Prosecutor's Office serves notice of suspicion to head of Odesa theater restoration company

The Prymorskyi District Prosecutor's Office has served a notice of suspicion to a former head of a construction company and a technical engineer over possible embezzlement of budget funds during the restoration of a theater in the center of Odesa.

This was reported by the press service of the Odesa Regional Prosecutor's Office.

The director is charged with misappropriation of other people's property and falsification of official documents. According to the investigation, in 2021, a utility company engaged in construction and repair announced a tender for repair and restoration work for the theater in the historic center of Odesa.

The winner of the tender was a construction company headed by a 44-year-old woman from Odesa. After the repairs were completed, the woman personally entered false information in the documents about the cost and scope of work performed by her company. As a result of the illegal actions of the LLC director, the state budget suffered almost half a million hryvnias of damage.

Her illegal actions were made possible by the negligence of a technical supervision engineer. The specialist did not properly supervise the repairs, did not check the compliance of the scope of work performed with the design and estimate documentation and regulatory requirements. After that, the specialist signed acceptance certificates for the completed construction work with inaccurate data. Now he also has the status of a suspect in the case.

Earlier, Intent, citing the Center for Public Investigations, wrote that in Odesa, law enforcement officers exposed a possible scheme to embezzle budget funds during the restoration of a historic theater building. According to the investigation, in 2021, the Obltransbud utility company announced a tender for the overhaul and restoration of the facades of the Vasylko Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater in Odesa with an expected cost of over UAH 33 million. After the estimate was revised, it turned out that some of the work had already been completed, so the purchase amount was reduced to UAH 27.3 million.Law enforcement officers found that part of the money was received unjustifiably due to overstatement of the scope and cost of the work. According to their calculations, the losses due to poor-quality restoration amount to more than UAH 490 thousand, which were probably misappropriated by the company's CEO.

According to YouControl, the founder of the company is Vadym Teplitskyi, a member of the Odesa Regional Council, and the head of the company is Tetiana Titova.

Back in 2022, Intent wrote that law enforcement officers were checking the quality of restoration work at the Ukrainian Theater, which was carried out by a company associated with a deputy of the regional council. At the time, the investigation concerned agreements between Obltransbud and Bild-Pro LLC, which was headed by Teplytskyi.

Кирило Бойко