Court allows investigator to dig into documents of Odesa MP's company

The Kyiv District Court of Odesa has granted the investigator temporary access to items and documents in the criminal proceedings regarding a possible conspiracy between officials of an Odesa utility company and a limited liability company.

According to the court ruling, the case concerns 13 tenders to select a contractor to restore the road surface after emergency repairs of heating networks in Odesa for a total of UAH 209 million 791.5 thousand.

In addition to the police, the Security Service of Ukraine is involved in the investigation. Investigators suspect that in the period from 2023 to the present, the company, with the support of the management of the utility company, entered false information into official documents and thus took sole participation in public procurement for the provision of services for the improvement of settlements, namely, the restoration of the road surface after emergency repairs of heating networks in the city of Odesa, which it won.

According to the publication "Anti-Corruption Dimension," the municipal enterprise in question is "City Roads," and the LLC is "Rostdorstroy." It was also established that the basis for these procurements was, in particular, the technical conditions for the provision of services for the restoration of asphalt and slab pavement after the repair of heating networks on the balance sheet of the utility.

Rostdorstroy LLC is part of the Rost business group and is registered in Odesa. Since 2016, the company has been headed by Oleksiy Andriushyn, and the ultimate beneficiaries are Yevhen Konovalov and Yuriy Schumacher. The firm has long held almost all major road contracts in Odesa and is also active in other regions.

Earlier, the new Prosecutor General of Ukraine said that the suspicions in the case of another Odesa-based limited liability company, Avtomagistral-Pivden, are legitimate, reasonable and confirmed by the results of forensic examinations. He also said that he had ordered an audit of all criminal proceedings against companies operating in the infrastructure sector.

According to the YouControl service, as of 2021, the sole official owner of Avtomagistral-Pivden LLC is Odesa businessman Oleksandr Boyko. Prior to that, the company was registered with Odesa residents Oleh Nalyvanyi and Valerii Korotkov. However, the media claimed that Avtomagistral-Pivden, like the second major road company from Odesa, Rostdorstroy LLC, is part of the sphere of influence of London resident Alexander Zhukov.

Кирило Бойко