“The curator doesn’t arouse suspicion”: how Yurii Holyk ended up outside NABU’s case about 1,5 billion for fitness trainer Reznichenko

In 2022, at the height of the full-scale war, the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration paid contractors 2,31 billion UAH, of which 1,5 billion went to a single company, Budinvest Engineering.

Its co-owners were named as Yana Khlanta, a fitness trainer and partner of Regional State Administration head Reznichenko, and Pavlo Chukhno, a manager for the Dubynskyi brothers, who are wanted by the FBI.

According to NABU and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, the major repairs were documented as “operational maintenance” to obtain wartime priority funding and avoid expertise and technical oversight. Examinations showed the cost of materials was inflated by more than 392 million UAH; part of the funds went to firms linked to the accused.

In August this year SAP sent an indictment to court against four people — Reznichenko, his deputy, the head of the roads department, and the head of the contractor.

Holyk, a long-time adviser and partner of Reznichenko, in whose premises NABU conducted searches in December 2022 and in June 2023, is not in the indictment.

Formally, he is a witness.

Prosecutors already pointed the court to the connections between Reznichenko and Holyk at the pretrial measure stage. Media showed that Holyk attended key meetings at the Office of the President and was linked not only to the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, but also to his girlfriend, Dnipro fitness trainer Yana Khlanta, who is registered as owning half of the private company Budinvest Engineering.

They flew abroad together on joint trips from 2019 to 2022 over the years when Holyk, Reznichenko, and Khlanta left Ukraine.

The question for NABU and SAP is simple: have materials about his role been allocated to a separate proceeding, and what stage is that at?