Research into the ownership structure of Housebuilding Company No. 7, which is constructing a 13-building housing complex ordered by the Security Service of Ukraine, has revealed little.
The project is controversial because it is taking place on donated government land and, while the 3,269 units are supposed to go to war veterans, it appears that only 327 apartments will go to them and the rest will be sold at market rates.
The security service, or SBU, hasn’t yet responded to Kyiv Post questions about the complex.
Current records name Roman Bielik, a resident of Stovpyahy village in Kyiv Oblast, as the ultimate owner of the company since September. Bielik’s profile can still be found on the website of Kyiv-based law firm Prokopenko, Chyuko and Partners, where Bielik is described as “curator of financial consulting” with 15 years of experience.
When the construction firm was chosen to develop the SBU residential project, it was majority-owned by Mykola Doychev, an experienced builder. In September, the SBU again favored Doychev, this time as the director of Compas Group, awarding a Hr 126 million deal to complete the construction of two residential buildings in Kyiv.
Housebuilding Company No. 7 and Compas Group are registered in Kyiv at the same address.
The court registry offers additional information on the SBU’s construction partner.
It contains a curious ruling on April 22 by the Solomiansky District Court in Kyiv.
It involves a Hr 1.25 million loan that Kyiv-based Terra Bank made to Housebuilding Company No. 7 in January 2014. During the year, the named lender, as well as its guarantors, changed three times, while the bank that originally issued the money was declared insolvent by the central bank. In the end, the court ruled that the construction company, jointly with Traektoria Llc, a company owned by the bank’s board chairman, Serhiy Klymenko, should repay the loan to an individual whose name was redacted from the ruling.
In September, the state Deposit Guarantee Fund accused Klymenko of embezzling depositors’ money. Klymenko, the bank’s supervisory board and shareholder was placed in pre-trial detention and reportedly released on bail in November. According to the deposit fund, Klymenko in January-February 2014 abused his office to funnel more than Hr 1 billion in depositors’ money to proxy firms as unsecured loans.
A billboard lists the information about Bergen residential complex that will consist of thirteen 25-27-story buildings with a 91-space parking lot, a shopping mall, playgrounds and a kindergarten. (Volodymyr Petrov)
“These transactions had every indication of being fraudulent,” a Deposit Guarantee Fund statement reads, “as the firms had provided no security for the loans and didn’t use the money for business purposes.”
Klymenko is a long-time partner of Maksym Lutsky, formerly a member of parliament with the Party of Regions and a deputy rector of the National Aviation University. In 2012, Klymenko was Lutsky’s official trustee during his parliamentary campaign in Kyiv, and served as his aide when Lutsky got elected. From December 2013 to August 2014, Lutsky’s wife Olena Savytska headed Terra Bank’s auditing commission.
The deputy head of Housebuilding Company No. 7, Yuriy Sokolnytsky, denies that his company was part of a fraudulent scheme and that it has any links to either Klymenko or Lutsky. He insisted that involving Klymenko’s Traektoria as a guarantor of the loan was a decision that Housebuilding Company No. 7 “was not informed about.”
“When a bank (runs into trouble), the controlling agencies arrive and (the bank) starts covering up its weaknesses,” Sokolnytsky said. “In this case, it’s the absence of any security on this loan. So the bank went the easy way and made a surety agreement with its own company. At the time, this company, as well as its owner (Klymenko), were clean.”
