Mikhail Markovich Dobkin
Official biography
Member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the VIII convocation, former governor of Kharkiv region.
Born on January 26, 1970 in Kharkiv to Mark Dobkin (born in 1947) and Alla Dobkina (born in 1947). From 1978 to 1985 he studied at the secondary school №97 in Kharkiv. He graduated from the National University of Internal Affairs with a degree in law and from Kharkiv National University of Economics with a degree in international economics.
- 1987 — Worked at a production facility.
- 1988-1990 — Served in the army in the air defense troops of the Kyiv Military District.
- 1993-2002 — Private entrepreneur, head of a number of business structures: Progress-90, Investtorgtsentr, East Oil Group.
- 1998-2002 — Member of the Kharkiv City Council.
- 2002-2006 — Member of Parliament of Ukraine. He was a member of the United Ukraine and the SDPU(o) factions, and the Democratic Initiatives and Center parliamentary groups.
- He finished his term in the ranks of the Party of Regions “Regions of Ukraine” faction. He worked in the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Budget.
- 03.2006-03.2010 — Mayor of Kharkiv.
- 03.2010 — By the Decree of the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych, he was appointed the Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
- On March 2, 2014, he was dismissed from the post of the Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
- On March 25, 2014, he submitted documents to the Central Election Commission for registration as a presidential candidate.
- Since November 2014, he has been a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the VIII convocation.
Family.
Dobkin’s parents are the same age. His mother Alla Mykolaivna (born in 1947) is still alive. His father Mark Moiseevich (born in 1947) died in 2016.
His younger brother is Dmytro. Dima has been a member of the Verkhovna Rada since 2012. Mykhailo Dobkin is married for the second time. His first wife is Lyudmila Vikentievna Dobkina (née Molotokas), born in 1962.
Children from his first marriage: daughter Alla (born in 1993) and son Mykola (born in 2000).
His second wife is Alina Vladimirovna Bozhenko (born in 1979), this marriage was registered in 2007. The couple had daughters Eva (born in 2007) and Polina (born in 2010).
31.03.2015 г. Mykhailo Dobkin was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for Regional Policy in the Opposition Government.
He was born in Kharkiv.
- 1988 — 1990 — service in the army;
- 1993 — 2002 — private entrepreneur; Progress-90, Investtorgtsentr, East Oil Group — manager;
- 1998 — 2002 — Kharkiv City Council — deputy;
- 2002 — 2006 — Member of the Parliament of Ukraine of the IV convocation. Member of the Budget Committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine;
- 2006 — 2010 — Kharkiv City Council — Chairman;
- 2010 — 2014 — Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration;
- Since November 27, 2014 — Member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the VIII convocation.
- On July 13, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada lifted the immunity of MP from the Opposition Bloc Mykhailo Dobkin and authorized his detention and arrest on the proposal of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine on suspicion of land fraud.
- On October 3, 2017, Mykhailo Dobkin announced his withdrawal from the Opposition Bloc faction. Thus, the MP expressed his disagreement with the fact that some MPs and the leadership of the Opposition Bloc party voted to support the law on judicial reform.
- On February 20, 2018, Dobkin announced the registration of a new political party, the Christian Socialists.
In the early parliamentary elections of 2019, he was a candidate for parliament from the Opposition Bloc party, No. 15 on the list. As a result, the Opposition Bloc failed to pass the 5% threshold in the parliamentary elections.
Compromising material
In early 2008, the Security Service of Ukraine brought a criminal case on embezzlement of public funds in the Kharkiv City Council to court. On March 31, 2008, the court of the Kyiv district of Kharkiv refused to initiate this criminal case, against which the SBU and the prosecutor’s office appealed.
In addition, in September 2007, the SBU deprived Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin of access to state secrets, due to the fact that during the SBU inspection of the organization of state secret protection and circulation of documents containing confidential information in the Kharkiv City Council, gross violations were found on the part of the chairman and secretary of the City Council.
According to the SBU, the same decision was being prepared for the Secretary of the Kharkiv City Council, Hennadiy Kernes.
Around the same time, Kharkiv City Council Secretary Hennadiy Kernes and Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin were caught discussing the illegal allocation of land belonging to one of the city’s universities. “Ukraine Criminal” published an audio recording of the conversation between the officials.
The mayor and the secretary of the city council discuss options for “assistance” in allocating a land plot for the construction of a sports complex at 23-a Muranova Street to Dobkin-Kernes’ fellow party member, police lieutenant general Vasyl Hrytsak, and the head of the Kharkiv regional tax administration, lieutenant general Stanislav Denysyuk. As the conversation suggests, the city leadership is fully aware of the illegality of such actions, but is nevertheless looking for ways to circumvent the norms of the current land legislation. During the conversation, numerous other facts of land fraud in Kharkiv came up.
“Golden” benches in the Kharkiv subway
In December 2010, the media reported, with reference to a letter of approval, that 10 benches had been delivered to the Alekseevskaya metro station in Kharkiv at a cost of 630 thousand hryvnias.
According to the documents presented by Kernes, each bench cost the budget UAH 28,800.
Extraordinary events
On June 21, 2010, Dobkin was involved in a car accident. According to Roman, an eyewitness to the accident, a Toyota jeep driven by Dobkin tried to leave a secondary highway in the direction of Kharkiv and almost rolled onto the roadway. At the same time, a Volkswagen was driving into Zmiyiv, which did not have time to dodge and flew directly into the jeep. After the collision, the jeep was thrown into the oncoming lane, where it collided with another foreign car. Only the girl, the driver of the third car, was injured. Fortunately, there were no passengers in the cars. The governor personally called an ambulance and the police.
«The incident happened at about 2:30 p.m. Immediately after the collision, all the bigwigs from Zmiiv arrived at the scene. The head of the district, Yevgeny Muraev, and the acting head of the traffic police, and about 40 other people were there. Mikhail Markovich was walking around gloomy as a doornail, but after talking to Muraev, his mood lifted. The driver of the Volkswagen that had hit the jeep was promised to call a tow truck and have all the other issues resolved. An ambulance quickly arrived at the scene, where doctors tried to help the victim. Personally, I got the impression that Dobkin was trying to hide her from the eyes of witnesses,» says Roman.
After half an hour, all the participants in the accident left: the driver brought Dobkin another car, he got behind the wheel and drove off in the direction of Kharkiv. After a while, the driver followed the boss in the battered car.
The fire
On December 25, 2010, on Saturday, a mansion associated with the head of the regional state administration Mykhailo Dobkin burned in Kharkiv’s Lesopark.
Fire with human casualties in the fiefdom of “Dopy” and “Hepy”
On January 8, at 11:29 a.m., information was received about a fire in a 5-story building of the Kharkiv Jewelry Factory on the leased territory of the Hartron plant. The fire killed 8 people. Another 22 were rescued by rescuers. Seven people were injured. According to the prosecutor’s office, there were about 200 people at the workplace at the time of the fire.
Dobkin and Euromaidan
— In November 2013, the Kharkiv authorities banned any mass rallies in the city and restricted visits to all prisoners in the colonies due to the threat of a flu epidemic. The restrictions on mass events were announced on the day when opposition politicians Iryna and Yuriy Lutsenko and Arseniy Yatsenyuk arrived to visit former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko for a short meeting at the Central Hospital of Ukrzaliznytsia in Kharkiv, and Euromaidans were beginning to gather in the regions.
Drugs
In 2007, Dobkin and Kernes were accused of using cocaine. This information was linked, among other things, to the assassination attempts on Kernes that took place that year. In December, a criminal case was opened against Oleg Medvedev, a member of the Kharkiv Moskovsky District Council from the Party of Regions, for organizing the attempted assassination of Kernes. At the same time, information appeared to explain the reason for the attempt: it was reported that in the summer of 2006, Kernes and Dobkin allegedly organized an attack on Medvedev, who had his nose and ears cut off in the entrance of his own house.
At the time, the media reported that “the nature of the injuries suggests that Medvedev was associated with criminal structures.” According to some reports, the reason for the attack on Medvedev was the supply of low-quality drugs to Dobkin. Meanwhile, commenting on this information, the Kharkiv prosecutor called it untrue. In September 2008, the Dzerzhynsky District Court of Kharkiv closed the case due to the absence of an offense.
The investigation into the criminal case of drug trafficking in Kharkiv found that the defendant, Ihor Havrylov, supplied cocaine to Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin and his brother, Kharkiv Regional Council deputy Dmytro Dobkin. This was reported by Kommersant-Ukraine with reference to the Main Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kharkiv region. According to the police, the pre-trial investigation in the criminal case of drug trafficking in Kharkiv has been completed, and its materials have been submitted to the court. Kharkiv Mayor Mykhailo Dobkin and Kharkiv City Council Secretary Gennadiy Kernes (“Hepa”) are witnesses.
In particular, the PGO’s submission to the Kharkiv Regional Council states that Igor Gavrilov, a 31-year-old Kharkiv resident with a previous conviction, who is the subject of a criminal case under Part 3 of Article 307 of the Criminal Code (“illegal production, manufacture, acquisition, storage, transportation, shipment or sale of narcotic substances by an organized group in particularly large quantities”), bought 42 grams of cocaine in Odesa on April 6 this year for sale.
During the interrogation, Gavrilov said that he had repeatedly supplied cocaine to Dobkin and his brother, Dmytro, a deputy of the Kharkiv Regional Council. According to him, drug use took place in Dobkin’s apartment. Another witness in the case, Oleg Medvedev, said that Gavrilov repeatedly brought cocaine to the apartment. According to him, Kernes’s son Kyrylo “sold ecstasy pills and marijuana” in the Laboratory nightclub located on Myroshnytska Street in Kharkiv in 2004-2006.
Medvedev also said that during meetings where he, Dmitry and Mikhail Dobkin used cocaine together, “the Dobkin brothers constantly left some of the powder for Gennady Kernes.” A Kommersant source in the investigative team noted that “it was precisely such high-ranking customers that led to such a long activity of Igor Gavrilov.”
Separatist
On March 10, 2014, Mikhail Dobkin was detained by the Prosecutor General’s Office and placed in a temporary detention center.
The proceedings against Dobkin were entered into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations on February 27 “on the fact of public calls made on February 12 in Kharkiv during the round table ‘Socio-economic and political processes in post-crisis Ukraine’. He is accused of calling for the decentralization of power in Ukraine through federalization and the creation of the Novorossiysk Union.
On March 11, 2014, Dobkin was placed under house arrest by a court decision.
Criminal prosecution
- On February 27, 2014, the SBU opened an investigation against Mikhail Dobkin under Article 110, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (“Trespass against the territorial integrity and inviolability of Ukraine committed by a representative of the authorities”).
- On March 10, he was summoned for questioning in Kyiv. After the interrogation by the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine, Mikhail Dobkin was arrested and placed in a pre-trial detention center. On March 11, the court imposed a measure of restraint in the form of “partial” house arrest for a period of 2 months (he must be at home in Kyiv every day from 14:00 to 9:00). On April 3, the house arrest was replaced by a “personal commitment”.
- On August 30, Mikhail Dobkin’s lawyer, Yulia Pletneva, announced the closure of the criminal case due to the “absence of corpus delicti in his actions”.
- On September 15, 2016, employees of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine and the Security Service of Ukraine attempted to conduct a search in the house belonging to Mikhail Dobkin’s mother. However, given the fact that Mykhailo Dobkin is registered in this house, it is inviolable as the home of a Member of Parliament of Ukraine.
- On July 13, 2017, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine voted by a majority to strip Mykhailo Dobkin of his parliamentary immunity, detain him and arrest him. The essence of the claims of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine to Dobkin is that, as the mayor of Kharkiv, according to the investigation, he helped his acquaintances, heads of construction companies, to obtain land. The firms were registered not as enterprises but as housing cooperatives, which allowed them to avoid paying land tax. Losses are preliminarily estimated at over UAH 200 million.
Owned cars
Mykhailo Markovych’s and his cohabitant Bozhenko’s fleet of six cars with identical license plates, namely: AH 14-88 MM (Toyota Land Cruiser), AH 14-88 VS (Range Rover), AH 14-88 SV (ZAZ 965), as well as Lexus, Mercedes, Chevrolet minibus, etc.
According to the declaration, 3 cars: Toyota (2007), Toyota (2012), Toyota (2013).
In 2019, Dobkin declared a number of vehicles: four Toyota Land Cruiser cars, watercrafts “Silver”, “Bass Prote”, “Tracker Tundra 21”, a “Teremok” boat, trailers “PA-2-1” and “Odyssey 5”, Porsche 911 Turbo, Mercedes GL 350, BMW 750Li, Daimler Chrysler, Range Rover, Mercedes-Benz CL 500.
Over the past year, Dobkin has purchased three motorcycles: a new Harley-Davidson FLHXSE (price — UAH 1.15 million), a Harley-Davidson FLD (price — UAH 748 thousand), and a motorcycle Dnipro-16 made in 1989 (price — UAH 7 thousand).
Apartments and houses
It is noteworthy that, according to the official income declaration, most Kharkiv officials, including Mr. Dobkin, are limited not only in funds but also in housing conditions. Thus, according to the declaration, he was registered in a 44-square-meter apartment at 2-A Eidemana Street (601, Saltovka).
Mykhailo Dobkin declared UAH 12 million, 470 thousand dollars, 30 thousand euros in cash in 2015, while his wife declared 500 thousand dollars and 550 thousand euros. The politician also declared a whole arsenal of weapons: 8 rifles, 10 carbines and hunting knives. In addition, Dobkin declared a land plot of 16.8 thousand square meters in Kharkiv with a marker, two houses of 1136.9 and 127.6 square meters in Kharkiv, and a 195.4 square meter wine cellar. He also owns a 44.4-square-meter apartment in Kharkiv.
According to his 2019 declaration, Dobkin has the right to use a 16.8 thousand square meter land plot in Kharkiv and residential buildings of 1.1 thousand square meters and 127.6 square meters. In addition, the ex-MP owns a 195.4-square-meter wine cellar and the right to use a 157.3-square-meter apartment in Kharkiv owned by his younger brother, David Dobkin. Moreover, the politician’s family owns three parking spaces in Kharkiv, an 83-square-meter plot of land in Kharkiv, three apartments (229.1 square meters, 152 square meters, 52.6 square meters), and five garages.
Dobkin lives in a house registered in his mother’s name under a dubious scheme
The Kharkiv house where MP Mykhailo Dobkin lives and which was picketed by activists belongs to his mother’s cooperative. She once received the land for free from the city council.
This is evidenced by the register of real rights to real estate, an extract from which is available to Nashi Hroshi.
The MP himself, according to his declaration, has only a 44-square-meter apartment.
On December 24, 2008, members of the Kharkiv City Council transferred a 1.68-hectare plot of land on Tulsky Lane to Triumph Housing Cooperative for free. This is a plot in the Kharkiv forest park. In total, the forest park has several dozen estates, sports and recreational facilities, Mykhailo Dobkin’s residence, and some private land plots that are still undeveloped.
At that time, the founders of the cooperative were Solopov A.V., Davydova I., Davydova G.P.
Olha Solop is a business partner of the son of Kharkiv Mayor Hennadii Kernes, Danylo Pryvalov. Their joint company, Firm Diana LLC, owns the Sumy market in the center of Kharkiv.
Triumph Housing Cooperative is not the only cooperative that was registered in Solopova’s and her friends’ names and received valuable land in Kharkiv for free during the reign of Mykhailo Dobkin and Hennadiy Kernes.
Halyna Davydova is the founder of Parking+ LLC, which annually receives tens of millions of hryvnias in contracts from the city council for road repairs. Davydova has also registered several cooperatives.
In 2011, the cooperative was re-registered to the current owners, Alla Dobkina (Mykhailo Dobkin’s mother) and Mykola and Anastasiia Bozhenko. The maiden name of Dobkin’s wife Alina is Bozhenko.
The Housing Code of the Ukrainian SSR, which is still in effect in Ukraine, allows housing cooperatives to receive free land for the construction of multi-family housing. However, the Code imposes several requirements on the participants of the housing cooperative: its members must permanently reside in the city where the housing will be built, demand better living conditions, and be on the housing waiting list. They also have to be registered with an enterprise, institution, organization, or the executive committee of the council as wishing to join the cooperative.
There must be at least five members of the cooperative, but generally the same number as the number of apartments in the planned building. Members of the cooperative must be under 30 years old.
Neither Davydova nor Solop meet these requirements.
In 2015, the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit demanding that the Kharkiv City Council’s decision to allocate land to Triumph Housing Cooperative be invalidated. Last month, the Kharkiv Regional Economic Court dismissed the claim. According to the court, when establishing a cooperative, one should be guided not by the provisions of the Housing Code, which has been in force in Ukraine since the Soviet Union, but by the Law on Cooperation and the adopted charter of the cooperative. And in this case, the founders of the cooperative did not have to meet all the standards set forth in the code. The prosecutor’s office filed an appeal against this decision, which is still being considered.
So now the plot and the house are owned by Dobkin’s mother’s cooperative.
Income.
According to his 2010 declarations, the total income of Kharkiv Oblast Governor Mykhailo Dobkin is officially about 105,000 hryvnias per year. However, a journalistic investigation casts doubt on the reliability of these figures.
The following year, however, Mykhailo Dobkin declared UAH 5,234,435 in income received in 2011.
In particular, the governor’s salary amounted to UAH 86,303, dividends and interest — UAH 5,148,069, insurance payments — UAH 63. The governor’s accounts in banks and other financial institutions amount to UAH 54,018.
During 2019, Dobkin received the following income: salary in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine — UAH 313.1 thousand, reimbursement of expenses for parliamentary activities — UAH 304.2 thousand, scholarship of the honorary citizen of Kharkiv — UAH 250 thousand, a gift from his wife in cash — UAH 10 million, salary at the main place of work at PJSC “Volodymyr-Volynska Poultry Farm” — UAH 197.6 thousand, income from the alienation of movable property — UAH 15 thousand, dividends in LLC “Oreola” — UAH 788.4 thousand, interest — UAH 3.5 thousand.
Mykhailo Dobkin falsified his higher education
According to journalists, Mykhailo Dobkin has a fake diploma of education. He graduated from the Kharkiv National University of Internal Affairs with a degree in law, but as it turned out, he did not attend the sessions, as he was traveling during the session. There is also no information about his attendance.
Summary.
Mikhail Dobkin, despite his attempts to do good deeds, still remains a liar, embezzler and a lover of “white powder,” which completely negates all his “goodness.” Falsification of documents, money laundering on Kharkiv public transport, addiction to drugs — this is how the former mayor of Kharkiv is remembered.