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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
“I know a lot of people”: how friends and relatives of the former secretary of state received tens of millions from a state enterprise
Should a taxpayer be alarmed when an advisor to a state enterprise works “for free”? After all, such philanthropy can sometimes conceal business interests connected to public procurement. The StopKor editorial team drew attention to an investigation by colleagues from the Spilno project, which concerns former Secretary of State of the Ministry of Information Policy Artem Bidenko and his long-time business partner Andriy Rudenko.
As Spilno writes, in September 2025 the IT company that journalists say was co-owned by Andriy Rudenko until 2018 won a tender from the state agency PlayCity for an online gambling monitoring system for 25,9 million UAH. The authors of the Spilno piece expressed doubt that rejecting the cheapest competitor’s offer (19,9 million UAH) was justified, and also suggested possible influence through Bidenko’s network.
To understand why this story raised questions for journalists, it’s worth rewinding a bit and examining the histories of Bidenko and Rudenko.
Artem Bidenko was deputy minister in 2015–2020 and later served as secretary of state of the Ministry of Information Policy. His activities in those positions are the subject of the NGL.media investigation “The Bidenko Case.”
After his dismissal, he wrote on his own blog on the Ukrainska Pravda site that he became an external consultant to the state enterprise Multimedia Platform for Ukraine’s International Broadcasting (MPIU) — without a salary and without a staff position.
According to NGL.media, Andriy Rudenko is a close friend and business partner of Bidenko. He heads the neuromarketing research direction at the NGO Institute of Information Security, of which Bidenko is a co-founder, and together with Elina Vysokovska owns the advertising agency Prana, which Bidenko left some time ago.
NGL.media calculated that in just under three years companies and entrepreneurs connected to Bidenko by family or friendship ties received over 70,5 million UAH from the Ministry of Culture, of which nearly 51 million UAH came from MPIU.
The largest share went to LLC Light Communication, founded by Bidenko’s father-in-law Vitaliy Shapovalenko, a former deputy minister of housing and communal services in the Azarov government.
According to YouControl, the company signed contracts with Ministry of Culture enterprises for 47,7 million UAH, and since August 2021, NGL.media reports, it received orders exclusively from MPIU.
Dozorro analysts already in 2021 tried to find out what the state paid the company 9,8 million UAH for on a documentary project for Independence Day, when the clips averaged only about a hundred views.
Nevertheless, that did not prevent Light Communication from receiving three series from MPIU in July 2023 — “Homo amans,” “Contains Sensitive Material,” and the drama “One and a Half Percent.”
It is known that the platform The Gaze was developed by an IT contractor previously affiliated with Rudenko. As Prozorro data show, on 29 December 2022 MPIU signed an agreement with that contractor for 12,56 million UAH, reduced the amount by 2,5 million a few hours later, received a report of work completion the same day, and on 30 December paid over 10 million UAH. The company’s head told NGL.media that work had started before the tender — “at their own risk.”
A separate episode involves an EEG headset for neuromarketing, research that Bidenko himself says he promoted. Entrepreneur Roman Peresunko, who received 2,2 million UAH from MPIU to promote The Gaze in the UK, rented the headset from Bidenko. Neither Peresunko nor Bidenko were able to provide NGL.media journalists with proof that the UK audience research actually took place.
In an interview with Detector Media, Bidenko called the NGL.media investigation’s headline “clickbait,” said that the actual amount received was 54,5 million UAH rather than 70,5 million UAH, and said he saw no conflict of interest: all contracts were awarded after his dismissal, and at the Ministry of Culture he was, in his words, a persona non grata.
According to NGL.media, within a year The Gaze signed contracts worth 90,8 million UAH, and its site was visited by about 16,6 thousand unique users per month.
Bidenko distanced himself from the project and since 2025 has headed a publishing association, emphasizing that the crisis in the book industry cannot be overcome without state intervention.
Can an informal consultant who bears no official responsibilities influence the decisions of a state enterprise that pays money to his relatives and friends? And isn’t it time for anti-corruption agencies to answer these questions? We will continue to follow this story.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Радник без зарплати, друзі з підрядами: що відомо про бізнес-мережу Артема Біденка і Андрія Руденка?". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: StopKor.
