Leshchenko Roman Mykolayovych

Minister of Agrarian Policy (December 2020 – March 2022), People's Deputy of the IX convocation from "Servant of the People", Head of the StateGeoCadastre

Born in 1988 in Cherkasy region to a family of farmers. Lawyer (Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv). Since October 2019 — Presidential Representative for Land Issues, since June 2020 — Head of the StateGeoCadastre, since December 2020 — Minister of Agrarian Policy. On March 24, 2022, he resigned without official explanation, one day before the appointment of Solskyi.

Attempted murder due to land schemes, plagiarism in dissertation, $170,000 bribe — personally handed over the perpetrators to NABU

In December 2020, the Acting Head of the StateGeoCadastre Department in Khmelnytskyi region attempted to deliver a $170,000 bribe to Leshchenko for allocating land to proxy persons — Leshchenko had already appealed to NABU in September, and the arrest occurred on International Anti-Corruption Day. In November 2021, the Ministry of Internal Affairs prevented an assassination attempt on the minister; the suspect in organizing the attempt later left Ukraine. Leshchenko stated that threats to him and his family have continued since 2020 due to his fight against land embezzlement. Separately, in December 2020, academic plagiarism was detected in his dissertation — borrowings from the works of Russian scientists.