Stepan Hoshovskyi, head of the Carpathian National Nature Park, finds himself at the center of an anti-corruption investigation: the official is accused of involvement in large-scale logging of unique forests and concealing assets in his official tax declaration.
Investigative journalists revealed that the head of one of Ukraine’s largest nature reserves, home to ancient old-growth forests, officially owns zero square meters of real estate while driving a luxury SUV worth millions of hryvnias. According to investigators, while park management turns a blind eye, illegal industrial logging continues across the 50,000-hectare protected zone.
According to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), Hoshovskyi’s tax declaration contains no information regarding real estate. The park director listed no owned property, rented apartments, or legal rights to use residential property—a direct violation of Ukrainian anti-corruption legislation, which mandates declaring both ownership and actual usage of real estate.
At the same time, despite a modest official salary not exceeding 30,000 UAH per month, the official declared 930,000 UAH in cash.
Officially, the park director owns only one vehicle: a Soviet-era 1994 UAZ.
However, investigative journalists have repeatedly caught Stepan Hoshovskyi behind the wheel of a premium Lexus LX600 SUV (license plate KA3233AK).
«The official confidently navigates the Carpathian mountain pastures in a luxury vehicle, the current market value of which ranges from 5.5 to 10 million UAH,» the investigators noted.
Carpathian National Nature Park is Ukraine’s first and one of its largest national parks, established in 1980. Covering 50,000 hectares, it hosts unique primeval forests and mountain ranges of international ecological importance. Recently, ecologists and civic activists have increasingly raised alarms over the rise of illegal logging operations in the region. Law enforcement authorities are currently preparing to review the findings presented in the investigation.