It turns out that the group of mayors of Irpen and Bucha, located near Kyiv, has powerful protection in law enforcement agencies.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center team is trying to stop the plundering of valuable land and forests in Bucha, Kyiv Oblast, by the head of the local city council, Anatoliy Fedoryuk, and his godfather, Volodymyr Karplyuk, the chairman of the Irpen city council.
The Prosecutor General's Office forwarded the activists' appeal to the Kyiv Regional Prosecutor's Office, which then passed it on to the Irpin City Prosecutor's Office. In turn, the Irpin City Deputy Prosecutor forwarded the complaint to the Irpin City Police Department. Fiscal Service officials followed suit, forwarding the complaint to the local police. It's also worth noting that some of the activists' allegations were already part of a criminal investigation, initiated back in 2013. The pre-trial investigation is ongoing.
Let us recall that Karplyuk and Fedoryuk, in collusion, committed a number of fraudulent acts for which criminal liability is provided.
Anatoly Fedoruk (right)
Karplyuk became known to the general public after he declared 67 apartments with a total area of over 7000 square meters. Therefore, the Anti-Corruption Action Center team decided to investigate how the former Party of Regions member obtained such income.
The Center's team collected a wealth of evidence of illegal activity by officials involved in the illegal acquisition of land and forests, followed by the construction of high-rise buildings. We described the mechanism of the officials' illicit enrichment in a petition to the Prosecutor General's Office, which had previously stubbornly ignored any signs of criminality in the actions of Fedoruk and Karplyuk.
Vladimir Karplyuk
It all began with a decision by the Bucha Village Council on June 25, 2002, signed by Fedoruk, which changed the designated use of 890 hectares of forest land. This decision rezoned all land covered by wooded vegetation within the Bucha Village Council as residential and public development land and designated it as a reserve land. However, according to law, the removal of forests over 10 hectares falls within the authority of the Cabinet of Ministers. Furthermore, the mandatory consent of the state forestry agency was not obtained.
Another decision of the Buchanskaya Council, dated April 29, 2004, signed by A.P. Fedoruk, alienated the land plot of the National Agrarian University with an area of 266,6 hectares from state property, although the law clearly states that land plots assigned to state universities cannot be transferred to municipal ownership.
The Center's team established that the aforementioned fraudulent activities were carried out, in particular, with the aim of privatizing land plots to front men and then reselling them to people closely associated with Bucha City Council officials. Specifically, all indications are that A.P. Fedoryuk and his deputy, V.A. Karplyuk, who are godparents, are running a joint business and effectively control the construction of residential complexes in Bucha.
Thus, the founders of Budregioninvest LLC are A.P. Fedoruk's wife, Lyudmila Ivanovna Fedoruk, and V.A. Karplyuk's wife, Larisa Vasilyevna Karplyuk. In 2011, V.A. Karplyuk was the director of Budregioninvest LLC. This developer built the following residential complexes: Novator, Varshavsky Dvor, Rich Town, Semeyny, Poltavsky, Bucha Kvartal, and Tsentralny.
Another developer, Meliorator CJSC, is owned by Vasily Petrovich Yatsyuk (55,65%), A.P. Fedoryuk's uncle, Valentina Ivanovna Yatsyuk (19,77%), and Igor Vasilyevich Yatsyuk (13,6%). This developer built the Pochayevsky residential complex. Zoya Karplyuk, V.A. Karplyuk's mother, is also the founder of Sarafan LLC. In 2012, V.A. Karplyuk was the head of this advertising agency, which, for some reason, was involved in the construction of the Novator residential complex, among other things. The founder of Novator LLC is Vasily Petrovich Yatsyuk, A.P. Fedoryuk's uncle.
The aforementioned companies are actively constructing housing on land plots obtained illegally and exploiting the official position of the head of the local council, A.P. Fedoruk. The scheme is simple. For example, in 2011, the Bucha City Council allocated plots of land to seven front men for private farming. All seven owners of these rather expensive plots then simultaneously transferred the right to manage their land to Oleg Ivanovich Yatsyuk, A.P. Fedoruk's cousin. A.I. Yatsyuk, in turn, through powers of attorney certified by private notary N.P. Matviets, allowed the developer, Budregioninvest LLC (a company registered to the wives of Fedoruk and Karplyuk), to manage the land at its own discretion.
Moreover, according to the Narodnaya Volya website, private notary Matviets N.P. is the wife of Anatoliy Anatolyevich Matviets, former deputy prosecutor of the Kyiv region. In 2007, this prosecutor received a three-room apartment in Bucha as a gift, based on a decision of the Bucha City Council signed by A.P. Fedoruk. As it turns out, this was not a coincidence. Several weeks earlier, A.A. Matviets, responding to a parliamentary inquiry, stated that he saw no violations of land legislation or signs of a crime in A.P. Fedoruk's actions.
Subsequently, Budregioninvest LLC, Karplyuk V.A. and Yatsyuk A.I. entered into an agreement for the construction of housing in the city of Bucha and subsequently became the owners of apartments in the constructed residential complexes.
Moreover, a clear conflict of interest is evident in the allocation of land for the construction of residential complexes. Specifically, the Bucha City Council, under the signature of A.P. Fedoruk, allocated nearly 10 hectares of land to Budregioninvest LLC, owned by A.P. Fedoruk's wife, Lyudmila Ivanovna Fedoruk, and V.A. Karplyuk's wife, Larisa Vasilyevna Karplyuk.
In addition, an agreement for the allocation of 1,43 hectares was concluded between the Bucha City Council, signed by A.P. Fedoruk, and ZAO Meliorator, signed by V.P. Yatsyuk, A.P. Fedoruk's uncle. Subsequently, Meliorator transferred the right to carry out construction to OOO Sarafan, whose director was V.A. Karplyuk.
Media reports also indicate that a person died during the construction of the Novator residential complex due to non-compliance with safety regulations. According to Narodnaya Volya, it was this death during construction that led to the dismissal of V.A. Karplyuk from his position as Deputy Mayor for Economic Affairs in Bucha, a dismissal that was effectively retroactive. In fact, no one was punished for the incident.
Karplyuk currently heads the Irpin City Council. Journalists drew attention to Karplyuk's 2013 income declaration, which indicated he owned 67 apartments. In 2014, according to his new declaration, the number of apartments had decreased to 23. Thus, Karplyuk sold 44 apartments in 2013-2014.
As journalists from the program "Schemes" discovered, the purchase agreement for the apartments indicated a price that was four times lower than the official price. It appears that Karplyuk intentionally understated the official price of the houses to evade taxes. Considering the number of apartments sold, the total amount of uncollected revenue amounts to approximately 880,000 hryvnias.
After the broadcast of the report about Karplyuk and Fedoruk's abuses, several unknown assailants brutally beat Alexander Kulibabchuk, whose wife was helping journalists from the program "Schemes" investigate the activities of the mayor of Irpin. The assailants ambushed Kulibabchuk outside his home in the Delo-Town residential complex in Bucha. The assailants beat him unconscious, according to his wife. He is the chairman of the Delo-Town condominium association and an activist involved in a protracted real estate dispute with the mayor.
The Anti-Corruption Action Center team began contacting law enforcement agencies based on the information they'd gathered. And something interesting began to happen.
She filed a criminal complaint with the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, V.M. Shokin. Evgeniy Mykolayovych Osipchuk, Senior Prosecutor of the First Supervisory Department for Compliance with Laws During Preliminary Investigations and Supporting Public Prosecutions, contrary to the requirements of the Criminal Procedure Code, forwarded the complaint to the Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office. Artem Aleksandrovich Yas, Head of the Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office, ditched the complaint to the Irpin City Prosecutor's Office. Ya.R. Kostov, Deputy Prosecutor of Irpin, forwarded the complaint to the Irpin City Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Kyiv Oblast, which is under Karplyuk's thumb.
I filed a complaint with R.M. Nasirova, Chairperson of the Fiscal Service of Ukraine. V.I. Melnik, Head of the Main Investigative Department for Financial Investigations, forwarded the complaint to the Main Directorate of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine in Kyiv Oblast. A.V. Mishchenko, Head of the First Department of the Investigative Department of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine in Kyiv Oblast, forwarded the complaint to the Irpen Regional Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in Kyiv Oblast.
Regarding certain corruption cases against the former Deputy Prosecutor of the Kyiv Region, A.A. Matviyets, activists filed a complaint with the Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, David Sakvarelidze. Senior Prosecutor of the First Supervisory Department for Compliance with Laws during Preliminary Investigations and Maintaining Public Prosecution, A.A. Kovtunenko, similarly forwarded the complaint to the Kyiv Region Prosecutor's Office. Acting Head of the Investigative Department of the Kyiv Region Prosecutor's Office, O. Zhyla, in a letter dated August 12, 2015, stated that the complaint contained no elements of a crime. Moreover, based on the circumstances described in the complaint of the Investigative Department of the Irpen City Department of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine in the Kyiv Region dated July 3, 2013, the data was entered into the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations under No. 1201310040001940 for signs of criminal offenses under Article. 246 (Illegal logging) and Part 1 of Article 366 (Official forgery) of the Criminal Code, and a pre-trial investigation is currently underway.
With the support of MP Yegor Sobolev, activists appealed to the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine and the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. First Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yury Sevruk forwarded the complaint to the Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office. Can you guess where it will be sent next?
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