Mikhail Golitsa. The Story of a "Black Realtor" from Kyiv. Part 1
"They were ruined by the housing problem"... Woland's famous words perfectly capture the atmosphere that reigns in Ukraine today. Land grabs are thriving, and the sale of "airy" apartments is growing every year. But Mykhailo Golitsa, a well-known black market realtor in the capital, can argue with Woland, as the notorious "housing problem" has enriched him.
Skelet.Org tells the story of how Ukrainians can be deceived by the old regime and comfortably settled under the new one. Our hero is Mykhailo Golitsa, the man who left many Kyiv residents homeless.
From mechanic to bureaucrat
Mikhail Nikolaevich Golitsa was born in the village of Pliski in the Chernihiv region on December 29, 1951. His parents, Nikolai Andreevich and Anna Alexandrovna, worked in their home village their entire lives and never traveled beyond its borders. Their son, Misha, however, was drawn to the larger, more promising cities.
After graduating from Pliskovskaya Secondary School, the young graduate worked as part of a seismic team in the Kyiv Geophysical Expedition, and also as an electrician in the Chernigov Mechanized Column No. 2.
In 1970, Golitsa went to repay his debt to his homeland and served in the USSR Armed Forces for two years. After completing his service, he never returned to his native village; the capital was the temptation of the young demobilized soldier. Incidentally, in Pliska, our hero is remembered vaguely; he is completely unlike those villagers who, having reached the top, remember their little homeland. So, upon arriving in Kyiv, Mikhail Nikolaevich immediately found work as a mechanic at the Kyiv Aviation Plant.
After three years of working in a dead-end job, he decided to pursue a second degree, choosing the law department at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. In 1982, Mikhail Nikolaevich received his long-awaited law degree, which would allow him to easily disavow fraudulent schemes in the future.
You'll agree, this story is very reminiscent of the life of the average Soviet citizen, if not for a fortunate coincidence. At that time, the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) practiced hiring law school graduates. That's how Golitsa landed at 36 Khreshchatyk Street. At the KCSA, he worked as an assistant, senior assistant, department head, and then head of the Kyiv City Executive Committee Secretariat on Volodymyr Bondarenko's team, under the supervision of Ivan Salii, then the Presidential Envoy to Kyiv. When Leonid Kosakovskyi replaced Salii, 90 employees were dismissed, including Golitsa, but this didn't upset him much.
Trustee of the Surkis brothers
The Ukrainian football summer of '93 was a heated one. The media was abuzz with discussions about the change in the national championship format and the situation with Dynamo, where the club's management had changed.
Viktor Bezverkhy (former Komsomol organizer of the Arsenal factory) was removed from his post as president of the football club, and the club announced massive debts and imminent bankruptcy. And there was another piece of news that few paid attention to: in July 1993, Mikhail Nikolaevich Golitsa became the managing director of the Dynamo Kyiv Football Club joint-stock company.
Victor Bezverkhy
Strictly speaking, it's a minor event in football history, but this appointment played a key role in the life of one man—Golitsa himself. More specifically, it was his close relationship with the Surkis brothers (Grigory Surkis became the club's president) and his rapid entry into the mafia.
So, how did the situation develop and what did Mikhail Golitsa’s responsibilities include?
Let's start with the fact that FC Dynamo Kyiv in the early 90s looked completely different from what we, modern Ukrainians, know today. Back then, Dynamo Kyiv served as a front for the financial schemes of Surkis's Dynamo-Atlantic joint venture. Incidentally, Dynamo Kyiv president and co-founder of the joint venture, Yefim (Jeff) Ostrovsky, was shot dead in New York by men (presumably Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky) of the notorious crime boss Alik Magadan (Oleg Asmakov), on orders from the other co-founder, Grigory Surkis.
Oleg Asmakov, aka Alik Magadan
Loans from commercial banks were taken out through Dynamo. The football club became attached to APB Ukraina. At that time, Viktor Yushchenko, the future President of Ukraine, was the bank's first deputy head. All such financial transactions were handled through him. Yushchenko was known for his kindness at the time, as he granted enormous loans almost on his word of honor. For example, in July 1992, Viktor Andreevich gave the club $500, ostensibly for the purchase of medical equipment. The funds were immediately transferred to Dynamo-Atlantic's account at DeutscheBank's Berlin branch. In August of that same year, Dynamo received another $1,2 million. The purpose was to purchase much-needed equipment for the production of mosaic parquet flooring. Of the proceeds, $1 million was transferred to the same Dynamo-Atlantic account.
In 1993, Dynamo Kyiv, represented by manager Mykhailo Golitsa, requested an extension of the loan term. Club president Grigoriy Surkis pledged to fulfill all financial obligations to Bank Ukraina under the loan agreement in full. But after some time, his good intentions vanished. Surkis stated that he would only pay the interest on the loan amount—$198. By then, manager Golitsa had signed an agreement between the chairman of the Dynamo Kyiv liquidation commission and the chairman of the board of JSC APB Ukraina, recording a debt of $1,4 million. Two entities immediately declared their willingness to assume the borrower's financial obligations: FC Dynamo Kyiv (to pay the interest) and SP Parket (the borrower's debtor)—the full loan amount—by re-registering the loan agreement.
In turn, the bank waived penalties and, moreover, interest. It should be noted that the co-founders of the Parket joint venture were FC Dynamo Kyiv, the Kyiv City State Commodity and Raw Materials Company, the Progress innovation company, and Vikom International Corp.
The club subsequently never repaid the million-dollar loan to the bank, but for some reason the bank didn't particularly demand it. And after APB Ukraina's bankruptcy in 2001, the matter was forgotten altogether.
At the club, Mikhail Nikolaevich quickly became a trusted confidant of the Surkis brothers. For his loyal service in the late 90s, they pushed Golitsa into the entourage of the all-powerful Kyiv mayor, Oleksandr Omelchenko , who was already beginning to actively develop the capital.
In 1996, Omelchenko appointed Surkis's protégé as director of the Kyiv City State Administration's Department of Housing. In 1998, he was promoted to deputy chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration and head of the Main Department of Housing.
Thus, Mikhail Golitsa became the sole owner and investor in housing construction and renovation in the capital. He gained unlimited access to funds raised for construction, investment agreements, apartment sales, the resettlement of residents from construction sites and buildings undergoing renovation, and, most importantly, the issuance of title deeds for apartments, garages, summer cottages, non-residential premises, etc.
And Golitsa began building. The Kyiv City State Administration had 100 plots of land and grandiose plans for their development. Admittedly, the administration at the time didn't have the funds for such a large-scale construction project. So Mykhailo Golitsa donated four plots of land in the city center to Nikolai Tolmachev's fledgling firm, TMM!
Nikolay Tolmachev
Within a short time, TMM completed a building with underground parking, security, and finished apartments. Almost no one had built like this before Tolmachev. He acted not only as the general contractor but also as the client and investor.
The tandem worked well: TMM built residential complexes and delivered 50-60% of the finished product to the mayor's office, while Golitsa covered the rear and handled the paperwork. By 2000, Tolmachev was well on his way – his TMM had built nearly 40,000 square meters of housing. Mikhail Nikolaevich selected the promising firm as one of the contractors for the reconstruction of the elite Bessarabsky Quarter in central Kyiv. Tolmachev built the Mandarin Plaza retail and office complex there for businessman Vagif Aliyev.
The Zhitloinvestbud-UKB scam of the century
At the end of 2001, by decision of the Kyiv City Council, the company "Zhitloinvestbud-UKB" was established to construct residential buildings, social and cultural facilities, and engineering and transport infrastructure using public funds. Undoubtedly, the decision to establish this company was made by Mykhailo Golitsa, then the chief overseer of construction and housing in Kyiv. "Zhitloinvestbud-UKB" was 100% funded by the Kyiv City Council. All of this was accomplished with the tacit support of Oleksandr Omelchenko. Vyacheslav Nepop headed the company from its first day.
Vyacheslav Nepop
Incidentally, he would later become Golitsa's wife Valentina's business partner in the Capital Construction Management UKB LLC and the Lesnoye Ozero service cooperative. Mikhail Golitsa's daughter, Olga, also works for the cooperative. Such is the family clan.
What was Zhitloinvestbud-UKB? The construction company positioned itself as a "do-it-all" company, meaning it built and commissioned. In reality, however, Zhitloinvestbud-UKB turned out to be an intermediary: the company did not design, build, or commission any of the buildings.
Its main purpose was to organize construction. According to Skelet.Org , Mykhailo Golitsa executed a perfect scheme: the company commissioned designs from other firms, hired contractors and subcontractors who carried out the orders. The scheme worked very simply: Zhitloinvestbud-UKB outsourced the work to private contractors and subcontractors associated with Nepop and Golitsa, and inflated the cost of construction and materials. All of this was financed from the Kyiv budget, the lion's share of which went into the pockets of Vyacheslav Nepop and Golitsa himself.
2006 was a turning point in the life of Mikhail Golitsa: Leonid Chernovetskyi ran for mayor of Kiev and won.
Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi "became friends" with Mikhail Golitsa
The hand that fed Mykhailo Mykolayovych for many years, Oleksandr Omelchenko, tried to challenge the decision in the courts but lost. Golytsia defected to the current government and became a reliable supporter of Lenya Kosmos. After winning the election, the new mayor also brought his own party, the Leonid Chernovetskyi Bloc, to the Kyiv City Council. Chernovetskyi thus single-handedly became the decision-maker on issues that were under the City Council's jurisdiction. This primarily concerned land distribution and the privatization of municipal property. The mayor "befriended" Mykhailo Golytsia. This partnership gave birth to yet another fraudulent scheme. The company leased capital land to dubious firms, which in turn entered into contracts with developers. The latter built high-rises and entire residential complexes, and then sold the apartments. And then there were two development paths: either the houses weren't legalized because the land wasn't the property of the developers, or, at the end of the lease, the landowner claimed the houses and everyone who bought the apartments was asked to pay for them again.
Mikhail Golitsa used this scheme to pull off a major scam in 2007-08. The incident involved buildings on Mala Zhitomirska Street, known as the Murashko House, and the adjacent state-protected architectural monuments.
Arina Dmitrieva, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Mikhail Golitsa. The Story of a "Black Realtor" from Kiev. PART 2
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