Alexander Vasilyevich Sergienko
Official biography
Oleksandr Sergienko is an expert in urban planning, PhD in Law. He was born in Ternopil.
Education
1995 — State Academy of Light Industry of Ukraine (now Kyiv National University of Technology and Design), specialty “Business Economics”.
1997 — Ternopil Academy of National Economy (now — Western Ukrainian National University), specialty “Finance and Credit”, diploma with honors.
2003 — Interregional Academy of Personnel Management, specialty “Practical Psychology”, diploma with honors.
2013 — Lviv Polytechnic National University, civil engineer, specialty “civil engineering”.
2014 — Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, specialty “Law”, diploma with honors.
2014 — National Academy for Public Administration under the President of Ukraine, specialization in public administration.
2019 — graduated from graduate school.
2020 — received the degree of Candidate of Law, having defended his dissertation on “Public Administration of Civil Control in the Field of Urban Development in Ukraine”.
Career
1994 — Construction and Installation Department No. 916 of the Kyiv Radio Plant Production Association. The position of leading economist. During this time, he rose to the position of Deputy Director of the enterprise.
1996 — AS-Rembud. Worked his way up from a leading economist to an accountant.
1998 — International Audit Service, auditor.
2002 — Private enterprise “Bayadera”, development director.
2004 — Ukrainian Construction Corporation, Vice President for Finance.
2004 — Establishes Avtoremrervis LLC. Becomes the owner of a service station.
2005 — CEO of Admiral International Ltd.
September 2006 — Head of the Department of Housing and Communal Services.
April 2011 — State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate of Ukraine, Deputy Head of the Department for Quality Control of Housing and Communal Services.
2012 — Head of the Department of Permitting Procedures of the SACI.
February 2019 — individual entrepreneur.
Family.
Married, has two children.
Compromise
Oleksandr Sergienko is known for the fact that in 2012-2014 he headed the Department of Permitting Procedures of the SACI, and O. Vorobyov was his deputy.
It was Oleksandr Sergienko who, together with the head of the Kyiv City DABI Inspectorate, organized the $5 per square meter scheme, which later spread throughout the country and provided income to the family of Sasha Stomatologist.
Oleksandr Sergienko and his supervisors centralized the issuance of construction permits in the Department of Permitting Procedures for the entire territory of Ukraine. He did not disdain even small objects, registering declarations instead of territorial authorities. That’s why all developers were forced to go to Kyiv to pay their respects. It is Oleksandr Sergienko who is the «creator» of the SACI Permit Register with all its «bookmarks, blockings, reservations,» etc., which were personally described by Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
There is information that Oleksandr Sergienko even registered the copyright to the SACI Register, and when Maksym Martyniuk (Volodymyr Groysman’s man) became the head of the SACI in 2014, with whom Oleksandr Sergienko could not reach an agreement, he tried to sell the keys to the state Register.
After the change of power, Oleksandr Rybak (head of the SACI under Yanukovych) and his friends Oleksandr Sergienko and Serhiy Kucher disappeared from the horizon. Sergiy Kucher was put on the wanted list.
But everything is coming back to normal. Alexander Sergienko began to hold seminars and talk about his old “exploits”. The participants say that sometimes he would start the seminar with joking words: “I am a criminal government”. As the saying goes, there is a joke in every joke.
Having settled old accounts with the new government, Serhiy Kucher tried to take over the scandalous Ukrbud through the deputy head of the Presidential Office, Serhiy Trofimov, but failed.
To date, there is reliable information that one of Olena Kostenko’s advisors has already begun to conquer the construction market as a “supervisor” from the Presidential Office, and Oleksandr Sergienko has begun to write new “green” schemes, taking into account his experience of 2012-2014.
Thus, Olena Kostenko, who was apparently appointed to the position under the patronage of Serhiy Trofimov, by a separate order obliges the territorial bodies of the SACI to provide all information on applications for permits for CC2 facilities for the relevant decision to be made by the central office of the SACI in Kyiv.
From now on, SACI orders signed by its acting chairman, Olena Kostenko, will be used to issue local construction permits, commission facilities, or to first “refuse” to issue documents, and then to issue permits under the same number (by manually correcting the SACI register).
A new pseudo-licensing commission of the SACI has already been formed, consisting of Oleksandr Sergienko and O. Vorobyov, and no representative of the professional urban planning community has even been invited. Moreover, this commission has already seen a bunch of documents in a closed mode (on the verbal instructions of the chairman of the relevant VR Committee and his “boss” in the OP).
The only positive thing from this is that now everyone knows who is personally responsible for issuing illegal permits — Olena Kostenko — because what can you ask from advisors and shadow curators?
However, people see the results of the work of the «new faces» in the construction industry, and the public continues to shout about corrupt schemes to legalize unauthorized construction and the complete impotence of the SACI in favor of the big construction business of the old clans.
Oleksandr Serhiyenko: from corrupt official to “honorary builder”
The All-Ukrainian NGO “Union of Engineers” addressed a letter to the Head of the Kyiv City State Administration V. Klitschko asking him to petition the President of Ukraine to award the honorary title of “Honorary Builder”. Klitschko with a letter asking him to petition the President of Ukraine to confer the honorary title of “Honored Builder of Ukraine” on the head of the NGO, Oleksandr Serhiyenko.
Interestingly, this NGO, the Union of Engineers, was founded in June 2020 by Oleksandr Sergienko and Oleksandr Kolomiets. The latter, the former head of the Department of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate in Kyiv Oblast, served as a cashier for Sergienko. Journalists recorded secret meetings between Sergienko and the newly appointed officials, which looked like shadow salary payments. Sergienko did not deny the fact of this meeting, but called it «working issues of the committee, where they discussed one of the versions of the bills.» Why they were discussed with everyone in turn in the back seat of Sergienko’s Mercedes and with specific bags is unknown.
It should be recalled that the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced the start of liquidation of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate of Ukraine (SACI) at an offsite meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine on March 13, 2020.
“The process of obtaining public services will be transparent, convenient and with minimal influence of officials on such decisions,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy said.
At that time, the unofficial leadership of the SACI was taken over by Andriy Klochko, head of the Parliamentary Committee on the Organization of State Power, Local Regional Urban Planning. His official assistant was Oleksandr Sergienko. And the morning meetings with the heads of the newly created state control bodies in the field of urban planning in the office on Shovkovychna Street were recorded during a journalistic investigation.
Sergienko is the author of the whole mess that has been created for a year and a half, which they called “urban planning reform”. Together with Andriy Klochko, they practically blocked the liquidation of the SACI for a year and handed out permits manually.
The Security Service of Ukraine exposed officials of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate on large-scale illegal issuance of permits and certificates of readiness to construction companies. The media immediately disseminated information about the discovered network of «back offices» of the so-called «construction mafia» built by the well-known «schemers of our time» Klochko-Sergienko.
About 70 searches were conducted at the SACI Central Office, the SACI Department in Kyiv, and even at the home of Oleksandr Sergienko, assistant to Andriy Klochko, chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning.
According to the criminal proceedings, Sergienko’s functions include control over the activities of SACI officials involved in illegal activities, through which they control the issuance of permits, ensure the movement of documents from the official office to the “back office” — the “consulting center” where they are charged.
“Dehumanization”
The cynicism and arrogance of this character exceeds all bounds. He has a criminal case against him for organizing corruption schemes in the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate of Ukraine. Having not built a single square meter, but having “flying” every construction, Serhiyenko claims the honorary title of “Honored” builder of Ukraine.
Head of the House of Representatives Vasylchenko is controlled by Klochko’s aide Sergiyenko — media
The media report on suspicious meetings between Sergienko and the head of the House of Representatives, Yuriy Vasylchenko.
«Oleksandr Sergienko usually leaves his home around 7:30 a.m. for the office at 21 Shovkovychna Street, entrance 1. And at the office, he is met by the virtual head of the GIG, Yuriy Vasylchenko. Instead of his official place of work, he comes to this office around 8:00 am. This «morning meeting» with Sergienko lasts about an hour, after which, usually puzzled by the list of tasks, Vasylchenko leaves the office accompanied by bodyguards,» the article says.
It also mentions that sometimes the meetings took place in the same morning hours, only in the literary cafe “Ginger” at 7 Zhylianska Street. There, too, the “meetings” lasted about one hour.
“You have already figured out who the ‘father’ of the GIG is: an assistant to an MP who manages the head of an entire central executive body designed to combat corruption in construction from his private office. And here’s another spoiler: The office on Shovkovychna Street is very convenient, because Sergiyenko can always quickly come to the building with the chimeras on Bankova Street. What unknown curators from the Presidential Office does he visit?” the media summarize.
Another imitation of SACI reforms: Klochko and Sergienko’s personnel blitzkrieg
On August 4, 2020, Yuriy Vasylchenko, a well-known virtual blogger of the State Inspectorate of Urban Development, a government agency that exists only on paper, wrote another post.
With a selfless thirst for self-disclosure, he subconsciously revealed another combination of his own puppet masters.
“116 applications for 8 positions. The results of the acceptance of documents for the positions of heads of territorial bodies of the State House of Representatives” — Vasylchenko begins with this. But then he immediately admits that he is manipulating the information, because in reality, 81 citizens took part in the competition.
Why would he want to do that?
As a reminder, the media have already reported on plans to transfer old corruption schemes together with Yuriy Vasylchenko from the SACI to the DIM. This is the result of fruitful cooperation between Andriy Klochko, Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on the Organization of State Power, Local Self-Government, Regional Development and Urban Planning, and his official assistant, former head of the SACI’s permitting procedures department, Oleksandr Serhiyenko.
“Yuriy Vasylchenko was transferred from the position of the head of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate to the position of the head of the SACI. He transferred the institutional memory of corruption to the new body not only along with the core of the old SACI officials. He also took on a personal burden. The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption drew up a report on an administrative offense against him,” Antikor writes.
Taking advantage of the opportunity to hold full and transparent competitions in accordance with the civil service legislation, the procedure for appointment to positions during the quarantine period was applied. However, out of the possibility to set the deadline for submitting documents from 3 to 7 calendar days, the shortest one was chosen… That’s right, 3 days. Anyone who has used the portal knows that these are the days when the number of “technical failures” suddenly increases, and it is impossible to submit documents to the SIP in paper form.
Then things get more interesting. Vasylchenko announces the start of the competition after work at half past nine in the evening, deliberately narrowing the opportunities to learn about the decision to select candidates.
Like all of his previous messages, this one collected “positive” comments from citizens:
And now attention: the file with the terms and conditions for the competition, which we downloaded from the site, was printed on June 5, 2020, that is, almost two months ago, but was uploaded only after saving, half an hour before the end of the working day: 17.34 29.07.2020.
In other words, everyone who needed to could familiarize themselves with the requirements and prepare in advance two months ago.
In order to weed out unnecessary people, the period for reading the announcement and submitting documents was narrowed as much as possible. After all, the announcement will appear only on Wednesday evening, 29.07, and then there are actually only two working days left — Thursday and Friday — they did a nice job of making us all work together.
And now Vasylchenko is trying to show that there are signs of some kind of competition, despite the fact that he himself reports it: “Two people applied for all 8 positions. One person applied for five positions. Six citizens submitted three packages of documents each.”
It should be noted that such non-transparent appointments allow people to hold these positions not only until the end of the quarantine, but also for 4 months from the date of its end.
It would be interesting to see what justified the extra-short timeframe for the selection of heads of the new bodies.
Why officials of the corrupt SACI are against changes in urban planning: analysis of draft law No. 5655
Draft law No. 5655 will be the “last nail in the coffin” for the “solvers” of the construction market — it is about the overall digitalization of urban planning and the complete rejection of contact between the official and the developer. This was emphasized by the well-known political scientist Kyrylo Molchanov on his Facebook page.
“Tsyfra will not allow anyone to decide or take a profitable new building into their pocket. That’s why Sergienko (former head of the Department of Permitting Procedures of the now liquidated DABI — ed.) and the communities are trying their best to stop the adoption of the draft law. Its adoption simply cuts off opportunities for shadow earnings in the urban planning sector,” the political scientist emphasizes.
The author notes that resistance to the draft law has now been launched, which is caused by the large-scale digitalization of the processes proposed by the document. At the same time, the draft law is the first stage of the reform. The next step is to amend the Criminal Code of Ukraine and the Code of Ukraine on Administrative Offenses to increase personal liability for offenses in the field of urban planning.
“There is a version that Sergienko turned on financial leverage to try to sink Draft Law No. 5655. Of course, not with his own hands, but through paid talking heads in the Union of Architects of Ukraine, who are “criticizing” the bill with all their might. We even marched in Kyiv — so many enthusiasts suddenly appeared,” Molchanov said.
According to the explanatory note, the purpose of the draft law No. 5655 “On Amendments to Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine on Reforming the Sphere of Urban Development” is to implement reform in the field of urban development by: reducing corruption risks in the provision of administrative services, ensuring state registration in the field of urban development by state registrars, publicity of such services, applying the principle of alternative choice of the urban development authority, and ensuring publicity of the provision of t
The interim head of the DABI Korol uses a Mercedes Sergienko’s Mercedes registered with a security company
The media focused on the car Sergienko uses to get around the capital. It is a Mercedes-Benz S-class executive car with registration numbers AN6714KI, which later changed to KA8320AO in a strange way. Korol was spotted driving it.
The car was contributed to the authorized capital of Okhrannyi Faktor LLC. This company with an authorized capital of UAH 100 was registered in Kyiv in 2016. But recently, its head and beneficiary changed: instead of Yaroslav Hryhorenko, in January of this year, the company was headed by Viktor Turovsky. By the way, Mr. Grigorenko is the founder and director of Kyivski Yarmarky LLC and Betonindustriyproekt LLC, which is engaged in construction activities. And Mr. Turovskyi worked as an inspector of the Security Police Department in Kyiv in 2016-107.
Interestingly, the company is listed on the Unified Portal for the Use of Budget Funds as a recipient of budget funds and a contractor of the same SACI. Moreover, reporters found information about security services that Okhrannyi Faktor LLC is supposed to provide to the State Inspectorate of Urban Development of Ukraine.
The most interesting thing is that recently journalists noticed a new passenger in the car used by Mr. Sergienko: the interim head of the SACI, Iryna Korol, whose appointment without a competition was not prevented by the criminal proceedings on abuse of power or her dubious background in her previous position at the Inspectorate.
However, while checking the relationship between the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate and the bodyguards, journalists discovered another remarkable fact: there is no information in the ProZorro system about the tenders held by the SACI or the DIM, in which the Okhrannyi Faktor became the winner, since the above contracts were apparently concluded without open bidding.
In response to a request for public information from the Stop Corruption NGO, the SACI provided an agreement on the procurement of public order and security services concluded on February 2, 2021, for almost UAH 45 thousand with another security firm,CitadelSecurity Company LLC. On the part of the customer, the document was signed directly by the chairman of the liquidation commission, Iryna Korol.
The contract was signed on February 2, and the services have been provided since January 6. Photo: screenshot
At the same time, the provided contract states in black and white that the contractor shall provide security for the facility starting from January 6, 2021. That is, we are talking about services that are provided not just retroactively, the difference in dates is almost a month! And this is just another example of negligence and legal chaos in the activities of the SACI, where construction permits for large facilities are issued almost a few weeks before the facility is put into operation, and you can wait months or even years for registration of the start of construction work on individual housing construction.
To this automotive security story, it should also be added that the new head of the Odesa Department of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate, Oleksandr Kifriak, who was appointed in early January by Korol’s order and replaced the scandalous Vasyl Buyukli, was also caught driving an undeclared BMW X5. According to insider information, the security for the newly appointed head of the Odesa SACI was personally organized by the same Oleksandr Sergienko, who is trying his best to maintain control over the corruption flows in the construction industry, and this car allegedly belongs to him.
Summary
Oleksandr Sergienko, together with his accomplices, actually set up an organized crime group within the walls of the SACI. Being an educated man, Sergienko skillfully, and most importantly, illegally conducts construction fraud, and thanks to his connections, he remains in the black. No wonder, the law is not written for people with money, and it does not matter where he got the money.