Mykolaiv-based company with no equipment and no experience gets a contract worth 130 million

City-Stars, a company that does not have the necessary equipment and sufficient experience, has received government orders in the Mykolaiv region for more than UAH 130 million in the past year and a half.

This is stated in the Nikcenter investigation .

The completion of the 60 million reconstruction of an important boiler house in Mykolaiv's Lisky, ordered by Mykolaivoblteploenergo, is postponed until the end of the year, although it was supposed to be ready by the end of September. This jeopardizes stable heat supply.

The reason for the delay is that the tender was won by a little-known company called City-Stars, which has neither its own equipment nor a convincing track record for complex energy efficiency work. The company is owned by businessmen Mykhailo Zhendubaev and Dmytro Kurbatov, who re-registered it in 2023 and immediately began to receive large government contracts without competition.

An illustration of the boiler house restoration. PHOTO: DREAM

The company was founded by lawyer Serhii Markin, known as a massive company registrar, and existed legally for two years without actually operating until it was acquired by Mykhailo Zhendubaev and Dmytro Kurbatov. In order to qualify for the first major tender, City-Stars submitted a certificate of alleged experience in the reconstruction of the Mykolaiv Regional Museum of Local Lore.

The company allegedly gained this experience as a subcontractor of Vertical-Mykolaiv. The owner of Vertical-Mykolaiv, Viktor Vidin, is not only the head of a number of Zhendubayev's own companies, but also the brother of the former head of the Mykolaiv Regional State Administration's municipal property department, indicating an extensive network of business and official connections to secure winning tenders.

ILLUSTRATION: Nikcenter

A similar approach to falsifying qualifications was used by City-Stars in the tender for the reconstruction of a boiler house, where the proof of experience was provided by a company associated with another business partner of Zhendubaev, Yurii Klymenko, the son of the rector of the Petro Mohyla National University. Together, the businessmen are implementing residential development projects in Mykolaiv.

At the same time, in order to hide their assets and avoid responsibility, over the past few years, Mykhailo Zhendubayev and his entourage have sold six companies, including successful contractors, to citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. As Nikcenter journalists found out, the new business owners were individuals with unconvincing profiles - a mother with many children and a teacher, a student and a man who participated in a raffle, which indicates the use of fictitious owners to conceal the real beneficiaries.

Катерина Глушко