In Mykolaiv, a contract to renovate a high school cafeteria was awarded without a competitive bidding process

The Capital Construction Department of the Mykolaiv City Council conducted a procurement process to select a company to be paid to carry out major repairs on the cafeteria at Mykolaiv Lyceum No. 40.

According to the Center for Public Investigations, the relevant announcement was published on the Prozorro e-procurement system.

The procurement was conducted as an open tender with specific conditions, and the sole participant—and thus the winner—was the limited liability company “Sporuda Development.” According to the YouControl service, the company was registered in 2023 in the Mykolaiv region.

The owner isMykhailo Zhendubaev, whomthe Center for Public Investigationspreviouslymentionedin connection with a May 2025 tender for the reconstruction ofa boiler houseworth 60 million hryvnias. The tender was won by the little-known City-Stars LLC, which was owned by Mykhailo Zhendubaev and his business partner Dmytro Kurbatov—the director of Sporuda Development LLC. 

City-Stars participated in fourgovernment procurement contracts, earning over 46 million hryvnias. In 2023, its total revenue was 2.5 million, and by 2024, it had already exceeded 90 million. There were no criminal cases involving the company.

In the fall of 2023, the Regional State Administration’s Department of Urban Development signed contracts for the reconstruction of a water pipeline that included markups on materials of 2–3 times the actual cost. At that time, contracts worth 355 million hryvnias were awarded to Mykhailo Zhendubaev’s company, Mykolaivmiskbud LLC.   

Another of Mykhailo Zhendubaev’s companies, “Mykolaivmiskbud,” had already been the subject of journalisticinvestigationsand criminal cases on multiple occasions, but this did not prevent it from securing a 78-million-hryvnia contract to modernize a pumping station. The firm has been accused of having ties to local authorities, corruption, and price gouging.

Previously, “Mykolaivmiskbud” was suspected of artificially inflating the cost of materials fora water pipelineand of conspiring with local officials to embezzle budget funds. Due to violations of the contract terms, the prosecutor’s office secured the termination of the agreements between the company and the Department of Urban Development of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration.

Кирило Бойко