The capital will begin punishing lobbyists who abuse the powers of city council members for personal gain or to further their business interests.
The Kyiv City Council's Commission on Law Enforcement, Law and Order, and Corruption Prevention will begin filing complaints against lobbyists with the prosecutor's office and the Kyiv City State Administration's Department for Corruption Prevention and Combating. Officials face no serious penalties. The fines they face are paltry – between 200 and 400 non-taxable minimum incomes (i.e., between 3,4 and 6,8 UAH). "But the main thing is to implement a mechanism for accountability for deputies concealing conflicts of interest. In fact, such cases abound. For example, the Kyiv City Council includes many representatives of municipal enterprises. Nevertheless, during the vote to approve the capital's budget for this year, not a single one of them declared a conflict of interest or abstained from voting, even though the budget allocates funds, including to their municipal enterprises. People need to learn to declare this and avoid participating in votes and discussions on such issues," believes Andriy Osadchuk, Secretary of the Kyiv City Council's Commission on Corruption Prevention. DS investigated which deputies might be targeted by anti-corruption fighters in the near future.
Yuri Zubko
The first Kyiv City Council member to be fined for abuse of office is Yuriy Zubko, a member of the City Council's Committee on Urban Development, Architecture, and Land Use. As the managing director of Kyivmiskbud Holding Company, he failed to declare a conflict of interest when the council voted to exempt the company from paying UAH 10 million in share participation fees. Furthermore, according to the Kyiv City Council's Anti-Corruption Commission, Zubko even actively lobbied his fellow council members to support the measure. Thus, the document, which initially failed to secure the required number of votes, has now been passed for the second time.
Vyacheslav Nepop
Evil tongues claim that the deputy is from the land commission Vyacheslav Nepop He lobbies for another construction company in the Kyiv City Council. He has headed the municipal enterprise for residential construction, Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, since 2002. This company, unlike other construction market participants, typically has no problem obtaining a discount on its share participation fees for city infrastructure development. Meanwhile, most developers are forced to repeatedly approach the Kyiv City Council with this request and are still denied. At best, they are asked to undergo additional inspections, which is extremely rare for Zhitloinvestbud-UKB. However, scandals at this company's projects are no less common than those of private developers.
Alexander Brodsky
Oleksandr Brodsky, head of the Kyiv City Council's Committee on Trade, Entrepreneurship, and Regulatory Policy, can also be considered a lobbyist. He has long been credited with managing a network of small architectural forms (MAFs) in Kyiv's underground passages (he allegedly controls them through the firms "Torgova Rada," "Max-Torg 2011," and "Mister Klin"). Brodsky, however, is not shy about defending the interests of kiosk owners and other retail outlets in the city. At the Kyiv City Council plenary session on April 21, the deputy proposed postponing the recently enacted ban on alcohol sales in the city's small architectural forms until early 2017. He claimed that this unexpected restriction "robs" entrepreneurs who have purchased licenses to sell alcohol. The draft resolution was proposed to be added to the meeting agenda as an urgent matter. However, the City Council members rejected this proposal and promised to consider the issue at the next meeting, which will take place after the May holidays.
Oleg Kostyushko
Oleh Kostyushko, a member of the Committee on Housing, Utilities, and Fuel and Energy, is said to be a co-owner of the waste removal company Kramar Recycling. This company frequently wins municipal waste removal tenders, rumoured to have some help from its shareholder. Last year and this year, it received orders worth almost a million from the Kyivpastrans municipal enterprise. It was also reported that in the summer of 2014, Kramar Recycling LLC received an order from Kyiv's district education departments for 834 hryvnias. Local forums in the Otradny microdistrict, where Kostyushko ran for the Kyiv City Council, reported that local housing offices were pushing Kramar Recycling's services on private sector residents. Furthermore, at meetings of the Committee on Housing and Utilities, Kostyushko repeatedly raised the issue of waste removal companies allegedly charging too little for their services. To avoid raising utility rates for the population, Kosciuszko proposed compensating waste removal companies for part of their fuel costs, which had skyrocketed.
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!