Children of Officials: Where Did Omelyan Get the Money for His Son's Education?

Children of officials: where does Omelan get money for his son's education?

In the family of the Minister of Infrastructure, a significant event has taken place. His eldest son, Sevaryn, finished the school he attended and has already “celebrated” the graduation night.

Severin Omelyan studies in Austria, at the elite institution Theresianum - Theresianische Akademie Wien.

This gymnasium was founded 270 years ago by Empress Maria Theresa and named in her honor. Getting into it is incredibly difficult - there are children of Austrian politicians, diplomats, and the creative elite studying there. Foreign students pay a substantial amount for tuition - about half a million hryvnias per year. There is another complication: for the coming year and even for two years ahead, you cannot enroll - there are no spots. The nearest first-grade intake is currently open for 2023 – 2024 academic years. So, applications to the first grade must be submitted at birth.

The question arises: where does the minister get funds for his child's education in such a prestigious foreign institution? In the declaration for 2016 year, the official declared 290 thousand UAH of income — an amount commensurate with the minister's annual salary. It is clear that this is not enough to pay for Theresianum.

Additionally, Omelian somehow managed to buy a Volvo S80 for 149 thousand UAH. In other words, half of his salary has already been spent.

Omelyan himself comments on this issue: he does not pay for his child's education. This financial burden is supposedly entirely on his former wife Solomiya.

It seems clear. But! A curious detail — Austria entered Omelans's life back in 2010 year. At that time, the future Minister of Infrastructure worked as an employee of the Ukrainian embassy in Vienna. The family also moved to Vienna. Ukrainian blogger Dmytro Khmelnitsky claims that Omelyan, leveraging his embassy connections, arranged his wife to work in the UNIDO organization — the UN Industrial Development Organization, which deals with industrial growth in developing countries. In 2012 year, returning to Ukraine and taking a managerial position in the Ministry of Ecology, Omelyan, together with the head of the international cooperation department there, T. Trotsky, lobbied for a signing between the ministry and that same organization — UNIDO — of a project supposed to involve foreign funding. On the Ukrainian side, state guarantees were provided for this project.

“Specifically for this, they regularly flew to Austria with Trotsky. It should be noted that, even after leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Omelyan repeatedly flew to Austria using a diplomatic passport, which, in violation of the law, he did not return to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine,” writes Khmelnitsky.

The mentioned project, which provided funding of approximately 5,7 million euros, was not implemented. Moreover, the procedure for financing and the final recipient of the funds in Ukraine are unknown at the moment. Corresponding documents simply disappeared from the Ministry of Ecology. Just at the same time, Severin Omelyan — the minister’s child — began studying at the elite Austrian gymnasium. A funny coincidence, indeed.

This, however, is old history.

Today, the main person in the Ministry of Infrastructure leads a deliberately modest lifestyle — savings are minimal, income is not large. Moreover, with the help of the media, Omelyan is trying to present himself as a ruthless fighter against corruption. So far, it hasn’t worked very well.

According to Analitik Media, the Ministry of Infrastructure today is one of the most corrupt Ukrainian media outlets.

Currently, Omelyan is named in an investigation conducted by the Interior Ministry and the General Prosecutor’s Office, regarding an attempt to sell tugs of the Odessa seaport to a foreign company at deliberately low prices.

As Antikor reported at the beginning of June, Vladimir Omelyan is connected with a possible corruption scheme related to the sale of Odessa port tugs to a foreign company. About this deal, the police opened a criminal case under Article 191 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code “Infliction of property damage by deception or abuse of trust.”

Even earlier — at the beginning of the year — the whole country witnessed a serious scandal in the Cabinet of Ministers when Ukrzaliznytsia was transferred to the Cabinet, after previously being taken from the Ministry of Infrastructure. Although the transfer of the country’s main railway agency from one “owner” to another was mostly formal, Vladimir Omelyan exploded in anger and openly accused politicians and officials of involvement in corruption schemes on the railway and in the “money trails” around it. The most blame went to the “singing railwayman” Balchun. Omelyan did not forget to accuse the prime minister Groysman — allegedly in his interests at Ukrzaliznytsia. All these “revelations” poured out from pages and screens of various domestic and foreign media.

In just one month, from mid-January to mid-February, Omelyan gave almost fifty interviews with “exposing” rhetoric. Political scientists estimate that such behavior can indicate only one thing: a young minister, being cut off from the “feeding trough,” is forced to attract attention to himself to keep his seat, reputation, and to find new sponsors or “new funding sources.”

The sources, apparently, had not been found for a long time — hence the scheme with the tugs. The minister’s bold move was so audacious that law enforcement could not ignore it. Thus arose the aforementioned criminal case. But whether it will be brought to a logical conclusion and whether the guilty party will be held accountable depends on the level of corruption inside the country’s security sector.

Another vivid episode. The minister single-handedly blocked establishing fair tariffs for freight transportation at Ukrzaliznytsia. He will not sign the order to amend the Tariff Book for freight transportation and the Methodology for calculating tariffs. In practice, this does not eliminate the corruption scheme with Ukrzaliznytsia’s wagons. The price of freighting depends on the so-called wagon component. Private companies set their wagon-component figures based on demand and other factors. This means rental costs for their wagons to intermediary companies form the market. The situation with Ukrzaliznytsia wagons is different: their wagon component is effectively zero. So Ukrzaliznytsia wagons cost intermediaries much cheaper. They successfully use this, driving astronomical profits from the spread. Only the Ministry of Infrastructure, as the regulator of tariff policy, can change the situation.

However, the minister stubbornly refuses to amend the Tariff Book and to make the service provided by Ukrzaliznytsia market-priced. The question is, why?

In this regard, Omelan is suspected of corruption and lobbying, in particular, for the sake of protecting the interests of the minister's godfather and his close friend — the former regional official Maksym Shkyil, owner of LLC “First Logistics Company.”

And finally — perhaps the loudest scandal, which erupted in mid-June. The publication Business Capital published a investigation stating that Vladimir Omelyan is currently establishing connections with U.S. political circles as a potential candidate for the presidency of Ukraine.

That is, our sharpshooter is trying to be everywhere: to earn money on bribes, to place his child advantageously, and to build a political career. But one thing he did not account for: in Ukrainian society, the demand for such “dealers” is already approaching zero. The political future of a official with such a reputation looks far from bright.

Oleh Boyko