Participants of the scheme, led by a deputy of Odesa City Council, will be brought to court

A case has been brought to court in Odesa against a lawyer and two members of an organized group who, under the leadership of a member of the Odesa City Council, illegally seized real estate in the city center worth more than UAH 11 million.

According to the Odesa Regional Prosecutor's Office, the criminals are charged with fraud with municipal property, falsification of documents, unauthorized construction and legalization of illegally acquired property.

According to the investigation, the deputy, a member of the city council's commission on municipal property, created a scheme for illegal enrichment using a lawyer and trustees he knew. They rented and bought communal premises, changing their area by using attics and basements and registering ownership in the names of fictitious persons using forged documents. Some of the premises were converted into apartments and sold.

The prosecutor's office calculated that their actions caused damage to the local community in the amount of more than UAH 11 million. The defendants were detained in May and a pre-trial restraint in the form of detention with the possibility of bail was imposed on them. The prosecutor's office has filed a civil lawsuit to compensate for the damage.

The MP who organized the event was put on the international wanted list. It is Oleksandr Matveev, who was a permanent member of the Commission on Communal Property.

Earlier, Intent wrote about this scheme. The accomplices were looking for premises in architectural monuments in the center of Odesa, rented them through controlled NGOs and enterprises, and then bought them on a non-competitive basis. After that, with the help of state registrars, they increased the area of the already purchased premises on the basis of forged technical inventory documents and registered ownership in the names of fictitious persons. Some of the illegally acquired non-residential premises were converted into residential apartments and sold to bona fide purchasers. From the sale of one property alone, the dealers received more than UAH 10 million.

Ірина Глухова