The presidential channel is sparing no airtime to advertise the young governor of the Kyiv region, Maksym Melnychuk (Read more in the article: Maksym Melnychuk: Who is the new Kyiv region's rich-boy governor?) is also praised on the Kyiv channel as a promising leader, academic, and renowned virologist and biotechnologist. The television is silent about the criminal cases involving the Melnychuk clan, which ruled the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences for 30 years. It doesn't mention the thousands of hectares of land in Foros, Bucha, Vorzel, Irpen, and the Saksky District of Crimea that the state lost as a result of this family rule. Viewers are not supposed to know that Maxim Melnychuk became a millionaire in just one transaction involving the alienation of land from the Frunze Crimean Research Plant.
It's like the old joke: steal a ruble—welcome to prison; rob the country of millions—honor and glory to you. In the worst-case scenario, such a robber could face the same fate as the governor's father, Dmitry Melnychuk. His grandfather wanted to rule the university for life and bequeath it to his sons, but he retired. However, for his youngest son's career, neither his father's honorary pension nor his own disgrace in the Kyiv mayoral election proved a tragedy. On the contrary, they turned into a success! Before the war, Maksym Melnychuk's pocket contained only the wealth of the National University of Economics and Law Enforcement (NUBIIP), but now it's the entire Kyiv region.
In this publication, ORD will tell how the new governor cheats on his declaration, and why he's loathed in the Kyiv Regional Council but appreciated by Poroshenko.
1. The regional council is shocked by the "gene pool of the nation"
The scientist demonstrated his brilliant wit to Kyiv residents in his very first television interview after his appointment, when he declared that the region would be successful thanks to his genes. "The Kyiv region must be number one, and my name (not in the sense of a good one – editor's note) is the key to that—Maxim—from the word 'maximum.' My genes. My wonderful family—true Ukrainians, who gave me excellent genetics, and I will use it for the country," declared the "true Aryan."
The scandal surrounding the Genofund appointment was easy to predict. Just at the end of January, the Kyiv Regional Council approached Petro Poroshenko with a proposal to abandon the practice of appointing governors, replacing it with elections. This was especially true since public demand for transparency in the country's leadership's personnel policy had long been ripe and overripe. And just a few days later, the deputies (along with their constituents) received a slap in the face from the President. Poroshenko not only appointed (according to the regional council, the worst of the worst), but also failed to even invite the deputies to the introduction of Maksym Melnychuk, limiting himself to a staff of regional state administration officials.
The recent mayoral elections provided a glimpse of the true authority of Maximus (as he was nicknamed after his disastrous gene interview). Maxim Dmitrievich received a well-deserved 0.05% of Kyiv residents' support. And this in a metropolis where Melnychuk isn't a parachutist, but one of their own, where he was born and grew to the stature of a "renowned scientist and academician"! To understand the scale of trust, NUBIIP, which the Melnychuk brothers "privatized," has 37,000 undergraduate and 600 graduate students, and candidate Melnychuk garnered a whopping 1500 votes in the election.
Morozets's reception at the building on Lesi Ukrainky Square was bolstered by the resignation of his predecessor, Volodymyr Shandra. He had come to power on the wave of the Maidan protests and suddenly resigned without explanation. However, this resignation may seem mysterious only to ordinary residents of the region, while regional administration officials had long believed that Shandra's first deputy was undermining him (Lev Partskhaladze, the chief Kyiv Poroshenko supporter, is accused of shadowy leadership of the region). Rumors immediately began to circulate that Shandra had been "forced out for intransigence." The real reason for Maximus's secret appointment to the high position was allegedly a conspiracy between landowners and oligarchs, for whom the young academician had long been more than just their boy, but an "errand boy."
2. How the governor cheats with declarations
This is what it means to be born into the right family: the current head of the Kyiv region defended his PhD dissertation at 24, received a doctorate in biology and the title of professor at 33, and became an academician of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences at 40. However, the salaries of leading figures in national science force him to eke out a rather miserable existence. How did Maksym Dmitrievich manage to accumulate almost 13 million hryvnias in his bank accounts?
"To sell something you don't need, you first have to buy something you don't need"—remember that cartoon saying? The lion's share of the Kyiv governor's income comes from selling "unnecessary real estate."
Interestingly, Melnychuk's income declaration only appeared on the Kyiv Regional Administration website recently. Although Maksym Dmitrievich had already reported his 2015 income in January, preparing for his governorship, the declaration that the Kyiv regional governor finally decided to make public appeared later, and it differs significantly.
We got hold of both and compared them.
So, here's declaration No. 1, dated January 26, 2016. In it, Maksym Dmytrovych Melnychuk, Vice President of the Agrarian Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, reported income of 2,387,000 hryvnias for 2015. Of this, 1,797,300 hryvnias came from the sale of real estate. The story remains silent on how Melnychuk acquired so much excess real estate. But even after selling his "excess," he still has quite a bit left: a 515-square-meter mansion, a 241-square-meter apartment, and a garage. His wife also owns a 356,2-square-meter home and a 45-meter summer house. This wealth also includes half a hectare of land privately owned by Maksym Dmytrovych and another nearly 3 hectares owned by his wife.
Another 350,800 hryvnias were paid in dividends. Meanwhile, the salaries of Ukrainian academics are so low that they barely have time to splurge – 13,000 hryvnias per month (or 159,248,000 hryvnias per year). His research and teaching activities earned the genius 79,600 hryvnias per year.
Maximus's personal property includes a 2008 Volkswagen Transporter and two boat trailers. His wife owns a 2007 Lexus RX350, a motorboat, and an ATV.
The governor's wife, along with her mother, sews tablecloths and curtains—and, according to the family's asset declaration, this is the family's only business. Considering the governor's wife's annual salary is the minimum wage of 22,4 hryvnias, and her total annual income is 334,8 hryvnias, suspicions arise that the governor's wife is concealing income. Firstly, she spends more than her salary and a significant portion of her total income on maintaining her property. Secondly, as journalists from "No Corruption!" uncovered, Alina Melnychuk's firm, Kalina, frequently receives lucrative contracts from government officials—in 2010-2011 alone, it sewed 3,73 million hryvnias worth of fabrics for the Administrative Department of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
Maksym Melnychuk's Declaration No. 2, although recently made public (and not before April 1, as required by law!), is dated February 4, 2016. And lo and behold – 859 hryvnias disappeared from it in just a few days!
The same plots of land, cars, and real estate are listed here, but the declarant has forgotten his salary... According to this declaration, his monthly salary in 2015 was 8679 hryvnias, not the 13,000 hryvnias he previously stated. In total, Maksym Dmitrievich received 104,156.77 hryvnias in salary for the year (it's easy to be off by 50,000 hryvnias if you don't live on your salary).
Even worse is the forgetfulness regarding the profit from the supposedly sold property. In the falsified declaration, the income from the alienation of property now amounts to 993310 hryvnias—that is, almost half the amount in the declaration filed just a few days earlier. Income from teaching and research has also decreased—by more than three times! It turns out that the former rector's son earned only 24,400 hryvnias at NUBIP for the year. However, financial assistance in the amount of 55,210,000 hryvnias (apparently for someone in need) was suddenly discovered.
Wanting to take a peek at the repository of the "nation's gene pool," we headed to the village of Gatnoye, where, according to the public real estate registry, Maxim Dmitrievich owns an estate. Solnechnaya Street looks wonderful, but we couldn't find the governor's residence there. However, the family seat is there: the governor's parents live in the three-story building at No. 11, and the estate across the street (a four-story palace with a swimming pool) is occupied by his older brother, Sergei Melnichuk (director of one of NUBIP's educational and research institutes).
This is what the homes of the governor's brother and father in a village near Kyiv look like:
It's worth noting that, according to the same open real estate property registry, Maksym Dmitrievich owns half a house with an area of 90 square meters in the Poltava region. However, the governor refuses to acknowledge the location of the rest of the property listed in his declaration. Likely in Austria and America, as well-wishers ascribe to him.
In an interview with Channel 5, the head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration claims he lives in a modest house in Petropavlivska Borshahivka and never lies. However, in this case, it's unclear which of the two declarations is fake and which one he wrote is true, as both contain a signature certifying the accuracy of the information provided.
3. Where do the millions come from? Or: genes didn't fail.
The peculiarity of NUBI is that the university owned (and still owns) a significant number of property complexes and land plots, giving its leadership virtually unlimited scope for "communization" in Kyiv, Crimea, and the Kyiv region. To his subordinates at the university, the former rector justified the pressure exerted on him by the "powers that be"—either by cutting off a "piece" for cottages for Cabinet of Ministers employees, or by sharing a forest with the capital's "belly" governor, or by ceding a lucrative poultry farm to fellow party members in Crimea.
At an academic council meeting, Rector Melnychuk complained that Tatyana Zasukha had come to him for land. He allegedly began explaining to her that students couldn't travel to the Chernihiv region for classes, saying it was more convenient for them to study on the outskirts of the capital. The wife of the then-governor of the Kyiv region responded, "If you don't give it to me, you'll regret it."
But the former rector had no reason to feel sorry. Every time, pressure proved a convenient tool for Dmitry Alekseevich: both the "powers that be" were pleased, and he himself was not offended.
Here are just a few episodes of university activity that influenced the growth of the Melnychuk family’s well-being:
2006 – the academic council allocates 10 hectares in the Chernechy forest for development.
2010 - an audit of business activities reveals losses amounting to hundreds of millions, although the facts described suggest more (the loss of 1000 hectares of Crimean vineyards is worth something).
2013 – 200 hectares of land located in the forest near Boyarka are being developed; on the eve of another inspection of forest management, someone sets fire to the university's administrative building.
2014: The Academic Council donates 120 hectares of the Vorzel scientific farm to Bucha developers.
In addition to the illegal alienation of university-owned (read: state-owned) land, we must add the sale of university laboratory products at reduced prices, the theft of products, and salary fraud for "dead souls" (an example is the department headed by the former rector's wife: it had a hundred employees listed, but actually worked 10 times less, but received the salary of ten).
In the summer of 2014, Ukrainian media trumpeted that Yatsenyuk's Cabinet would fail the corruption test if it succumbed to blackmail from Maksym Melnychuk. Melnychuk, in the spirit of the Party of Regions, herded students and faculty like sheep to picket the Cabinet of Ministers, demanding that his father remain in office for another seven years. But the government passed the test. Some even dreamed that the new government would break the old system, but no investigation into the abuses took place. Although the Melnychuk family mafia inflicted billions of hryvnias of losses on the state, Poroshenko merely paused...
4. "The Mafia is Immortal" - the parent retired, the son took over
Why did the President need a regional governor like Maksym Melnychuk? In response to this question, the Kyiv Regional State Administration quoted Mark Twain: "Buy land, they don't make it anymore." They argued that as a contractor for the plundering of state property, a person with such genetic experience is simply irreplaceable.
Participants in a roundtable discussion on forest protection held at the Kyiv Regional Council on April 19 also had their own theory. Many believe the family clan has not lost its influence over the university, which owns forest reserves. And with Maksym Dmitrievich's ascension to the governor's post, this influence has become dangerous.
Former employees of the Boyarsk Research Station at the National University of Law Enforcement and Institutions (NUBLEP) told ORD that only a few researchers remain on staff at this university division, while an entire army of loggers is at work. Logging continues on the grounds of the Boyarsk Experimental Station (17 hectares) under the Melnychuks' protection. And the current rector of the University of Law Enforcement and Institutions, Stanislav Nikolaenko, has made it clear to environmentalists that he is powerless to stop this rampage.
"The university was given these lands for education, but it's undergoing certification to sell timber abroad! Construction was underway in the forests during Dmitry Melnichuk's tenure as rector, and it's still ongoing," environmentalist Alexey Vasilyuk complains.
The commercial acumen of the old university staff would be the envy of any lumberjack: timber production under the guise of sanitary felling, deliberate arson—these are the latest trends in "scientific thought." Here you have tax-free roundwood harvesting, and forest destruction by allocating the most lucrative plots for development to "respected individuals"...
Activists captured the results of the barbarity using aerial photography:
Forests are being cut down at such a rate that in a year or two Kyiv could be left without its green lungs: 340 thousand cubic meters of excellent timber were harvested at the university in 2015!
"Last year alone, 1100 hectares were cleared, and this year they plan to clear 60 percent more," regional council deputy Yuriy Openko says, citing alarming figures.
Environmentalists have concluded that the plunder of natural resources in the Kyiv-Svyatoshinsky district of the Kyiv region can only be stopped in one way: by taking the forests from the National Forest Protection Agency (NUBIP) and incorporating them into a national park.
5. Omnivorousness is the key to success. Or: why the President chose Melnychuk
The governor's political tastes deserve a separate chapter. They can be summed up in one word: omnivorous. Maksym Dmitrievich has been linked to many people... In his youth, he served as an aide to Ivan Kyrylenko, a BYuT member, and Valeriy Samoplavsky, a member of the For a United Ukraine faction. Under Kuchma, both served as deputy prime ministers of agriculture, and the former also ran the Ministry of Forestry.
During Yanukovych's reign, Maksym Dmytrovych served as deputy to the fugitive Minister of Agrarian Policy, Mykola Prysyazhnyuk (who is now set to be tried in absentia for embezzling funds from the Agrarian Fund), and his father was friends with the Klyuyev brothers. In Yatsenyuk's Cabinet, the Melnychuks' interests were lobbied for by Svoboda minister Ihor Shvaika. The new head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration is believed to be backed by Vadym Stolar, a member of the Party of Regions (recently profiled by ORD), and agricultural oligarch Yuriy Kosyuk, who allegedly personally approved his candidacy, arguing that he, unlike Shandra, wouldn't argue or cause trouble.
Unquestioning obedience is the most important virtue in terms of inheriting Leonid Kuchma's presidential tradition. Mr. Dmytro Melnychuk, for his talent for stealing and sharing, was awarded the title Hero of Ukraine by Kuchma (not to mention Roman Shukhevych). By distributing hundreds of hectares of forest land to Mykola Azarov's cronies, Dmytro Oleksiyovych secured a position for his son in Azarov's Cabinet of Ministers. It's no surprise that Poroshenko, too, recognized Maximus's potential as an outstanding courtier and bestowed upon him the governorship.
As for public expectations regarding expanded community powers and decentralization, Ukraine is currently moving in the opposite direction. The president is tightening the power vertical with the help of tame deputies, whose primary job is to ensure the proper conduct of elections and, secondarily, to enrich their master (the one who appointed them). And problems with the origins of capital are rather a plus (skeletons in the closet protect against capriciousness). By relying on such people, Petro Oleksiyovych continues to concentrate power in his own hands, promising the people new horizons of "beautification."
On the topic: Maksym Melnychuk. Who is the new rich kid governor of Kyiv Oblast?
Tatyana Zarovnaya, ORD
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, Facebook , Twitter , VK - Only new faces from the SKLEP section!