A deputy from the Servant of the People Oleksiy Romanko bought 6 real estate objects in Kyiv for $1 million (almost UAH 40 million!!!) in 2 years of being a deputy.
For many of the “new faces” who came into power in the last elections, the beginning of their political career coincided with the rapid growth of their fortunes. And even a full-scale Russian invasion does not prevent those in power from enriching themselves through the new opportunities they have received in office.
So, a modest “servant of the people” from the Sumy Regional Council, Aleksey Romanko, in just two years of being in an elected body, turned from an ordinary entrepreneur into the owner of six real estate objects in Kiev for a total of almost $1 million. How a deputy from the small town of Shostka got millions for such acquisitions so quickly is easy to understand, given the number of corruption scandals in which this deputy appeared.
Before the 2020 local elections, Aleksey Romanko was little known even in his native Sumy region. At the time of joining the regional council, he was a private entrepreneur and the owner of Zavod Satel, a company engaged in timber harvesting and trading. And a few years ago, the future deputy earned his living as a forester in one of the forestry enterprises. But after getting into the regional council and also from the Servant of the People party in power, everything quickly changed in his life.
Kyiv apartments of the Shostka deputy
Before joining the regional council, the novice politician, according to real estate registers, owned only three real estate objects in Shostka and Shostka district. This is an 80 sq. m in Shostka, a country house in the village of Makovoye, Shostkinsky district, with an area of 67 sq. m and non-residential premises in Shostka with an area of 780 sq. m with a garage.
All these properties were purchased by Romanko between 2017 and 2020. As you can see, Romanko could not be called a poor person before the elections, but after receiving a deputy mandate, new real estate objects began to appear in his property at a rate that was by no means natural.
Less than six months after his election, in July 2021, Romanko buys two one-room apartments with an area of about 50 square meters at once. m each in one of the houses on Poznyaki in Kyiv. On the 7th and 17th floors. The cost of one such apartment in this area is now up to 100 thousand dollars, and in 2021, even before the full-scale invasion, prices were noticeably higher.
Literally four months later, Romanko bought another apartment and several non-residential premises. This time already at the elite Pechersk. So, on October 13, a two-room apartment in Pechersk with an area of almost 47 square meters appeared in the property of Romanko. m and non-residential property with an area of 67 sq. m.
In this area, the price per square meter of real estate is at least 2.5 thousand dollars, so the last two objects should cost Romanko about 280 thousand dollars.
A year has passed, and already during the full-scale war, Alexei Romanko bought two more apartments in the capital. This time, the choice of the Shostka deputy fell on a new residential complex near the Levoberezhnaya metro station. On September 29, 2022, Romanko bought three-room apartments of 97 sq. m and 88 sq. m. At today’s prices, these two apartments will also cost about 280 thousand dollars.
It is impossible not to notice that the longer Romanko is in power, the more expensive his property becomes. If the first two apartments bought six months after receiving the mandate can be considered budget apartments, then the acquisition in Pechersk and Levoberezhnaya is, to a certain extent, elite real estate. But Romanko did not limit himself to only six objects in Kyiv. His closest relatives are also owners of apartments in the capital.
The deputy’s mother, Tatyana Petrovna Romanko, purchased an apartment of 56.8 square meters in the Riverstone premium residential complex on the picturesque bank of the Dnieper. In the same complex, an old friend, Romanko’s partner in business and deputy from the Servant of the People party in the Sumy Regional Council, Alexander Slyusar, has two apartments.
The cost of the deputy’s mother’s apartment in the Riverstone complex is about $140,000. In addition, she is the owner of a house in Shostka with an area of 240 square meters. m.
Thus, the value of all real estate owned by deputy Romanko and his mother is about 850 thousand dollars. That is, in two years of being in power, the Shostka businessman, who recently sawed and sold timber, became practically a dollar millionaire. But the source of deputy Romanko’s superprofits is quite easy to establish, having familiarized himself with journalistic investigations into corruption in the Sumy Regional Council.
Shostka schemes
Back in April 2021, when Romanko had just become a deputy of the regional council and, apparently, was already asking the price of the first real estate in the capital, the well-known Sumy activist and anti-corruption activist Yaroslav Bondarenko conducted his own investigation and collected evidence of Romanko’s involvement in the illegal sale of timber.
According to Bondarenko, large quantities of round timber are sold abroad from Shostka, which do not have the necessary chips, which means that it was cut down illegally. One of the trucks filled with such illegally cut down forest was even detained by law enforcement officers and sent to a penalty area. But when it turned out that the owner of the car and the goods in it is the current deputy of the regional council from the pro-presidential party, the car was returned to the owner and this story was quickly forgotten.
As Bondarenko notes, in the scheme of illegal logging and sale of forests, his friend and neighbor of his mother in Kiev real estate Slyusar, also a deputy from the Servant of the People, are actively involved together with Romanko.
Another high-profile corruption story happened to Romanko already during a full-scale invasion. In the fall of 2022, a loud scandal occurred in the Sumy region. According to the State Bureau of Investigation, more than 40 wagons with diesel fuel and liquefied gas were stolen in the region in the amount of more than UAH 27 million. This property belonged to Ukrainian entrepreneurs. On the fact of this crime, criminal proceedings No. 62022170040000021 were opened, and one of the defendants in the scheme, Viktor Gubenko, chairman of the Shostka district state administration, has already been handed a suspicion. According to media reports, Aleksey Romanko is also involved in the implementation of this scheme.
Another deal, in which Romanko is suspected, is the implementation of a scheme for fraudulently taking possession of land plots, which should be transferred free of charge to residents of the Shostkinsky district for their own agriculture. Law enforcement agencies opened criminal proceedings on the fact of illegal re-registration of land plots No. 42022202550000008. But the results of the investigation of this production are not yet available, obviously because the deputies from the ruling party are the defendants here.
As you can see, the sources of superprofits of the Shostka deputy are extremely doubtful from the point of view of legality and deserve more attention from law enforcement officers than we are seeing now, and a harsh reaction from the leadership of the Servant of the People party.
By and large, Romanko’s case is similar to the scandal that recently involved another “servant of the people”, people’s deputy from the Chernihiv region Pavel Khalimon. Let us recall that in the summer of 2022 he acquired a luxurious estate in the center of Kyiv in the name of his cohabitant. When, thanks to a journalistic investigation, this story became public, Khalimon was dismissed from the post of chairman of the Chernihiv regional organization “Servants of the People”, and criminal proceedings were opened against the people’s deputy under the article “illegal enrichment”.
After all, the very fact that during the war, when the defenders of Ukraine on the front lines need daily help in acquiring protective equipment, cars, drones or thermal imagers, incumbent MPs spend tens of millions on luxury real estate, is absolutely immoral. After all, only for the money that Romanko and Khalimon spent on their beautiful life, it would be possible to provide an entire combat unit with the best equipment. We hope that in the history of the dizzying enrichment of Alexei Romanko, competent persons will draw the right conclusions.