Billionaire Volunteer: How the “Gray Cardinal” of the “Great Construction” Yurii Holyk Fled Abroad from NABU

After a string of high-profile scandals and criminal cases related to the president's program “Great Construction,” in which its curator from the presidential administration, Yuriy Holyk, figured, he suddenly disappeared not only from the information space but also from the country.

The most interesting thing in this story is not how much Yuriy Holyk stole or with whom he shared it, but where and how he disappeared. Although the criminal cases involving Holyk are not closed, his whereabouts are reliably unknown to anyone—not to law enforcement, nor to investigative journalists. This leads to various theories—from Holyk being hidden from NABU so detectives wouldn’t reach key OPU figures, to Holyk no longer being alive and thus unable to tell anyone about the schemes for obvious reasons.

However, the latest version seems somewhat hasty, because Holyk’s traces have been found in several countries—Poland, Israel, Austria—but in any case a specific place of his residence could not be reliably verified. After Yuriy Holyk left Ukraine under the “Shlyakh” program as a volunteer, he disappeared.

Chronicle of the scandals

To understand why Yuriy Holyk came under such danger, it is worth briefly reminding who he is and, in outline, going through the scandals that accompanied his name since the current country leaders came to power in Kyiv.

Yuriy Holyk emerged in the public space in 2019 year as one of the close associates of the Dnipropetrovsk regional governor Valentyn Reznichenko. From there he quickly left and entered the inner circle of President Zelensky first as an advisor to Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk (the latter is remembered mainly for the scooter and the blown-up walls in the Cabinet building), but he quickly reinvented himself as a public figure of the advertised presidential program “Great Construction,” which the people sharply renamed the program “Great Plunder.”

Although Holyk did not hold any official position in this program, his role in it was quickly defined as the “gray cardinal.” Indeed—no tender was won without Holyk’s consent, and the talk was about hundreds of billions of hryvnias. At the same time Holyk managed to take a position as one of Zelensky’s closest advisers on infrastructural projects.

Kyril Tymoshenko, the former Deputy Head of the President’s Office in 2019–2023 years, ensured such a status for Yuriy Holyk. He was considered one of Zelensky’s closest associates and oversaw information policy, regional agenda, and the presidential program “Great Construction.”

It was thanks to Kyril Tymoshenko that Yuriy Holyk could become the “gray cardinal,” who sat at the distribution and subsequent skimming of state funds allocated from the budget for “Great Construction”—according to various data, “kickbacks” reached fantastic 40%. How they were distributed and whose pockets they landed in remains an open question, but Yuriy Holyk was precisely at the point where all this colossal money converged.

To understand the scale—in 2021 year, about 106 billion hryvnias were invested in road construction, and the total state expenditure on roads reached 132 billion hryvnias, including local budgets—about 178 billion. It is not worth reminding about Russian tanks rolling on these roads the following year—these scenes are still fresh for those who survived, Ukrainians. In 2022 was planned even more, but for entirely obvious reasons road repairs had to be abruptly curtailed. Overall the state directed no less than 240–250 billion hryvnias to the program, most of which went to road construction.

After Kyrilo Tymoshenko left the post of Deputy Head of the OPU with a scandal in January 2023 year, the star of the “gray cardinal” Yuriy Holyk dimmed. Although for some time he was unofficially still considered one of the ideologues of the infrastructural policy of the Zelensky era. Despite the lack of an official post, journalists recorded his visits to the President’s Office and speculated about his continued influence on infrastructural processes.

But it was precisely in this period that numerous publications in the press about Holyk’s role in embezzlement on the “Great Construction” began to convert into full-fledged NABU investigations. The most high-profile episode was the Schemes investigation, which established that billions of hryvnias of contracts went to the company Budinwest Inzhynering, which was linked to Yana Kholanto—Valentyn Reznychenko’s close ally. Yuriy Holyk supported close contacts with the scheme’s participants—the journalists described him as one of the coordinators of processes around road contracts.

After this publication NABU, willingly or unwillingly, had to conduct searches in Reznychenko, and searches were also conducted at Yuriy Holyk. This became the first case when Holyk became a direct subject of investigative actions. Soon, Bihus.Info journalists reported that the case materials contained Holyk’s correspondence with representatives of the contractor company that received state contracts worth billions of hryvnias. According to the investigation, issues related to the implementation of road projects and the distribution of money were discussed.

It was precisely during this period that Yuriy Holyk crossed the border of Ukraine as a volunteer. The scandal triggered by this fact also ended in nothing. As for Yuriy Holyk himself, despite numerous episodes of criminal cases in which he figures, apart from regular visits to the Office of the President in 2023 year, his name unexpectedly surfaced in 2025 year as the coordinator of the development of Ukrainian drones STING. This while several years had passed since anyone could find Yuriy Holyk.

So where is Yuriy Holyk after all?

There is no answer to this question. Strangely, given that Holyk continues—at least according to some media reports—to participate in the exploitation of defense funds. How accurate this is is hard to judge. But recall, Holyk participated in the appropriation of funds for “Great Construction” without any official status. That did not stop him in the slightest.

So, to say that Yuriy Holyk has lost influence over Ukraine’s budgetary funds and their redistribution cannot be entirely denied. Although it is clear that he is no longer at the center of the “skimming” of defense money, he is on the periphery, but still involved in at least hundreds of millions of hryvnias.

As for the version that Holyk physically disappeared, it is indirectly challenged by the fact that a few months ago there was a large-scale purge of the internet of compromising materials related to Yuriy Holyk. It is doubtful that anyone else would have done this if the key figure had died.

And Yuriy Holyk himself, no later than 3 July 2026 year, published a photo of a diploma issued in his name by the National University of Ostroh Academy. In connection with this, there arises the assumption that all searches for Yuriy Holyk are an outright farce, and he himself did not go anywhere.

Therefore the attractive but clearly conspiratorial version about removing Yuriy Holyk should still be considered unlikely. Although there are grounds for it—very many at the very top of the ruling elite are interested in silencing him forever. Precedents of such “solution to the issue” have already occurred, everyone understands this. Including Yuriy Holyk. Therefore, most likely, he tries not to “pop up.”