Kyivzelenstroy and ragweed: National police investigate Mamoyan’s project to eliminate weeds

The National Police are investigating the facts of the possible misappropriation of budget funds in the fight against ambrosia in the capital in 2021. According to law enforcers, Kyivzelenstroy, having transferred more than UAH 34 million to its contractor Esco-Engineering LLC, significantly overpaid. In particular, the investigators found that the company valued its services for Kyiv 4 times more expensive than for Poltava. Even earlier, journalists found out that during the implementation of this contract, the cost of the Ambrostop drug, which is sprayed with harmful plants, could even be overstated ten times. It is also interesting that the actual owners of Esco-Engineering LLC are in the entourage of the deputy of the Kyiv City Council Sergey Mamoyan (elected from the now banned Opposition Platform for Life, in the collage on the left), on whose initiative the city authorities approved the corresponding Concept for the elimination of quarantine weeds.

As became known KVlaw enforcement officers are investigating the facts of possible “budget cuts” during the implementation of the project by the municipal association (KO) “Kievzelenstroy” to eliminate quarantine weeds in the capital.

Consequence carried out within the framework of criminal proceedings No. 42021102010000159, which was opened by the Main Directorate of the National Police of Kyiv on August 27, 2021. Preliminary legal qualification of crimes committed by the defendants in this case – part 3 of Art. 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (appropriation, embezzlement or possession of property through abuse of official position, committed repeatedly or by prior agreement by a group of persons).

KV decided to analyze what exactly the defendants in this case are charged with and which influential persons are associated with this story.

Esco-engineering. Or how the capital struggled with ambrosia

June 30, 2021 between KO “Kyivzelenstroy” and LLC “Esko-Engineering” was concluded agreement on the provision of services for the elimination of quarantine weeds by a chemical method. According to the contract, the specified LLC was to treat these plants with a special preparation based on the natural mineral bischofite on the territory of 630 hectares. This treatment was to be “carried out at an early stage in the active growth phase using a fine sprayer or special equipment”, and this should have led to the fact that the plants wither within 14 days (if necessary, the contractor must repeat the treatment. – KV ).

According to the contract, the cost of these services was UAH 34.77 million (UAH 5.5 per sq.m.). The agreement provided that it was valid until December 31, 2021. In the end, according to the information of the Prozorro system, Esco-Engineering LLC received funds for the services provided under this agreement.

It is important to understand here that these works were carried out within the framework of the Concept for the elimination of quarantine weeds in Kyiv, which was approved decision of the capital City Council No. 414/455 of March 11, 2021. According to it, the leadership of the capital instructed Kievzelenstroy to carry out measures “to localize and eliminate foci of ragweed and hogweed (a poisonous plant whose juice causes burns. – KV) by treating them with chemicals to reduce the number of cases of allergies among the population.” And the deputy of the Kyiv City Council acted as the ideological inspirer of this Concept Sergey Mamoyan (now non-factional, elected from the now banned pro-Russian party “Opposition Platform – During Life” (“OPPL”), is the deputy chairman of the commission on transport, communications and advertising). It was he who, on March 2, 2021, registered in the capital city council the corresponding draft decision on his approval.

During investigations law enforcement officers drew attention to the fact that the cost of processing ambrosia, which was carried out in Kiev by the specified company under the aforementioned agreement using the Ambrostop preparation (based on bischofite), was almost 4 times higher than the price of similar services ordered in April 2020 she has the Poltava City Council. We are talking about the fact that Kyivzelenstroy paid 55.2 thousand hryvnias for processing 1 hectare of weeds, while its colleagues from Poltava only 13.6 thousand hryvnias. According to investigators, this fact may indicate an overpricing of the purchase made by the capital.

Note that in the summer of 2021 the media reportedthat the cost of Ambrostop, which was included in the contract with Kievzelenstroy, could in general be overestimated by almost ten times. In particular, Poltava journalists found out that in 2020 the cost of one liter of this drug was 19 hryvnias, for Poltava LLC Esco-Engineering set the price at 45.5 hryvnias, and for Kiev – 184 hryvnias.

In addition, the National Police established that Esco-Engineering LLC during 2020-2021 actively provided contracting services for construction and installation and other works to various “budgetary structures” of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and other regions, although the number of workers of this company “did not responded to the work required to complete the work within the stipulated time. Also, according to investigators, the specified LLC has relationships with enterprises that have signs of fictitiousness. Obviously, in this way, law enforcement officers hinted that the execution of the agreement on the elimination of ragweed in Kyiv definitely had certain risks.

Further more interesting. In July 2022, the Goloseevskaya district prosecutor’s office applied to Kyivzelenstroy with a letter to provide copies of documents on its financial and economic relations with Esco-Engineering LLC. A week later, the leadership of the communal association refused to satisfy law enforcement officers in their demands. For what reasons, the court rulings do not specify, but most often in such cases, the capital’s “communal services” have several arguments: that they supposedly are not required to provide any documents; that these documents are necessary for economic activity, etc.

For this reason, the prosecutor’s office applied to the Goloseevsky District Court of Kyiv with a request for permission to the mentioned documents, and on September 21, 2022, such a request from law enforcement officers was satisfied.

Later, on November 18, 2022, the lawyers of the Kivizelenstroy Co. sent a petition to the Goloseevsky Department of the National Police of Kyiv to close this criminal proceeding (the court rulings also do not indicate the reasons for which law enforcement officers should do this. – KV). But they did not wait for a response from the investigators in the communal association, in connection with which they turned to the Goloseevsky District Court with a demand that the servants of Themis oblige the law enforcement officers to consider this petition and provide a response to the communal association. December 21, 2022 court satisfied Kievzelenstroy’s demand.

At the beginning of 2023, the lawyers of this KO already applied to the Kiev Court of Appeal with a petition to appeal against the aforementioned decision of the Goloseevsky District Court of September 21, 2022, according to which law enforcement officers were granted permission to access documents “on ambrosia”. Such a request was justified by the fact that the withdrawal of these documents would deprive Kyivzelenstroy of the opportunity to carry out its activities. January 11, 2023 Court of Appeal refused in the opening of such a production due to the fact that the communal association did not give reasons why it would not be able to work without these “papers”.

It is worth noting that this is not the first time that the leadership of Kyivzelenstroy has prevented law enforcement officers from carrying out their work. For example, as part of investigations into abuses during the overhaul of the Pobeda park (Dneprovsky district) and the reconstruction of the Natalka park (Obolonsky district) in the capital, the lawyers of this CO also tried to appeal the seizure of documents in court. Moreover, during the investigation of Pobeda Park, it turned out that the project for its overhaul was badly damaged as a result of some kind of “flooding”, which is why the forensic experts could not check the entire amount of work performed for compliance with the project documentation.

Poltava trace and scandalous beneficiaries

According to the Youcontrol analytical system, Esco-Engineering LLC was registered in July 2019. Since February 2022, the head, founder and ultimate beneficiary of this company has been Dmitry Zatovko from Kiev. Since April 2020, these positions have been joined by a resident of Poltava, Lyudmila Nechitailo.

The specified company, as noted by law enforcement officers, is active a participant in tenders held by various municipal and state structures from different parts of Ukraine. In total, during its existence, Esco-Engineering LLC has concluded 35 contractor agreements. But it was the agreement with Kyivzelenstroy that became “the most profitable” – this company earned less than 3 million hryvnias on all other contracts.

It should be noted that Kyivzelenstroy purchased the aforementioned Ambrostop even before the approval of the Concept for the elimination of quarantine weeds and independently carried out the processing of the territories. In particular, in 2020, this drug will be provided to the communal association supplied Poltava LLC Bishofit TMwhich during 2019-2020 provided similar services KP “Decorative cultures” of the Poltava City Council. It is noteworthy that Esco-Engineering LLC was the only competitor of this company during the corresponding auction.

Bishofit MD LLC and Esco-Engineering LLC have a more than obvious connection. So, one of the co-owners of Bishofit MD LLC Konstantin Stotika (a resident of the city of Pereyaslav, Kyiv region) until December 2019 was the sole ultimate beneficiary of Esco-Engineering LLC. In turn, the head of Bishofit MD LLC is a resident of Poltava, Elena Chuguevets, who for a short time, during April 2020, was the official owner of Esco-Engineering LLC.

In 2018-2020, one of the co-owners and head of Bishofit MD LLC was Valery Pryadko. He is known, in particular, as a deputy of the Poltava Regional Council of the last VII convocation (in 2015-2020), to which he was elected from the Party of Ordinary People of Sergei Kaplina. Together with him, Sergey Mamoyan, the author of the Anti-Ambrosia Concept of Kyiv, also passed to the same local government from the same political force.

It is noteworthy that in 2020 Valery Pryadko received 4.5 years in prison as part of the case for providing an unlawful benefit in the amount of UAH 35,000 to employees of the National Police in 2019. The investigation proved that Pryadko, who at that time was the acting head of the Poltavapharm enterprise, together with his subordinate “for money”, tried to expedite the provision of special permits by law enforcement officers related to the circulation of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and precursors in pharmacies. Now Valery Pryadko’s business affairs are handled by his daughter Anna – in particular, she owns the largest share in the authorized capital of the aforementioned Bishofit MD LLC (in the amount of 45%).

The aforementioned Sergey Mamoyan has not previously appeared in high-profile public scandals. At the same time, the media regularly mentions his brother Suto Mamoyan, a people’s deputy of the current 9th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada (he was elected from the same Opposition Platform for Life).

For example, in 2019, entrepreneur Valery Shevchik accused Suto Mamoyan and Mikhail Brodsky (a well-known businessman, people’s deputy in 1998-2002, deputy of the Kyiv City Council in 2006-2008) in putting pressure on his activities – they say, these people demanded money from him to extract and sell sand. In 2020, people’s deputy Mamoyan introduced in its annual declaration, information about the purchase of Toyota Land Cruiser 200 cars, the cost of which was significantly lower than the market value – only 20 thousand hryvnias each. The people’s deputy himself explained such a price by the fact that the cars, they say, would be “broken”.

In addition, at the beginning of 2023, Ukrayinska Pravda reported that Suto Mamoyan regularly flies to the United Arab Emirates, where he meets with the owners of a large betting company in order to solve its problems and get mediation between it and the Ukrainian authorities.

“Esko-engineering” and corruption in “Kyivzelenstroy”

As KV has repeatedly reported, the activities of KO Kyivzelenstroy are accompanied by regular scandals with criminal overtones.

For example, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau assumes that a group of persons, which includes, incl. former officials of Kyivzelenstroy, could embezzle more than 115 million hryvnias in 2016-2018 during the procurement of special equipment by these KOs. According to the investigation, budgetary funds were appropriated through a dubious rise in the price of equipment after the conclusion of contracts for its supply, and later the defendants in this case invested these financial resources in housing construction in Italy. However, as of today, none of the current or former senior staff of the Kyivzelenstroy CO has received a guilty verdict.

Second example. Since July 2020, the State Bureau of Investigation has been investigating the facts of the provision of “budget kickbacks” to officials of the Kyivzelenstroy CO. According to law enforcement officials, in 2021-2022, one of the officials of this communal association received about UAH 1.6 million in “kickbacks” from three contractors from projects carried out at the expense of the capital’s budget. It is noted that a “courier” and an employee of the Economic Security Bureau were attached to the scheme for receiving bribes. The first was entrusted with the function of “transporting money”, and the second had to make sure that no one was “caught red-handed.” While the defendants face up to 12 years in prison.

Since July 16, 2019, KO “Kyivzelenstroy” has been managing Alexey Korol (on the collage to the right). Until December 10, 2020, he was acting CEO, and from December 11, 2020, he was appointed CEO.

This communal association is subordinate to the Department of Ecology and Natural Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration, which since January 11, 2021 has been headed by Alexander Vozny. The activities of this department have been controlled by the Deputy Chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration for more than eight years. Petr Panteleev.

Ivan Kulik, translation Skeleton.Info

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