The High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) has found Mykola Derevianko, a former member of the Odesa Regional Council, and Volodymyr Herasymchuk, director of Ukrmezhbud LLC, guilty of abuse of office. The former official was sentenced to 4.5 years’ imprisonment, and the head of the contractor company to 4 years’ imprisonment. The convicted men are involved in a case concerning the embezzlement of public funds during the modernisation of street lighting in the Odesa region.
Splitting tenders and inflating prices sixfold
The investigation established that in 2018, a member of the Odesa Regional Council from the “European Solidarity” party organised a corruption scheme. He persuaded the head of the Tsebrykivka settlement council to sign contracts for the installation of street lighting with a firm under his control, bypassing official tender procedures.
To circumvent the Prozorro electronic procurement system, the conspirators artificially split the procurement into smaller parts (individual streets). The cost of works for each section did not exceed 1.5 million hryvnias. This allowed the contractor to enter into direct contracts and inflate the actual cost of the work by more than six times.
Subsequently, the organisers of the scheme forged acceptance certificates for the completed construction works, entering false data into them. On the basis of these documents, the first 6 million hryvnias were unjustifiably transferred to the accounts of Ukrmezhbud LLC. Subsequently, law enforcement officers uncovered another similar incident involving 10.4 million hryvnias. The total amount of losses to the state for the period 2018–2020 amounted to 16.4 million hryvnias.
“The court upheld the civil claim brought by the SAPO prosecutor and ordered the convicted parties to pay, jointly and severally, over 16.3 million hryvnias to the Tsebrykivka Settlement Council in the Odesa region,” the case file states.
Context and family ties
The convicted former MP Mykola Derevianko has family ties in the highest echelons of power. His wife, Olesia Derevianko, is the second cousin of Ukrainian MP Oleksii Honcharenko. She had previously also been notified of her status as a suspect in this investigation.
The verdict of the High Anti-Corruption Court may be appealed to the Appeals Chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court within thirty days of its pronouncement.