How to buy elite land in Odesa cheaply and what Trukhanov and Kivalov have to do with it

Last week, members of the Odesa City Council supported draft decisions on the sale of land at 1 Genoese Street in Odesa's Arcadia resort district for less than $200 per square meter.

The Center for Public Investigations found that the land plot was evaluated by a company with a dubious past, and the buyer herself also has an ambiguous background.

The expert monetary valuation of the land plot, according to the draft decision of the Odesa City Council, was carried out by the private enterprise Ukrland. The beneficial owner of the private enterprise is Lyudmyla Popova from Odesa. The main activity is in the field of engineering, geology and geodesy, providing technical consulting services in these areas.

Since 2020, as established by the CPR, law enforcement officers have suspected Ukrland, along with other appraisers, of inflating prices for apartments purchased by the Odesa City Council. The pre-trial investigation established that in 2018, the Capital Construction Department of the Odesa City Council purchased apartments for orphans at prices, according to investigators, higher than the average market value of apartments.

For example, in 2012, FC Renta LLC purchased a 93.6-square-meter apartment for UAH 496,80. In 2015, the company divided this apartment into two apartments of 34.9 square meters and 48.6 square meters. And in 2018, the Department of Capital Construction purchased them for UAH 961,702 and UAH 1,338,338, respectively. Law enforcement officers also found that the appraisers had improperly drawn up the relevant reports, which casts doubt on the prices of the residential real estate.

According to the CPR, the appraiser did not conduct the appraisal of the housing at the request of the Odesa City Council or the Department of Capital Construction, but at the request of the seller. Although the city council had the opportunity and legal grounds to order it itself.

Photo: Natalia Bondarchuk's Facebook page, May 2021

As for the buyer, Natalia Bondarchuk, according to the CPR, she once ran for the Odesa City Council of the VII convocation from the party "Trust the Deeds". And according to journalist Iryna Hryb, she was an assistant to Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov. However, the owner of the land denied this information to the Center for Public Investigations.

"It's a lie, it's a complete lie," she said.

Also, as the CPI found out, Natalia Bondarchuk is the president of the NGO "Research Institute for the Development of Democracy". In July 2019, the NGO, together with the Kyiv Institute for Reform and Development, the National University "Odesa Maritime Academy" and the South Ukrainian Center for Ethnic and Political Studies "Lad", presented a dubious poll with an overstated rating of the leader of the Ukrainian Maritime Party, Serhiy Kivalov. According to their data, Kivalov allegedly gained 49.7%, and the candidate of the Servant of the People party ,Oleksiy Leonov, 14.5%. However, three days later, the election results showed that Leonov had won with 40.21% of the vote against Kivalov's 31.63%.

Speaking to the CPR, Natalia Bondarchuk noted that she did not know Kivalov, and did not remember which polls were conducted by the Research Institute for the Development of Democracy:

"What year is it today? 2024. I don't remember what I ate yesterday, do you know how much information I have?" Bondarchuk said about her ties to Kivalov.

At the same time, she mentioned that the director of the NGO is the former editor-in-chief of the Slovo newspaper. The publication, according to a study by the Pylyp Orlyk Institute for Democracy, was created and is actually run by Kivalov's International Humanitarian University.

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