Andrii Kovalenko, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service (STS) in Kyiv, has drawn the attention of anti-corruption investigators due to his declared financial transactions. According to an analysis of his asset declarations for 2023 and 2024, the official received 690,000 hryvnias from selling movable property to employees of the very department he managed.
Andrii Oleksandrovych Kovalenko previously headed the legal support department of the Kyiv City STS Main Directorate before being promoted to Deputy Head of the same main directorate. However, public attention is focused on the property sections of his annual reports, which reveal suspicious financial ties with his former and current subordinates.
The public portion of the declarations does not provide a detailed breakdown of what specific material assets or movable property were sold. Furthermore, the documents completely lack any comparison between the transaction amounts and actual market prices, making it difficult to independently assess their economic validity and fairness.
The first high-profile transaction was recorded in the 2023 declaration, where Kovalenko reported 310,000 hryvnias in income from the alienation of movable property. The source of income was listed as Yaroslav Mykhailovych Havryliuk, the person who currently heads the legal support department of the Kyiv tax office—meaning he effectively inherited the position from Kovalenko.
The situation repeated itself in the 2024 report, where the official declared another 380,000 hryvnias from a similar sale. This time, the buyer was Karina Serhiivna Kovalchuk, who also worked in the same department—initially as deputy head of the general litigation support department, and later as head of the department for legal support of operational activities.
Combined across both documents, the total amount of the transactions reaches 690,000 hryvnias, with both buyers being direct subordinates or successors of the official within a single legal department of the tax service. Lawyers and anti-corruption experts emphasize the systemic nature of such financial interactions.
«The mere fact of buying property from a boss is not a violation. But two consecutive transactions, both within the same legal department of the tax office, no longer look like a random sale,» analysts of public governance processes point out.
Currently, there is no official internal evaluation in the public domain regarding the presence or absence of a conflict of interest in these actions. The Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in Kyiv and the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) are expected to provide public explanations and verify whether such transactions conceal hidden risks for the civil service.