that Filatov will definitely side with the former. Supporting this version are the complicated personal relations between the current Dnipro mayor and the chairman of the supervisory board of the Dnipropetrovsk Switch Plant, which in the past were marred by public attacks. Filatov's relations are even worse with one of the leaders of Opposition Bloc, Oleksandr Vilkul, who ran for Dnipro mayor in the last elections. Moreover, Krasnov is considered a situational political ally of Vilkul.
Photo — Oleksandr Vilkul
It is not surprising that Borys Filatov has already begun providing informational support to Vyacheslav Mishalov. Well-known Dnipro journalist Vitaliy Teplov quoted on his Facebook page a statement that the local mayor's press service sends to journalists on behalf of the city council secretary. The statement makes no attempt to explain the reasons for Mishalov-related structures' enviable successes in mayoral tenders. However, it persistently pushes the idea that the secretary's resignation is being demanded by supporters of a "revenge of the Russian world."
Mishalov tied the party review of his activities to Dnipro's refusal to accept Lviv's garbage and its lack of support for the transport blockade of ORDLO. He promised to substantiate this version at a press conference in Kyiv in the near future. He also hinted that he possesses some compromising material on certain Self Reliance figures, which will soon be revealed. As for the accusations against him regarding "family" embezzlement, Mishalov has so far found nothing better than to refute them in the style of the Russian Foreign Ministry. "Those sweeping accusations leveled against me and my relatives are being staged by traitors and simple revanchists," he said. For reassurance, he added that "they will not be able to destabilize the situation in Dnipro."
Anna Antonova, OLIGARKH
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "«Мастер» начал бояться дела". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
