Vyacheslav Nepop: A "flayer" from Kyiv's construction mafia. Part 1
"Who's going to jail him? He's a monument!"—this catchphrase can be perfectly applied to Vyacheslav Nepop, the longtime director of Kyiv's Zhitloinvestbud municipal enterprise, a living monument to corruption in the capital's construction sector. He has successfully outlived three mayors of the capital and three presidents of Ukraine, and he will likely also outlive Petro Poroshenko , under whose banner he was elected to the Kyiv City Council, and Vitali Klitschko , through whom he carries out his schemes and illegal scams.
For quite a long time, Nepop was a shadowy figure in the capital's hierarchy, virtually unknown outside Kyiv, and even there, known only to voters in the Solomensky district. Nepop's sudden "fame" came after the events of April 2016, when mass clashes erupted in Kyiv between defenders of Duck Lake and "titushki" (illegal thugs) hired by developers. As it later emerged, Nepop was willing to walk over the corpses of not only unfortunate ducks but also those of animals at the Kyiv Zoo, earning him a notorious reputation as a merciless enemy of animals, practically a "slaughterer." So even now, when news reports surface of unknown individuals deliberately poisoning ducks in Kyiv's waterways, many wonder: is Nepop planning to fill in the lakes there as well to make way for development?
Houses turned out to be more cost-effective than planes
Nepop Vyacheslav Ivanovich was born on May 23, 1966, in Artemovsk (now Bakhmut) in the Donetsk region. His father worked at the Artemovsk Ceramics and Pipe Plant as chief mechanic, and his mother was an economist at the Donbassecology Research and Production Association. This is a very curious fact from the biography of the man who is mercilessly destroying this environment today.
Viktor Bilych
After graduating from high school (Artemovsk No. 7), Vyacheslav Nepop enrolled in the Zhukovsky Kharkiv Aviation Institute (KhAI), specializing in aircraft construction, where he studied for six years (until 1989). He didn't explain why it took so long: perhaps he served a year of military service after graduating, or perhaps he took an academic leave. But something else is no less interesting: after being assigned to the Kiev Mechanical Plant (Antonov Aviation Company), where he received a job as a shop mechanic, Nepop immediately began building not aircraft but residential buildings. Unconcerned about the goings-on in his shop, the "young specialist" demonstrated his energy and initiative by immediately taking an active part in the plant's youth housing cooperative (YHC) program. There, he became close with another KhAI graduate, Viktor Bilych (born 1964), who was also interested in housing issues. Thus began their long and mutually beneficial friendship. Incidentally, in 2016, Viktor Bilych, with Nepop's help, became head of the Moscow Bureau of Technical Inventory (BTI), and now heads the city's Employment Center.
Not content with the passive role of a rank-and-file participant, Nepop reached an agreement with the plant's management and became head of the company's construction team, effectively taking control of the construction and becoming involved in the distribution of future apartments. Nepop, like Bilych, was essentially just a registered employee at the plant, spending his time dealing with construction issues. And they achieved great success in this field. Bilych, who had developed numerous useful connections in the capital's construction department and the city executive committee, and who had befriended Alexander Omelchenko, moved to work at the State Property Fund in 1994 (as deputy head of the regional office). Nepop remained employed by the plant until 1998, continuing to milk the company's construction funds. He was assisted in this by Nikolai Tolmachev, another "Donetsk" (originally from Torez) KhAI graduate who had taken up house construction and who, in 1992, arrived in Kyiv with his company, OOO TMM. There, Tolmachev met Nepop and Bilych, who were building their residential complex, becoming the third member of their close-knit team. He became so close to Nepop that in 1998, he invited him to become the director of his TMM.
Nikolay Tolmachev
Around the same time, in the early 90s, Nepop made another friend, a construction worker, perhaps the most important figure in his circle: Mykhailo Golitsa , then deputy head of the Kyiv City Executive Committee's housing department (now the Kyiv City State Administration's Department of Construction and Housing). Interestingly, in 1993-94, Golitsa was the managing director of FC Dynamo Kyiv. It was then that Dynamo Kyiv was instrumental in the multi-million-dollar financial scams of the Surkis brothers , another prominent Kyiv construction company, who secured multi-million-dollar foreign currency loans from the scandalous Bank Ukraina. Therefore, it's safe to say that Golitsa is a trusted confidant of the Surkis brothers, at least in the early 90s. After all, it wasn't just a case of stolen and written-off loans, followed by the sale of the debt-ridden FC Dynamo to the Surkis brothers (in which Golitsa, the club's manager, was directly involved). There was even more serious criminal activity: contract killings of businessmen involved in the scheme, carried out by the American "Russian mafia," controlled by Semyon Mogilevich. You can read more about this in Skelet.Org's article about the other brothers: Vyacheslav and Alexander Konstantinovsky.
Mikhail Golitsa
By the late 90s, Golitsa was already part of Oleksandr Omelchenko's entourage and was appointed director of the Kyiv City State Administration's Department of Housing (it was rumored that the Surkis brothers were involved in this appointment as well). According to information available to Skelet.Org , when Tolmachev appointed Nepop to head his company, TMM, in 1998, Nepop, Viktor Bilych, and Mykhailo Golitsa received shares in the company, which he later transferred to his wife, Valentina Golitsa. She subsequently served as Vyacheslav Nepop's business partner in several companies working with the municipal enterprise Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, of which Nepop has been director since 2002. It should be added that Golitsa's business relatives now also include his daughter Olga and son-in-law Nikolai Negrich , who are also involved in the capital's construction industry and are involved in corruption schemes involving Vyacheslav Nepop, Viktor Bilych, and others.
schemes by Vyacheslav Nepop
Vyacheslav Nepop. At the head of Zhitloinvestbud-UKB
The creation of the municipal enterprise "Zhitloinvestbud-UKB," whose authorized capital is 100% owned by the Kyiv City Council, was approved by its session on December 21, 2001. But who exactly was behind its creation, and what were their goals? Numerous sources claim that one of the "founding fathers" of the enterprise was Mykhailo Golytsia, who headed the Kyiv City State Administration's Department of Construction and Housing from 1998 to 2010. Who stood behind Golytsia (the Surkis brothers, Oleksandr Omelchenko, or other figures from the Kyiv elite) can only be guessed at, as he never revealed his patrons. However, it is known that from 2001 to 2010, Golytsia carried out his schemes through the municipal enterprise "Zhitloinvestbud-UKB," whose general director from the very beginning (since 2002) was, and still is, his old friend and partner, Vyacheslav Nepop. Even when Golitsa was forced out of his post, he was given the reins of the Kyivmiskbud holding company, while Nepop's enterprise, Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, remained an important component of their schemes for embezzling Kyiv real estate and the budget.
schemes by Vyacheslav Nepop
What is Zhitloinvestbud-UKB? On its website, the company positions itself as a construction company: we built, we erected, we delivered, etc. In reality, Zhitloinvestbud-UKB doesn't build anything itself, or even design anything. It's a regular intermediary firm that merely organizes construction. It commissions designs from other companies, hires construction contractors and subcontractors—and pays for it all with funds from the Kyiv budget, the very purpose for which it was created. And just imagine that Vyacheslav Nepop has been sitting on this cash flow for sixteen years!
According to a report by Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, between 2002 and 2016, the company commissioned (not directly, but through contractors) 2,3 million square meters of housing, constructing 180 residential buildings, plus four schools and eight kindergartens, as well as a tram depot in Troyeshchyna, 22 parking garages, and 22 office and entertainment facilities. This is quite a significant amount; Zhitloinvestbud-UKB accounts for approximately 15% of the total housing built in Kyiv during this period by all developers, making it one of the largest. Considering the cost of housing construction alone, billions upon billions of hryvnias passed through Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, and one can only imagine how much of this ended up in the pockets of those involved. The main method of “sawing up” is the transfer of work to private contractors and subcontractors associated with Nepop and Golitsa, as well as inflating the cost of construction and materials.
As Skelet.Org reported , in 2016 alone, and for capital construction alone, Zhitloinvestbud-UKB received about a billion hryvnias from the capital's budget.
But construction isn't the only thing. Zhitloinvestbud-UKB, a typical "office" that hires contractors for construction, spends enormous sums on the salaries of its management and "leading specialists": accountants, lawyers, department heads, and engineers, whose sole job is to approve projects (merely sign off on plans). In 2016, at the height of the country's severe economic crisis, their average salary was 202 hryvnias! Of course, they didn't skimp on it before, during more prosperous years. And all this, we emphasize, comes from Kyiv's budget—that is, the taxes and duties of honest residents of the capital. After all, crooks find hundreds of ways to evade taxes.
Vyacheslav Nepop. Secrets of Immunity
Although Zhitloinvestbud-UKB had been active since 2002, particularly during the construction boom of 2006-2008, it only recently attracted the attention of journalists and law enforcement agencies. Before the second Maidan, its activities were carefully covered up by Nepop's friends and associates in government structures. However, Zhitloinvestbud had already been embroiled in several scandals before.
For example, in the fall of 2013, allegations of corruption and embezzlement in the Taras Shevchenko National Museum reconstruction project came to light. Zhitloinvestbud-UKB was involved in this project, hiring the firms Azur Group, Fundament, and Inbud as contractors. The first two firms were directly involved in Nepop's business schemes. Fundament, founded during Soviet times, was soft-peddled in 2008 from its former owner, Genrikh Shpigel, under the pretext of "saving him from a hostile takeover." Vyacheslav Nepop then became chairman of its supervisory board, and 90% of its shares were distributed among his friends and associates. The co-owners and supervisory board members of Fundament included Viktor Bilych, Nikolai Negrich (Golitsa's son-in-law), as well as Viktor Puzichuk and his son, Valeriy Puzichuk . Nepop controlled his 23% stake through Anzhelika Kovaleva, head of the administrative and personnel department at Zhitloinvestbud. Furthermore, in 2017, information surfaced that Maria Vyacheslavovna Nepop, an economist there, had become one of Fundament's shareholders. Yes, his daughter!
Initially, Fundament was the primary winner of tenders held by Zhitloinvestbud for several years, but then began frequently playing the role of a shell company in "two-bidder tenders," losing them to Azur Group and KZhBK, both controlled by the Puzichuk family. Incidentally, Azur Group is Zhitloinvestbud's contractor for the controversial Utinoe Ozero development.
As for the Inbud company, it belongs to Viktor Notevskiy, a business partner (in the Cials private enterprise) of Leonid Skalozub, the former head of the Department for Combating Economic Crimes of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (oh, the cynicism!), who in 2010 became the head of the security service at FUIB, Rinat Akhmetov's bank. In that same year, Inbud was among the favorites in the Zhitloinvestbud tender—meaning, Akhmetov's people got a share in the schemes of Nepop and his friends and associates. Incidentally, one of the first tenders Inbud received from Nepop was the contract for the construction of the controversial fence around the Verkhovna Rada, which fenced off the parliament in 2011.
In addition to this cover from Akhmetov, Nepop also had the protection of then-Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka , with whom his friend Mykola Tolmachev was closely associated. It's no surprise that no one touched Nepop's company between 2010 and 2013! Even when the State Fiscal Service officially uncovered corruption and abuse amounting to almost 300 hryvnias in just one incident, Nepop got away with it—he remained at the helm of Zhitloinvestbud-UKB.
Vyacheslav Nepop: A "flayer" from Kyiv's construction mafia. Part 1
It's worth emphasizing that close cooperation between Zhitloinvestbud and Inbud continued after the second Maidan. For example, in March 2016, Inbud received a contract from Nepop to build a residential building in the Dniprovskyi district (contract value: UAH 135,32 million). And in June of that year, Inbud won a tender held by Zhitloinvestbud for the restoration of the Kyiv Velodrome (contract value: UAH 74,124 million). Only two firms, Inbud and Fundament, participated in the tender.
Another key to Vyacheslav Nepop's immunity is his wise political choices. From 2002 to 2006, he served as a Kyiv City Council member for Oleksandr Omelchenko's Unity party. At the same time, Nepop served as an assistant to Volodymyr Moysyk, a member of parliament from Our Ukraine. In 2006, Nepop was re-elected to the Kyiv City Council, this time supporting the majority of the new mayor, Leonid Chernovetskyi . In 2008, he became an assistant to Yuriy Serbin, a member of parliament from the BYuT party.
Maksym Lutsky, the scandalous 2012 elections
In 2010, Vyacheslav Nepop began actively supporting MP Maksym Lutskyi ( Dmytro Tabachnyk's godfather ), and even actively assisted him in running for the Solomyansky district in the 2012 parliamentary elections. Lutskyi's election campaign was incredibly dirty (bribery, fraud) and sparked a wave of protests from public organizations and opposition figures.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Vyacheslav Nepop: The "Beastmaster" of Kyiv's Construction Mafia. PART 2
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