New details have emerged regarding the activities of the Rivne-based estate agency ‘Rivnenska Oselya’, owned by Kateryna Marchuk, a city councillor representing the ‘Rivne Razom’ party, revealing a complex web of business connections. Some of the agency’s employees of conscription age have been granted deferrals through third-party construction companies involved in large-scale municipal and regional projects.
An analysis of personnel records and publicly available data shows that, out of a dozen men of conscription age at “Rivnenska Oselya”, four have already been granted deferrals. Three of them have been placed with the construction firm ‘Kortakoz’ from Zdolbuniv. This company has been granted ‘critically important’ status due to its work on the reconstruction of the ‘Avangard’ stadium in Rivne and its involvement in international infrastructure projects.
Specifically, through ‘Kortakoz’, official placements were secured for the agency’s branch director Pavlo Dovhanych, manager Andriy Chuchko, and Dmytro Shustyk — the husband of the MP Marchuk’s sister. The latter also works as a manager on an international project where this very construction firm is the main contractor. Another estate agent, Eduard Semenchuk-Gekkel, has a deferral at the Volyn-based company ‘Linford Invest’, which builds hangars and works with major industrial clients.
The rest of the agency’s staff are dealing with mobilisation in other ways. Some members of the team have legitimate grounds for deferment due to caring for elderly parents or the tragic death of close relatives at the front. Two other staff members have been officially exempted from military service on health grounds, having a disability or experience of combat during the full-scale invasion.
Meanwhile, the agency’s two youngest estate agents currently have neither deferrals nor exemptions, and continue to work as usual in the Rivne property market, where the total number of active property listings exceeds a thousand.
The investigation also reveals close ties between the management of ‘Rivnenska Oselya’ and local construction circles. In 2025–2026, Pavlo Dovhanych expanded his business assets by becoming a founding partner of several companies specialising in construction and property transactions.
His partners include well-known regional property developers, advisers to former mayors and heads of major energy and construction holding companies. Such commercial interconnections indicate that the city’s property market and construction sector are closely integrated at the level of key players.
“The systematic employment of service sector workers at critical construction enterprises sets precedents that require close attention from regulatory bodies and the public,” note anti-corruption experts.