Billions for roads, inflated costs and tenders for the right firms: embezzler Yuriy Holyk organized a “feeding trough” in Dnipropetrovsk region

Billions for roads, inflated cost estimates, and tenders awarded to the right firms: embezzler Yuriy Holyk arranged a “feeding trough” in Dnipropetrovsk region

“This is not only about roads. We see that the price of materials and construction work for virtually all infrastructure projects in the Dnipropetrovsk region over the last 4 years has been inflated by one and a half to two times.”

To all requests from deputies in the relevant departments of the regional state administration to provide tender documentation and cost estimates, there is a standard reply sent down from above by Yuriy Holyk stating that this information belongs to the commercial secret of private enterprises. Moreover, based on publicly available information in Prozorro, there are grounds to believe that tenders during the Rezničenko–Holyk era were drafted for specific firms.

“That is why we decided to create a commission with the involvement of an external audit to investigate the activities of the ‘young team’ of Valentyn Rezničenko and Yuriy Yuriyovych Holyk,” — comments Volodymyr Khorishko, a deputy of the Batkivshchyna faction in the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council.

The faction’s statement also notes that during the Rezničenko–Holyk era the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration paid non-market prices for goods and services from certain contractors, as journalists have previously written about. Indeed, the outlet Our Money found that the Dnipropetrovsk OSA purchased asphalt for road repairs in Kryvyi Rih at a price one and a half times higher than in other regions of Ukraine. According to the Prozorro system, for the repair of the road from the Soniachniy microdistrict to Spaskaya Street in Kryvyi Rih, the Department of Housing and Communal Services and Construction of the Dnipropetrovsk OSA purchased asphalt concrete of type “B” brands 1-2 for 3420 hryvnias/ton.

A few years earlier, a similar pavement for a section in Donetsk region was purchased by the local ODA for 2248 hryvnias/ton. The exact same asphalt concrete cost 2333 hryvnias/ton for the State Road Agency in Poltava region. In all cases, the purchase volumes were approximately the same. A draft agenda for the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council session proposed to include a corresponding resolution.

On the day of the dismissal of the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast State Administration, Valentyn Rezničenko, the remaining regional budget funds were a meager 13,4 million hryvnias. Accounts payable for protected items stood at 37,6 million hryvnias. By the end of the year, a “budget gap” of 239,5 million hryvnias was expected. Of 30 billion invested in infrastructure projects and more than 100 billion hryvnias of contractors’ revenues, a large portion was absorbed by entities close to the governor and his adviser. There were also individuals on Interpol wanted lists…”

Now former head of the DODA Valentyn Rezničenko has offered no comment on his resignation. For him, as usual, Yuriy Holyk spoke and wrote on Facebook — a former freelance adviser, a notorious crook and embezzler. On his first day after the boss’s resignation, he announced a flash mob — “200 objects built by us.”

The governor Rezničenko did indeed oversee a great amount of construction. Capital investments, according to Holyk, reached 30 billion hryvnias — an absolute record since Ukraine’s independence.

Meanwhile, there was clear inconsistency in other figures. Thus, in his speech to listeners at the Ukrainian Institute of the Future, Holyk claimed that the development budget of the Dnipropetrovsk region over 4 years grew from 622 million hryvnias to 8,4 billion hryvnias — i.e., almost 20 times. The governor refuted his adviser: according to him, the revenue part of the region’s budget for 2019 year was 18,4 billion hryvnias, and only 3,5 billion hryvnias were planned for development. On 25 June, Yuriy Holyk stated that 16 thousand entrepreneurs from the Dnipropetrovsk region work in the Prozorro system and over 4 years they earned more than 130 billion hryvnias.

Author: Oleh Samson