Anubis earns extra money: business in memory of defenders in Odesa

Last year, Babel Street in Odesa was renamed in honor of the fallen Ukrainian defender Dmytro Ivanov. On this street,at number 12, , there is the Anubis funeral agency owned by the Pestruyev family, who are well-known players in the funeral services industry in the city. It was the owners of the Anubis agency who made money for a long time, in particular by installing tombstones for defenders who died for Ukraine.

The activities of Anubis are currently being investigated by law enforcement. Intent looked into the details.

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"When we faced the trouble (in 2023 - ed.), the military enlistment office immediately told us that the Anubis funeral home would do the best job," recalls Angelina Lyubchak, mother of the fallen Hero of Ukraine Oleksandr Svishch , in her memoirs .

At that time, according to the woman, no one mentioned that the family could order all funeral services from the specialized utility company Specialized Utility Service Enterprise (SPKPO) at the expense of the city. Instead, they offered Anubis, where the family of the fallen hero paid the full cost of the burial.

"After the burial, I had the opportunity to write an application for a refund, but at first I didn't have time for that, and then the procedure was unclear, so I just gave up. It was unpleasant for me," Angelina Lyubchak shares her experience.

According to her, now - starting in the summer of 2025 - the city reimburses the families of the fallen defenders from the budget a certain amount for the installation of a tombstone. According to , according to the decision of Odesa deputies who adopted the Odesa Veteran targeted program in 2023, the maximum amount of targeted assistance for the installation of a headstone is 65 thousand UAH. Families can choose a contractor to perform this work, but this was not immediately the case - previously, the list of contractors was essentially determined by officials.

In addition, according to Angelina Lyubchak, Anubis immediately said that all the fallen defenders would be given the same monuments. Therefore, they immediately offered specific options for the tombstone and showed a visualization of the future monument.

Even then, Angelina Lyubchak thought it was a bit strange that an employee of a private company was telling her about the future monument on her son's grave, and not, for example, a representative of the mayor's office or military commissariat. But, as the woman says, "when you're in tears, it doesn't matter who says what," she was only interested in giving her son a decent burial.

Targeted overpayment

On May 25, 2023, the executive committee of the Odesa City Council approved samples of tombstones on the graves of Ukraine's defenders.

According to the information provided by the Odesa City Department of Labor and Social Policy, from 2023 to 2025, 88 families of fallen defenders received targeted assistance from the city budget for the installation of headstones totaling UAH 4.8 million.

In 2023, UAH 2.9 million was provided from the budget for the installation of 55 headstones, and in 2024 - UAH 1.8 million for 33 headstones. In 2025, no targeted assistance was provided.

Funds from the city budget for the installation of headstones

In order to install the headstones, Odesa officials entered into a tripartite agreement: the city department, the family of the fallen defender, and the contractor. However, the mayor's office refused to say who the contractor was. They said that all documents were seized as part of the criminal proceedings.

Response from the Department of Urban Development

Nevertheless, Intent managed to find all 88 transactions under these agreements through the E-Data system for the use of public funds. From August 2023 to July 2024, these services were provided by only two contractors - the private enterpriseMonumentService and private entrepreneur Dmytro Drebot. The cost of the work ranged from UAH 44 thousand to UAH 62 thousand.

Data from the system for the use of public funds E-Data

For comparison, in neighboring Mykolaiv, in 2024, the same tombstones were also made and installed for fallen defenders. There was a tender and a clear budget was available. According to the cost of making the tombstone was 18.5 thousand UAH, which is almost three times cheaper than in Odesa.

Screenshot of the visualization of headstones in Mykolaiv

Bargaining is inappropriate here

In Odesa, they also initially tried to hold an open tender. The Specialized Utility Company announced an open tender, but it didn't work out.

It is worth noting that the burial and commemoration of the fallen defenders of Ukraine is an extremely sensitive topic. Currently, in Odesa, more than a thousand families of fallen heroes have united in the Family of Angels of Light NGO, which has proposed to develop a modern memorial on the territory of the Western Cemetery. The work is ongoing.

In May 2023, the executive committee of the Odesa City Council approved its version of the monuments for the fallen soldiers. And on June 2, SPKPO announced a tender for the manufacture and installation of tombstones on the graves of the fallen defenders for UAH 4.4 million, i.e. the cost of one should have been UAH 55 thousand.

Approved samples

Only one private entrepreneur from Kyiv , Oleksandra Torgonska,volunteered to fulfill the order . However, on August 4, 2023, the results of the tender were canceled with the wording "no further need for procurement". It is noteworthy that Torgonska registered as an individual entrepreneur only on May 16, 2023, i.e. only two weeks before the tender was announced, and in October of the same year she stopped her activities.

While the utility was deciding whether to enter into a contract with Torgonska, on July 24, 2023, the utility announced another tender for the manufacture and installation of five tombstones for fallen defenders worth UAH 325,000. That is, one headstone approved by the Odesa executive committee went up in price by 10 thousand UAH in two months. But even this auction did not end with the signing of a contract - no one came forward.

A year later, in 2024, the municipalities did not lose hope and announced a total of six tenders, each time for five headstones for UAH 325,000. None of them were successful, and no contractor was found. But, as it turned out, all this time, the monuments were being installed at public expense by entrepreneurs associated with Mykola Pestruiev.

Pestruiev and his team

As a reminder, Mykola Pestruiev headed the Specialized Utility Company, which actually announced the tender, for almost 10 years, from 2003 to 2012.

At the same time, he ran for the Odesa City Council and the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, and was twice alocal deputy. Today, he is officially a co-owner of RitualServicePlusLLC , and unofficially, through family ties, he controls a number of companies operating in the funeral services market in Odesa. And, of course, his main "brainchild" is the Anubis funeral home.

The fact is that there is no current legal entity, Anubis Funeral Home or simply Anubis LLC, in Odesa. But there was Anubis VIP LLC, which has long since ceased operations. It was located at the former address of the SPKPO utility company at 40 Hretska Street. And the founders were Mykola Pestruiev's then daughter-in-law Anastasiia Ukhanova and business partner Serhii Liadov, who until recently owned a joint business with Liudmyla Pestruieva and is still a signatory to the NGO Association of Funeral Directors, where Mykola Pestruiev is the chairman.

But that's not all. Pestruiev's son Dmytro, who was a two-termdeputy of the Odesa City Council - from the Party of Regions and Trust the Deeds - is also listed as a business owner: as of now, he is a co-founder of "Granit-dorservice" LLC and has a individual entrepreneur.

In addition, the absence of a legal entity for the funeral home is compensated for by a number of individual entrepreneurs who actually conclude the contracts. Some of these sole proprietors even provide Mykola Petstruev's phone number when registering. More precisely, the phone number he himself provided when registering as a private entrepreneur. For example, this is the entrepreneur Arthur Paulauskas, or Ivan Sotnikov, who has already ceased his activities.

The same phone number was also used to register Pyramid LLC, owned by Mykola Pestruyev's wife, Lyudmyla Pestruyeva. She is a co-founder of many companies, including Spetspredpriyatstvo-Service LLC. The address of this company also coincides with the former legal address of SPKPO on Hretska Street.

But the address of the private enterprise Monument Service, which installed monuments for fallen soldiers at the expense of the budget, coincides with the address of Mykola Pestruiev's own company. "Monument Service is located on Dmytro Ivanov Street (formerly Babel Street, 12). It is here that not only Pestruev's Ritual Service Plus is located, but also the Anubis Funeral Home. It is also worth noting that the private enterprise "Monument Service concluded five agreements with SPKPO for a total amount of almost UAH 610 thousand.

It is also interesting that the phone number of Inna Hrynevych, director of Spetspredpriyatstvo-Service LLC, is often listed in GetContact as "Inna Bohunter Anubis" (in various variations).

Serhiy Drebot, a private entrepreneur, is also related to the family . He is not a public figure himself. A 49-year-old resident of Odesa, he registered as a private entrepreneur back in 2010. He has been participating in public procurement since 2020. It was then that he signed his first contract with the Specialized Utility Company and since then, he has signed 18 more contracts. Drebot does not work with other budget clients. Instead, he is a co-founder of the Odesa Regional Federation of Karate and Martial Arts together with Vitalii Achkasov, whose father, Volodymyr Achkasov, once replaced Mykola Pestruiev as director of the SPKPO.

Searches for overpayment

It was here, at 12 Dmytro Ivanov Street (formerly Babel Street), that law enforcement officers conducted searches in the office of the Monument Service in the spring as part of a criminal investigation opened in 2023. According to investigators, the company's director, Andriy Nikitin, entered into a criminal conspiracy with unidentified officials of the Odesa Department of Labor and Social Policy. The conspiracy was that the employees of the department, when relatives of the fallen soldiers contacted them about the manufacture of a tombstone, should inform them that this could only be done by the Monument-Service company. It could be done for budgetary funds. But, as it turned out, at a much higher price than the market price. According to law enforcement officers, the difference in price ended up in the pockets of interested parties. It is worth noting that the Odesa Department of Labor and Social Policy has been headed by Olena Kitayska since 2010.

Here is just one example of an agreement from case materials that demonstrates the level of overpayment. This agreement was concluded on September 4, 2023, between the Odesa Department of Labor and Social Policy, Monument-Service PE, and a family member of the deceased defender. The subject matter of the agreement was "services for the construction of a tombstone and arrangement of the burial place of the deceased serviceman of the Armed Forces of Ukraine". The city department acted as the "payer". According to the estimate, the private company was paid UAH 54.3 thousand. Of this amount, UAH 33.4 thousand was paid for the set of granite monument, and the rest of the amount was for installation, assembly, artwork, etc. At the same time, the real cost of the granite monument set, according to law enforcement estimates, is UAH 13.3 thousand, which means that the overpayment of budget funds for the monument alone is UAH 20 thousand.

As a reminder, the city has signed 88 contracts under the program to honor the memory of fallen soldiers, all with only two contractors - private entrepreneur Serhiy Drebot and private enterprise Monument Service. This means that the overpayment for these contracts alone, and for the manufacture of the monuments, excluding installation work, amounts to UAH 1.8 million.

"Persistent criminal association"

The law enforcement officers themselves talk about UAH 2.1 million of overpayment. This is the amount they state in the materials of the criminal proceedings in which Mykola Pestruiev is suspected. Because despite the absence of his name in the official founders of the companies that received contracts from the city hall, it is he who law enforcement officers call the organizer of a "stable criminal association". And he was the one who engaged the contractors, both entrepreneurs under his control and city hall employees. Therefore, back in June, a judge of the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv imposed a pre-trial restraint on Pestruiev in the form of detention on suspicion of embezzlement of funds during the manufacture and installation of tombstones for fallen defenders. set bail at UAH 20 million, but a week later reduced the bail amount to UAH 1.8 million.

As part of the same investigation, the deputy director of SPKPO was suspended from work in the summer and also received suspicion. But she has already returned to work.

The deputy director of SPKPO has returned to work

Also involved in the case are Natalia Mostovskikh, who as of 2023 headed the Odesa Department of Municipal Economy. According to the investigation, Pestruev engaged Mostovskikh, who, in particular, "facilitated the mechanism for changing the procedure for paying compensation." But the latter denies any involvement in the scheme.

Natalia Mostovskikh's response

We have contacted Anubis for a comment. However, at the time of publication, no response was received. We also wrote in a telegram to the likely number of Mykola Pestruiev. He read the message but did not respond.

A funeral agency instead of doctors

Today, it is difficult to predict how long the case of Nikolai Pestruev will be investigated and what the verdict will be. But according to Intent's interlocutors, this is just one episode of the former utility worker and former city councilor's activities.

According to a participant in the funeral services market, who asked not to be named because of the danger of pressure, the city has long had a well-established burial scheme, with Mykola Pestruiev and his Anubis funeral home at the helm.

Our source claims that it includes not only city hall employees, but also employees of the city's hospital and emergency services. He claims that there is an unspoken agreement that Anubis representatives are the first to be notified of a person's death in Odesa so that they can be the first to offer their services.

"When a loved one dies, relatives often don't have the psychological strength to look for something else, so they agree. This is how the system works. Sometimes relatives are even intimidated: if they refuse funeral services, they simply won't be able to take the body out of the morgue," our interlocutor says.

Myroslava Huskevych fromOdesa confirms this. She said she learned about her father's death not from doctors but from a representative of a funeral service. Later she found out that it was the Anubis funeral home.

"It was the funeral service that called me and told me about the death of my father, who was in the hospital. When I arrived at the morgue, the doctor did not come out to me and did not explain why he did not inform me," recalls Huskevych.

Another Odesa resident , Natalia Dovbysh, recalls her experience back in 2017, when the first people she saw in the hospital after her grandmother's death were representatives of Anubis. Serhii Hutsaliuk describes a similar situation , but in 2020 and at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. He says that "ritual agents" were in the hospital all the time.

This article was produced with the support of the program "Stronger Together: Media and Democracy" program implemented by the World Association of News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) in partnership with the Association of Independent Regional Publishers of Ukraine (ARPU) and the Norwegian Media Business Association (MBL) with support from Norway. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the program partners.

Олена Чернишова

"Anubis earned extra money: how Odesa does business on the memory of defenders

<span><span><span><span><span><span>***</span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span><span> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span>Targeted overpayment</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span>Bargaining is inappropriate here</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span>Pestruiev and his team</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span>Searches for overpayment</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span> "</span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span>Persistent criminal association</span></span></span></span></span></span><span><span><span><span><span><span>"</span></span></span></span></span></span>

<span><span><span><span><span><span>A funeral agency instead of doctors </span></span></span></span></span></span>

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