Each year, Ukrainian government officials submit an online declaration listing their and their families’ assets and income.
The official deadline for the declarations is April 1. According to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP), 791,872 declarations were submitted.
As every year, the annual declarations highlighted the enormous material gap between top officials and most Ukrainians.
President Volodymyr Zelensky declared $700,000 in income, the recently appointed Head of the National Bank Kyrylo Shevchenko declared a $780,000 salary, while deputy head of the Constitutional Court judge Serhiy Holovaty declared owning a church.
Lawmakers, judges, and government officials declared piles of cash, expensive cars, watches, and other luxuries.
Meanwhile, the average wage in Ukraine in December 2020 was $515.
Now, the NACP will investigate the declarations looking for undeclared and illegally obtained assets.
However, to receive a criminal penalty for lying on the declaration, an official must hide over Hr 9 million ($325,000). Those who hide property worth less, face only a fine of under $1,800.
“So why wouldn’t lawmakers (and other government officials) simply lie in their asset declarations?” says Vitaliy Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Kyiv-based watchdog group.
Zelensky’s royalties
Asset declarations of top government officials receive the most attention.
President Zelensky and his wife Olena Zelenska have declared seven apartments, six luxurious watches, over $700,000 in bank accounts and an additional $650,000 in cash.
Despite owning seven apartments, the president has declared that he uses a state-owned residence near Kyiv. The residence is 4,000 square meters and is provided to the president for free.
During his election campaign, Zelensky said he won’t use state residencies, proposing to turn them into summer camps for children. But a year later, it emerged that he actually moved to a state residence. He said it was temporary.
In 2020, Zelensky earned $470,000 from selling two houses, one in Ukraine, the other one in Italy.
Additionally, Zelensky, who was a successful actor and TV producer before taking office in 2019, earned $165,000 in royalties from his Kvartal 95 and Kinostolytsia production studios.
Zelensky’s presidential salary was Hr 336,000 ($12,218) in 2020.
Zelensky’s Chief of Staff Andriy Yermak received a salary of Hr 444,500 ($16,165) in 2020. He owns one apartment in Kyiv and a car, and has over $200,000 in cash. Yermak is owed over Hr 8.3 million ($300,000) by Garnet Media Group which he owns.
Avakov’s antique collections
Zelensky and Yermak are far from being the richest government officials.
Having been in public service for nearly two decades, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov accumulated a collection of luxuries and antique objects. He describes them in his annual declarations in exceptional detail.
This year, too, Avakov declared several collections of coins, among them a collection of “2,661 copper, bronze, silver and golden coins” which includes Roman Empire coins, with the oldest ones dating back to the 2nd century BC.
Avakov has a collection of paintings, mostly by Ukrainian artists, and one lithograph by Pablo Picasso; two collections of stamps; a collection of sculptures; a collection of arms and a collection of wines numbering 748 bottles.
The oldest and most expensive wine bottles are mentioned separately, such as Chateau Mouton-Rothschild bottled in 1945.
Avakov and his wife have some $390,000 and Hr 1 million in the banks, and around $150,000 in cash in a variety of currencies — including Australian dollars, euros and Japanese Yen.
Avakov also keeps €1.7 million in Italian banks and an additional Hr 200,000 ($7,200) in precious metals.
“All other properties remained unchanged compared to 2019, except that there were slightly more books and slightly less wine,” wrote Avakov on Facebook.
Government officials and their assets
Other top officials declared high salaries, cars and houses.
Shevchenko, who was appointed the National Bank head on July 16, received an Hr 2.5 million ($90,000) salary from the bank and an additional Hr 19 million ($690,000) salary from Ukrgazbank, a state-owned bank which he led prior to being appointed to the National Bank.
Shevchenko has over $3.5 million in a foreign bank, several land plots in Ukraine and over $200,000 in cash.
Parliament Speaker Dmytro Razumkov declared over $1.2 million in cash. Prosecutor General Iryna Venedyktova earned Hr 1 million ($36,000) in 2020. Her husband had a slightly bigger salary — he made Hr 1.2 million.
Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal has $235,000 in cash, a house in Lviv and several land plots.
The controversial Chairman of the Constitutional Court Oleksandr Tupytsky has finally declared his house and land in occupied Crimea that journalists discovered to be missing from his declarations. Tupytsky has been behind the October court ruling which allowed government officials to escape prosecution for hiding their assets.
Tupytsky was hiding his house in occupied Crimea, which he obtained in 2018 and declared it only three years later. He was fired by Zelensky on March 27 but the legality of his firing is being disputed. The decision came after months of conflict between Zelensky and the Constitutional Court.
Rich opposition
The leaders of Ukraine’s main opposition parties have also accumulated extraordinary wealth.
Ukraine’s most notorious pro-Kremlin politician Viktor Medvedchuk, leader of the 44-member Opposition Platform – For Life faction, declared 4 houses.
Among them is a 1,000-square-meter house in Russian-occupied Crimea, located on a 5,620-square-meter land plot.
But that’s not the biggest house owned by Medvedchuk. He has a 1,773-square-meter house and six hectares of land in Kyiv and over 100 hectares (1 square kilometer) in Yuriv, a village 50 kilometers west of Kyiv.
Medvedchuk has over $16 million in banks and over $1.7 million in cash. His favorite currencies are euros and Russian rubles.
Yulia Tymoshenko, the leader of the 24-member Batkivshchyna faction in parliament, has $5.5 million in cash. Her husband owns an additional $500,000 in cash.
The cash came from a money transfer of Hr 148.35 million ($5.5 million) from a U.S. firm.
Tymoshenko said in her asset declaration that she received the money on April 24 from U.S. law firm Reid Collins & Tsai LLP as part of a pre-trial settlement of compensation for political repressions against her in 2011-2014.
However, Tymoshenko did not reveal anything about the lawsuit, including who paid the settlement.
In 2011, Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on abuse of power charges in a case that was later recognized as politically motivated by Ukrainian and European authorities. At the time, she was the main political foe of then-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Ukrainian politicians have a penchant for storing large sums in cash. But none declared as much of it as ex-President Petro Poroshenko.
Poroshenko, now a lawmaker leading the 27-member European Solidarity faction, keeps $51.2 million and Hr 423 million ($15.3 million) in cash. He also keeps several million in foreign bank accounts.
Ukrainian political observers have long accused politicians of writing in absurd cash sums, which are untraceable, to later legalize vast riches they obtain that don’t match their income.
Poroshenko is the owner of the Roshen confectionery company. Forbes estimates his net worth to be $1.6 billion.
Poroshenko has declared spending nearly Hr 80 million ($2.9 million) in 2020. Over, $1.1 million of it was spent on legal services.
In 2020, Poroshenko was charged with abuse of office, money laundering and tax evasion. He denies all accusations and says the charges against him were politically motivated.
Kira Rudyk, leader of the 20-member Voice faction, sold cryptocurrencies for Hr 1 million ($37,000) and owns $403,000 and Hr 800,000 in cash. She also has $200,000 in foreign banks.
Weird possessions
As it happens every year, some officials declared odd possessions.
In October 2020, Serhiy Holovaty was one of the Constitutional Court judges that deprived the National Agency for Corruption Prevention of most of its powers. Holovaty had a conflict of interest but still voted for the decision, which is illegal.
The agency said it had identified incorrect information regarding assets worth Hr 3.6 million in Holovaty’s asset declaration.
Now Holovaty declared something new: a church.
According to Holovaty’s declaration, since 2010, he has owned a church in Cherkasy Oblast. In his last year’s declaration, he surprisingly forgot that he has such an odd possession. However, he doesn’t have to worry: Thanks to the court’s ruling that he supported, there’s no criminal punishment for hiding assets cheaper than Hr 9 million.
The church isn’t the weirdest possession found on officials’ declaration.
A member of the Kharkiv city council Javid Said, who represents the pro-Kremlin Opposition Platform, has declared owning a lion. The document didn’t specify whether it was an actual living lion.
