How “Servants” Hunko and Khalimon Profited from the Academy of Sciences’ Lands

How “Servants” Hunko and Khalimon Profited from the Academy of Sciences’ Lands

The Servant of the People party is on track to set a record for the number of corrupt deputies. On Tuesday NABU detained Servant of the People deputy Anatoliy Hunko for taking a bribe of 85 thousand dollars; he allegedly tried, under the cover of a parliamentary investigative commission, to “sell tickets” to those who wanted to cultivate land belonging to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences.

This is already the second Servant who has come into NABU’s sights over abuses involving these lands. The scheme is the same. But the outcome is radically different. Censor.NET offers a recap of the whole story.

How was Hunko caught? SBU together with NABU exposed the MP red-handed, who for $85 thousand was “selling” land of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences. The arrest took place, judging by the video, in an office in Pechersk. That’s the Gulliver business center, a logical location for Hunko, who for many years served developer Viktor Polishchuk.

“For money the official promised a businessman to ensure the granting of state land plots of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine for cultivation. Law enforcement documented the MP’s criminal activity and caught him red-handed while receiving the first part of the illicit payment in the amount of $85 thousand,” the SBU reported.

The investigation is being conducted under part 4 of article 368 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (Acceptance of an offer, promise, or receipt of an improper benefit by an official). In the coming days the deputy will be served with a notice of suspicion. The same goes for his two accomplices.

Who is Hunko? “Some no-name,” — that’s how one of the leaders of the president’s faction described Hunko, the Servant of the People candidate, before the election in district 208.

However, what was unknown to the deputies was well known in the capital’s suburbs. And Hunko’s history in Brovary was a red flag — a very bad story for the Servants that could only end in criminal charges.

In Brovary, Hunko, owner of the company JSC “Guild of Law,” was known as Viktor Polishchuk’s lawyer. The same Polishchuk who owns the Gulliver shopping center in Pechersk, the Eldorado stores, and the bankrupt Mykhailivsky bank. The same Polishchuk who is a friend of Oleksandr Yanukovych, and whose wife is a relative of Svitlana Medvedeva (the wife of the former Russian president).

Polishchuk appeared in Brovary after Yanukovych came to power in 2010 and very quickly squeezed out local developers. People began speaking of him, as they say, formally and in whispers. Some moved far away from trouble to Spain.

In 2013, a few months before the start of Maidan, the Brovary city council transferred lands of the state enterprise “Radio Transmission Center” to Polishchuk’s circle. A German pharmaceutical giant, Bayer AG, was supposed to build a factory there. Strange?

Of course. Later the Germans denied any involvement. And the lands, where there had been private plots of 48 Brovary residents, went to Hunko’s company “Inter-profit.” And while some froze on Maidan, within months some of Brovary’s most famous residential complexes grew on those allotted lands — “Lisovyi” and “Zelenyi Kvartal.”

To build their high-rises, half a year before the illegal annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Polishchuk’s team illegally destroyed the working equipment of the state enterprise “Radio Transmission Center.” It was this site that was developed. Previously it housed unique electronic equipment and a tower (the “Borey” complex) that were part of Ukraine’s defense system. The long-wave radio transmitter “Borey” could broadcast Ukrainian frequencies over long distances (covering 95% of Ukraine’s territory).

After Maidan the investigation into the land distribution became a cause championed by local majoritarian deputy Pavlo Ryzanenko, but no matter how often he went to prosecutors, the case was not properly investigated.

Polishchuk’s lawyers managed to bury the issue everywhere. Only once did the prosecution work fully, when Polishchuk’s interests clashed with those of the circle around former Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema, which was also building residential complexes in Brovary.

In any case, Anatoliy Hunko had time to be jailed and some of his property was seized. But in 2019 the case was closed.

Hunko then ran in district 209 in Chernihiv region for Fatherland. Even then Hunko campaigned through a “network” (or by Ostap Bender’s method — chairs [voters] in the morning, money in the evening). He also became known to local women through an Olya Polyakova concert — in villages without roads the rumor spread quickly that the singer earned either 5000 dollars or 2 million hryvnias for one concert. Hunko still lost to the Servant of the People brand.

A year later he ran in district 208 (the previous deputy, agrarian Valeriy Davydenko, according to the investigation, committed suicide) already for the president’s party, and defeated Oleg Liashko himself. Interestingly, Hunko started the election with a rating of 65%, while Liashko had 1%.

Another interesting detail — Hunko’s wife in the previous Kyiv region council was a deputy from the Radical Party. In this convocation she was head of the council from the Servants. However, in May this year Nataliya Hunko was removed from that position. The official reason — Hunko did not timely submit a report for 2022, and when it was finally submitted it was judged unsatisfactory.

Hunko’s and Khalimon’s agrarian schemes

In 2021 a raiding scandal erupted in Hunko’s district. Harvests of sunflower and corn were taken from the fields of SE DH “Ivanivka.” Locals claim Hunko then lobbied through NAAS his own director, Mykola Polovik. Polovik was accompanied by attorneys from Hunko’s “Guild of Law.”

The grain was exported through LLC “Prylutsk Agrarian Company” to PP “Transvit,” owned by Serhiy Seliutin — a business partner of another Servant deputy, Pavlo Khalimon. Yes, this is the same Khalimon featured in Mykhailo Tkach’s report in February.

The journalist then found that the 39-year-old deputy bought a luxurious house with a plot in central Kyiv, near the Hryshko Botanic Garden.

The house was officially registered to another person, but journalists established that Khalimon constantly lives in the estate. The seller was bishop of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Oleksandr Drabinko.

Most interesting and most regrettable is that in 2020 NABU had already documented Khalimon over his schemes with the lands of the Agrarian Academy of Sciences.

But then someone leaked information to the figure, and former Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova effectively blocked the case.

On 21 July ex-parliamentarian and agribusinessman Oleg Dmytrenko appealed to NABU with a statement about a possible crime by Servant of the People MP Pavlo Khalimon. He reported that he made audio recordings of meetings and phone conversations with the deputy and his trusted associate — another entrepreneur Serhiy Seliutin, which allegedly show the two offering to resolve problems with law enforcement and favorable conditions for agribusiness in Chernihiv region in exchange for a cash reward of 40 million hryvnias.

This concerned the large state enterprise “Ivkivtsi” in Chernihiv region — 5 thousand hectares of its land were leased to Dmytrenko’s structures.

But Khalimon is not just an MP, he’s also an agribusinessman, and in the summer of 2020 he decided to take control of the enterprise by appointing his own person, Inna Leshchenko, as deputy director, wrote Censor.NET editor-in-chief Yuriy Butusov about this story.

According to Dmytrenko, MP Khalimon demanded 50% of Ivkivtsi’s profits, i.e., 40 million UAH, and invited him to a meeting. Not anywhere, but in the office of the advisor to the deputy head of the Presidential Office, Borys Baum, on Bankova Street.

“On the morning of 22 July 2020 Dmytrenko called Khalimon and promised to bring everything they had agreed on. And NABU on the morning of 22 July applied to the General Prosecutor’s Office for sanction to arrest Khalimon. But after lunch Khalimon stopped answering. And the next day police searched Dmytrenko’s companies. The operation to arrest the bribe-taker who settles his affairs in the president’s own office failed,” Butusov wrote three years ago.

So, effectively after 3 years NABU managed to take revenge for the leaked case on agrarian lands. After Tkach’s report Khalimon was even removed from the post of deputy head of the faction.

As journalist Vitaliy Nazarenko says, besides Chernihiv region Hunko has similar enterprises in Kyiv, Rivne and Vinnytsia regions + 300 ha near Kruty (Nizhyn district, Chernihiv region). Khalimon has Ivkivtsi in the Pryluky area. Both practically parasitize on NAAS lands, and undeclared millions flow out from there. Hunko was even caught in correspondence admitting he invested money into sowing.

On the lands leased in Kruty

Last year Hunko registered and passed in first reading bill No. 7588/1, which became an analogue of the Cabinet’s 7588.

7588, which gives the Cabinet the right to dispose of agricultural lands that are on the balance sheets of state institutions and state enterprises (SE), was registered back in July 2022, adopted in first reading in September. And only on 27 July was it adopted in full.

Since February, the author of this article repeatedly asked officials to comment on the situation with agrarian lands, but officials refused to comment. They only advised watching the fate of the Cabinet’s bill, hinting at powerful opposition from a semi-criminal lobby.

In the spring it became clear that the State Property Fund also claims these lands.

State Property Fund head Rustem Umerov wants the Cabinet to transfer state lands to the SPF for holding lease auctions on Prozorro.

As the Telegram channel “Monopolist” notes, the law also provides for the possibility of converting SEs into LLCs while retaining 100% of the authorized capital in state ownership so that they pay not land tax but rent to the state. And most importantly — the law stipulates that lease and sublease of state lands are to be conducted exclusively by open bidding.

“There is a risk that Umerov is doing this on the orders of Deputy Head of the Presidential Office Rostyslav Shurma to consolidate land profits for the Presidential Office. Maybe so. But now the state effectively does not ‘feel’ this land,” the channel’s journalists noted.

But clearly people like Khalimon and Hunko were earning well from it.

Tetyana Nikolaienko

censor.net