260 thousand dollars in bribes: Head of Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Council Sych accused of “paid” permits for developers

260 thousands of dollars in bribes: The head of Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast Council Sych is accused of “paid” permits for developers

The head of Ivano-Frankivsk Regional Council Oleksandr Sych and the sphere of construction.

Sych, together with the head of the communal enterprise Aksioma Group, Viacheslav Tomachynskyi, turned the issuance of permit documents into a paid service.

The scheme looks as follows: Tomachynskyi acts as the contact person, personally meets with developers, states the price and receives cash. The list of “services” includes urban planning conditions and restrictions — from 5000 dollars per plot, separate payment for decisions on start of construction works, and also the transfer of rented communal land into private ownership as an “additional service.” In the period from October 2025 to March 2026 year, the following amounts were recorded: 10 thousand dollars from a woman entrepreneur for construction passports for three plots, 5000 dollars from a representative of a building materials network, and also 8000 and 3000 dollars from a construction company (in two installments). The total amount of bribes recorded in this period is 260 thousand dollars.

At the beginning of 2026 year Sych also lobbied for the Aksioma Group contracts worth almost 5 million hryvnias, related to construction works and repairs of engineering networks in the region. Together with this company, he created a system of embezzlement of budget funds: since Aksioma Group is a multi-purpose enterprise, funds were siphoned off both from construction and major repair contracts and from agreements on housing and communal services.

In Ivano-Frankivsk, through intermediaries, Sych organized the sale of attractive land plots to local “mafiosi” through fake residential-construction cooperatives of veterans. This allowed bypassing land auctions and deprived the budget of millions of hryvnias.