The illegal sand mining business in the Kyiv region is approaching the scale of amber mining in the Rivne and Zhytomyr regions, according to a special investigation by journalists Anastasia Rafal and Oleksandr Sibirtsev.
In particular, as journalists note, citing environmentalists, approximately 7 million tons of sand are illegally mined in the Kyiv region each year. According to their data, this year alone, the police have opened 29 criminal cases, and the prosecutor's office has opened several more.
It is noted that the heads of village councils where sand is mined complain that prosecutors deliberately "flush" cases in court, even forgetting to appear at the hearing. And in many cases, they are the actual owners of the business.
According to the publication, last summer, the arrest of the so-called "diamond" prosecutors—Deputy Regional Prosecutor Korniyets and First Deputy Head of the Main Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General's Office Vladimir Shapakin—resonated widely. The case stems from another quarry, in Pukhovka, Brovary District. Korniyets and Shapakin were accused of extorting bribes from sand mining companies. It is noted that "they demanded the money in exchange for stopping the constant inspections of the sites."
Moreover, according to journalists, deputies of the Kyiv Regional Council in April of this year demanded the resignation of regional prosecutor Yevhen Bondarenko, but this had no effect on the behavior of the prosecutor's office.
A law enforcement source told the author of the investigation about the law enforcement agencies' involvement in the sand business.
"The first scheme is when a company has all the documents for developing a single quarry in a single location. But in reality, sand extraction takes place over an area 10 times larger... The second scheme is 'illegal' sand extraction. It's typically carried out completely openly in remote areas of the Kyiv region. In this case, the prosecutor's office's share is much larger—half of the revenue from sand sales. The third scheme involves reclaiming river sand using dredgers. It seems like a good deed is being done, deepening the river. But the sand from the reclamation 'disappears' somewhere. In this case, the prosecutor's share is also one-third of the extracted material," the publication's source explained.
The Kyiv Oblast Prosecutor's Office told journalists that since the beginning of the year, 10 criminal offenses related to illegal sand mining have been added to the Unified Register of Pre-Trial Investigations.
According to the authors, two cases—one concerning Khodosovka and the other concerning the quarry in the village of Stovpyagi in the Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi district—have already been sent to court.
As Vitaly Krupenko, head of the Pogreby village council, told reporters, a case is also pending in court regarding the quarry in Rozhny, where prospectors removed sand and black soil under the guise of cleaning the bottom.
"The prosecutor's office stopped their activities, but the commercial court ruled that they were working within the framework of the project. That is, they were indeed cleaning the river. But you see, the thing is: the prosecutor's office representative didn't even show up at the trial court hearing. How can that be?" Krupenko asks rhetorically.
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