Operation “Clean City”: Case on Land Misappropriation in the Capital Sent to Court

Anti-corruption authorities have sent to court a case concerning a criminal organization that, according to the investigation, was controlled by former Kyiv City Council deputy Denys Komarnytskyi, who is currently outside Ukraine and therefore beyond the court’s reach. The case concerns land corruption in the capital and Operation “Clean City.”

KV learned about this from a statement by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).

“NABU and the SAP (Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office — KV) have sent to court a case of a criminal organization that took control of the capital’s land decisions in order to seize valuable plots for development. The scheme was uncovered thanks to the large-scale Operation ‘Clean City.’ The perpetrators used the so-called ‘toilet scheme’ — registering primitive structures on plots to obtain the land outside of competitive procedures, supposedly for servicing those structures.”

According to the investigation, the group included officials of the Kyiv City State Administration and city council deputies: “The head of the criminal organization, a media-known former deputy of the Kyiv City Council, through a wide circle of acquaintances among influential people controlled land and budget decisions, as well as appointments and dismissals of Kyiv City State Administration and Kyiv City Council officials.”

NABU says that over the course of 2023-2024 years “the perpetrators planned to seize land belonging to the territorial community of Kyiv worth more than 70 million hryvnias.”