Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Vadym Huttsait, president of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine and former minister of youth and sports, has in recent years appeared in a number of public stories related to government procurements, business in Russia, and the organization of sporting activities. Some of these episodes concern a criminal case regarding the purchase of boats for Kyiv athletes, and others have been the subject of journalistic publications. At the same time, no guilty verdict has been handed down against Vadym Huttsait in connection with these episodes.
One of the most extensively described episodes concerns the period when Vadym Huttsait headed the Department of Youth and Sports of the Kyiv City State Administration. According to court documents cited by Ukrainska Pravda, the investigation examined possible embezzlement of 2,249 million UAH during the purchase of boats for the youth sports school “Regata.” In July 2019 the entrepreneur and coach Oleksandr Yakhniienko was transferred that amount for three German Empacher boats, media report. According to the investigation, the supplier may have been connected to the department’s leadership, and the boats’ price may have been inflated. The case materials included a comparison: the estimated price of one boat was about 600 thousand UAH, while Kyiv allegedly paid about 1 million UAH. Law enforcement also checked the circumstances of the advance payment and possible issuance of tax documents. Huttsait himself denied involvement in any possible violations. Oleksandr Yakhniienko was, meanwhile, a regular participant in sports procurements. According to Clarity Project data cited in a 2020 publication, in 2017–2019 he took part in 25 tenders and won 20 of them for a total of about 12,8 million UAH. The case materials also mentioned deliveries of sporting equipment from Belarus, Italy, and Germany. These facts describe the procurement history but by themselves do not prove the illegality of all concluded contracts.
A separate set of questions about Vadym Huttsait arose because of the Russian company “Altair” in Lobnya, Moscow region. Publications about his declarations and biography noted that among the company’s founders were Vadym Huttsait and Russian fencers Ilgar Mamedov and Stanislav Pozdnyakov. Later Huttsait said he left that business as early as 2014. Independent open sources confirm there are public reports about this connection, but the dating and actual participation of Huttsait in the company at different times require clarification using registration data.
Ilgar Mamedov later headed the Russian national fencing team, and Stanislav Pozdnyakov became president of the Russian Olympic Committee. Connections with them were one reason for the public attention to the Russian episode in Vadym Huttsait’s biography. At the same time, the existence of such a past business connection is not proof that the official took part in any illegal actions.
In March 2020 Huttsait became minister of youth and sports. The Verkhovna Rada appointed him on 4 March. Prior to that he headed the sports department of the Kyiv City State Administration. In November 2022 Huttsait was elected president of the NOC: 123 of 147 delegates voted for him, after which he replaced Serhii Bubka, who had led the organization since 2005.
On 9 November 2023 the parliament dismissed Vadym Huttsait from the post of minister of youth and sports. The decision was supported by 243 deputies, three were against, and seven abstained. The day before, Huttsait had submitted his resignation and said he planned to focus on work at the NOC.
In 2023 some questions arose around purchases of airline tickets for national teams by the Ministry of Sport subsidiary UkrSportZabezpechennia. Journalists compared the prices of the purchased tickets with carrier fares available at the time and pointed to a significant difference. In particular, flights discussed included Frankfurt—Seoul and Warsaw—Funchal with return to Vienna. Those calculations were part of journalistic analysis, not a judicial finding of losses.
That same year the state enterprise “Ice Stadium” announced a procurement to create a National Tennis Center worth over 300 million UAH. Huttsait said he was unaware that the tender had been held and demanded explanations from the enterprise’s management. The procurement was later canceled, officially citing an error as the reason.
Another area of the sports system that Huttsait publicly commented on concerns reserving athletes and coaches from mobilization. In December 2023 the NOC president said some athletes and coaches had already been granted exemptions, but it was not possible to arrange exemptions for everyone. He also said that sports officials had been working on this issue already while he was in the ministry.
Vadym Huttsait is an Olympic fencing champion who won gold at the Barcelona Games in 1992. Before working in government positions he spent many years coaching and led the Ukrainian national fencing team. In 2019 Huttsait was included on the election list of the Servant of the People party at No. 81, but he declined to run. In 2006–2012 he served as a freelance assistant to Member of Parliament Elbrus Tedeyev. In November 2022 Huttsait headed the NOC, and after resigning from the government he continued his work in the Olympic movement.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Вадим Гутцайт: російський бізнес та човни президента НОК України". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Fraza.