The head of a village council in the Odesa region was stripped of his powers two years after an investigation was launched against him

Members of the Serhiivka Village Council in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District of the Odesa Region voted to remove the council’s chairman, Anatolii Cherednychenko, from office.

The council members adopted this decision following a secret ballot at a special session on July 13. 

All 15 council members who participated in the meeting voted unanimously in favor of this decision. Since late July 2024, Anatoliy Cherednichenko has been wanted in connection with a criminal investigation into the possible embezzlement of funds allocated for the restoration of infrastructure damaged by Russian missile strikes.

Proceedings in this case began on June 12, 2023, and on July 17, 2024, Anatoliy Cherednichenko was notified of the charges against him. According to investigators, the village head conspired with the director of the village council’s municipal enterprise, a contractor, and a technical supervisor. Together, they embezzledbudget funds during the major renovation of residential buildingsin the villages of Serhiivka and Chabanske in the Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District of the Odesa Region, which had been damaged by enemy shelling.

Among the damaged properties were a nine-story residential building in one settlement and six private homes in another. The cost of the restoration work was estimated at over 11 million hryvnias.

They overstated the scope of work actually performed, its cost, and the cost of construction materials used, thereby inflating the amount of funds supposedly spent on repairing the buildings. It should be noted that in September 2023, in the Odesa region, the contractor was replacedand construction work resumed on a buildingin Serhiivka that had been destroyed by a rocket. 

At that time,Oleg Kipper, head of the Odesa Regional State Administration, explained that the work had been paused because time was needed to transfer the necessary documents from one contractor to another. He also added that law enforcement agencies were investigating the previous contractor. 

Previously, on June 30, 2023,journalists from the Center for Public Research (CPR)visited the site of the tragedy and showed what the destroyed recreation center and the partially destroyed nine-story building looked like after initial repairs. In the first entrance, only emergency repairs had been carried out.

Anatoliy Cherednichenko,for his part,explained that the designand cost estimate documentation had been prepared a year ago, but adjustments were later needed, which is why the project remains unfinished.

The project involved the major renovation of a nine-story residential building at 23 Chornomorska Street in the town of Serhiivka, Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi District, Odesa Region, whichwas damaged as a result of a missile strike on July 1, 2022.

Кирило Бойко