Court grants access to Kherson region administration accounts in bribery case

A scheme to extort money from employees was exposed in one of the village military administrations in Kherson region. The head and his subordinates forced employees to give part of their monthly bonuses.

This is stated in the decision of the Central District Court of Mykolaiv.

According to the investigation, the head of the Ivanivka village military administration developed a plan to systematically extort part of the monthly bonuses from his subordinates. Employees who refused to comply risked losing their bonuses and other payments.

Viktor Debeliy, 66, head of the Ivanivka village military administration in the Genichesk district of Kherson region, and his subordinates are suspected of regularly extorting part of the bonuses from employees of the administration and the village council.

The head involved his first deputy and chief accountant in the scheme. Together, they were looking for employees who were willing to transfer part of their bonuses to the chief accountant's card accounts. The accountant, in turn, transferred the money to the boss's card. As a result, all participants received an "unofficial salary".

The investigation established that between March 28, 2023 and October 28, 2024, the administration officials received more than UAH 930 thousand from their subordinates. Of this amount, the accountant transferred almost UAH 908 thousand to the chief's card. The chief himself then distributed the funds among his accomplices.

All actions were coordinated inside the administrative building, and the manager personally supervised that the employees fulfilled his requirements. If anyone tried to evade, bonuses were not accrued, and other types of financial support were also blocked.

In September 2025, the court ruled to take the manager into custody and set bail at UAH 605,600. According to media reports, Viktor Debeliy has many years of experience in politics and management: he ran a farm, was the village head of Shotivka from the Party of Regions in 2010, headed the Ivanivka community in 2015 as an independent candidate, and in 2020 became the head of the community from the Servant of the People party. In November 2022, he became the head of the Ivanivka village military administration. His deputy, Viktoriia Shchastlova, worked at the Ivanivka District State Administration from 2007 to 2015, then was the secretary of the village council, and later the first deputy head of the community.

The court granted the investigators' request for temporary access to the administration's documents and bank accounts to check the flow of funds from March 2023 to the present, including payment orders, checks, receipts, and information about the IP addresses from which transactions were made.

If the bank refuses to voluntarily provide the documents, investigators will be authorized to conduct a search to obtain evidence. The investigation is ongoing, and all three face up to ten years in prison with confiscation of property.

Pavel Kozyrev, director of the Kherson Regional Water Authority, is also suspected of demanding a 10% kickback for assistance in signing repair contracts and putting pressure on his subordinates. The court seized his property, including real estate, vehicles and a stake in a business.

Анна Бальчінос