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 Oblast Council Oleksandr Sych and the construction sphere.

Sych, together with the head of the communal enterprise “Aksyoma Group” Vyacheslav Tomachynskyi, turned the issuance of permitting documents into a paid service.

The scheme looks as follows: Tomachynskyi acts as the contact person, personally meets with developers, names the price, and receives cash. The list of “services” includes urban planning conditions and restrictions — 5000 dollars per plot, a separate fee for decisions to commence construction works, and also the transfer of rented municipal land into private ownership as an “additional service.” In the period from October 2025 to March 2026 of the year, the following amounts were recorded: 10 thousands of dollars from a female entrepreneur for construction passports for three plots, 5000 dollars from a representative of a building materials network, and 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 “Aksyoma Group” contracts totaling nearly 5 million hryvnias, related to construction works and repair of engineering networks in the region. Together with this company, he created a system of embezzling budget funds: since “Aksyoma Group” is a multi-profile enterprise, funds were siphoned off both from construction and major repair contracts and from housing and communal services contracts.

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