Anti-Corruption Court closes case of former head of Odesa regional police Golovin

The High Anti-Corruption Court has closed the criminal proceedings against Dmytro Holovin, the former head of the Main Department of the National Police in Odesa Oblast and the lawyer of his former first deputy.

This was reported by the court's press service.

The criminal proceedings were closed due to their release from criminal liability. The Anti-Corruption Court also canceled the seizures of property imposed by the rulings of the investigating judges of the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv and the High Anti-Corruption Court.

This case was submitted to the Anti-Corruption Court in August 2021. The defendants included four people: two former National Police officials and two heads of private companies. Initially, their actions were classified as misappropriation of property on a particularly large scale committed by an organized group.

However, on December 15, 2025, the prosecutor of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office decided to change the charge against the former police officials to negligence. Since this crime is a minor one, the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution expired in 2023.

What were the initial charges?

According to the investigation, in November 2017, law enforcement officers conducted a search at the Odesa Commercial Sea Port, where they found 3.6 million packs of cigarettes intended for transit. After the seizure, the cigarettes were stored in a warehouse in Odesa, which allowed them to enter Ukraine without proper customs clearance.

The investigation claims that it was planned to draw up a fictitious act of destruction of the goods and sell the cigarettes in Ukraine via the Internet or ship them to Europe. However, in 2018, the Prosecutor General's Office transferred the case to the Odesa Police, but instead of the Investigation Department of the Main Department of the National Police in Odesa Oblast, the case was transferred to another unit.

According to prosecutors, the former head of the Main Department of the National Police in Odesa Oblast, Dmytro Holovin, together with his deputy Kostiantyn Heiko, developed a new plan to misappropriate the seized cigarettes. The conspiracy involved local businessman Oleksandr Chudakov and a number of other unidentified individuals. According to the plan, the cigarettes were to be transferred for storage to an enterprise controlled by Chudakov. This company was Agat-2016 LLC, where Valeriy Kapitanchuk was listed as the head. The latter is currently hiding abroad, but he has been notified of suspicion in absentia, and the High Anti-Corruption Court allowed the investigation to be conducted in absentia.

Golovin 's deputy signed an agreement with Agat-2016 LLC for the storage of material evidence. Meanwhile, Golovin ordered his subordinates to transport the seized cigarettes to the warehouse of this company. To execute the plan, he provided the investigators with Chudakov's contact number, introducing him as an employee of the Security Service of Ukraine who was to control the transportation of the goods. In September 2018, the cigarettes disappeared from the warehouse. Some of them were sold online, and the rest were shipped to Europe.

Subsequently, the owner of Agat-2016 LLC changed. According to official documents, the company was sold for UAH 1.5 million, but in fact the new owner, Gennadiy Prokhorov, purchased it for only $100. According to the investigation, the implementation of this scheme caused losses to the owners of the seized cigarettes in the amount of over UAH 13.46 million.

Кирило Бойко