The SEB froze the pier of former NBU head Smoliy on Podil via court

Investigative judge of the Sviatoshynskyi District Court of Kyiv seized the property complex of LLC “MTR Management Ukraine” on Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska, 10-A. It is prohibited to sell, divide, pledge, or change the owner.

This was reported by the international detective bureau Absolution.

The SEB case in Kyiv No. 72024102400000060 under part 5 of article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — embezzlement on an especially large scale, money laundering and forgery of documents. The court considered the petition in absentia.

What exactly was frozen

Two objects in the register. A property complex with an area of 1 480,8 sq. m: a public catering combine base, a checkpoint — and already entered in the same record were two hydraulic structures.

berthing embankment letter No. 1, 151 linear meter, GTS-1050 (1968)

shore reinforcement letter No. 2, 37,5 meters, GTS-1051 (1988).

separately stands the building of the confectionery shop, 1 106,3 sq. m.

How the pier ended up in a private company

The investigators’ version begins with the privatization of Ukrrechflot. In May 8 of 1992 the State Property Fund and the ministry of denationalization approved the concept for transforming the Ukrainian Intersectoral State Association of River Fleet. The state enterprise “Torhrichtrans” was turned into the joint-stock company “AKVT Torhrichtrans.” Then a Ukrainian-Swiss joint venture appeared — the future “MTR Management Ukraine.” The address is the same: Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska, 10-A.

Hydraulic structures were not included in Torhrichtrans’s charter. Therefore, writes the SEB, they could not have become a contribution to the joint venture.

The law of 1990-ths explicitly forbade this. Port facilities, berths of all categories, embankment berths, and protective hydraulic structures were not subject to privatization and could not be contributed by the state to the charter capital of the joint-stock company. The same was in the Cabinet of Ministers’ decree of 31 December 1992 and in the wording of the privatization law since 1997.

In the Register of Hydraulic Structures of the Shipping Register, as of 1 January 2024, both hydraulic structures on 10-A were already listed as belonging to a private owner.

The firm formalized the right to the complex citing a letter from the State Property Fund dated 1998. In the extract from the register as of 29 December 2020, there were still only the canteen and the checkpoint. In the extract as of 8 July 2024, the same property complex had additionally “acquired” 151 meters of berth and 37,5 meters of shore reinforcement. The investigation calls this the illegal appropriation of state hydraulic structures.

Who owns the site

“MTR Management Ukraine,” code 19364495, has been in the register since 26 June 2000. NACE — storage and real estate rental. Director Oleksandr Veremiyenko. 85% — owned by LLC “Oktava Capital,” 15% — by Svitlana Smoliy. The ultimate beneficiary in open data is Oleksandr Kardakov. Revenue in 2025 was about 8 million UAH, five employees.

This is not the port of Ukrrechflot in the classical sense. It is a piece of the Podil embankment with Soviet-era “food” real estate, to which a berth born in 1968 was suddenly assigned.

Shortly before his appointment as deputy governor of the NBU, in the second half of 2013, Yakiv Smoliy began re-registering business assets to his wife Svitlana. She is a participant and shareholder of the companies LLC “Khoroshe Ozero,” LLC “Aval-Trans,” LLC “Novoodeiskyi Elevator,” LLC “MTR Management Ukraine,” LLC “Shelter Investment,” LLC “Konstanta Invest” (in mid-2016 the firm was re-registered to the company “Rulingen Invest Ltd”), AMC “Etalon Asset Management,” LLC “Tovarystvo Vydubychi,” LLC “IA ‘Vilna Ukraina’,” PJSC “MLL West Kyiv,” PJSC “Naberezhna-Invest,” PJSC “Torhrichtrans”.