Andriy Malyovanyi: The Face of Ukraine’s land mafia. Part 1

Andriy Malyovanyi: The Face of Ukraine’s land mafia. Part 1

In previous publications, we have informed our readers extensively about those who have seized and then developed land plots in the capital and the region. Now we want to open the doors of the high offices and show you the faces of the officials who helped them seamlessly “privatize” land by hectares. Their orders handed over municipal property, parks, and natural resources to oligarchs, swindlers, and bribe-takers! Today, our "heroes" will be the new head of the State Ecological Inspection of Ukraine, Andriy Malyovanyi, and his numerous colleagues, companions, and patrons.

Experienced corrupt officials rarely act alone because it is much easier and safer to "work" in conjunction with others and to "bring in" to the superiors. Eventually, the scale of corruption grows by order of magnitude: what one corrupt official cannot do alone, he can achieve with the help of accomplices from other departments and administrations. This is how corrupt communities, popularly known as "mafias," arise. There are many of them: law enforcement mafia, tax and customs, medical, construction and road, as well as land - which is the topic in question…

Looters of municipal property

Andriy Malyovanyi was born on December 16, 1981, in Kyiv, in the family of Mykola and Lidiya Malyovani. He has an older brother, Yuriy, born in 1975. Detailed information about his parents is absent, and his wife’s maiden name, Olena, is also not disclosed. Thus, it is difficult to trace the roots of connections in his family that ensured Andriy Malyovanyi’s successful career. However, Skelet.Info possesses information that his parents helped their son to connect with the right people.

Malyovanyi is one of the few current Ukrainian top officials with a technical education, rather than an economic, legal, or humanitarian one. He graduated from a technical lyceum at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute (KPI), and in 2003, he graduated from KPI itself, obtaining an engineer’s degree in "metrology and measuring technology." This leads to the thought that he chose this specialization not by chance, but as if he was initially preparing for a job in land management.

For some reason, Malyovanyi remains silent about his first job: there is nothing in his biography about what he did for almost two years after graduating. His career officially begins in 2005, as a manager at LLC "Center for Entrepreneurship" (EDRPOU 32594921). Under this name, there is a company in Kyiv engaged in wholesale fuel trade (gas, petroleum products, etc.). This company belongs to the owners of LLC "Ukrservice" (22193583) Ihor Frezyuk and Vasyl Fedoriv, who are connected with the corporation "Galnaftogaz," owned by the scandalous petrol oligarch-raider Vitaliy Antonov. It’s Antonov who owns the "OKKO" gas station network!

Andriy Malyovanyi: a humble career start

In August 2006, Andriy Malyovanyi left this rather profitable job for a more promising one: he joined the civil service (or rather returned to it) by getting the position of deputy head of the Privatization Department in the Department of Communal Property and Entrepreneurship of the Shevchenkivskyi District Council. It is worth noting that if this had been his first job in the civil service, he would initially have worked as a specialist (even if only for a month), but Malyovanyi was immediately put in a managerial position, which indicates that he was not entering the office for the first time. Thus, Malyovanyi might be hiding exactly this fact in his biography. But why?

More importantly, no one, of course, was brought into such key positions, which allow for the division of city property (lands, real estate, enterprises) from the street. Appointments were made through considerable pull, placing trusted people in these key roles. So who "stood up" for the 25-year-old boy, Andriy Malyovanyi? There is no definite answer to this question, all this time journalists could only make conjectures. There was speculation that his former boss Antonov had placed Malyovanyi. But their relationship wasn’t publicly evident in the future, although members of the land mafia never forget the oligarchs they worked for – it’s precisely in this way that they acquired fat chunks of real estate in the capital.

However, it is known that Malyovanyi immediately became a member of the corrupt team formed around Leonid Chernovetskyi, who "took" power in the capital at that time. Malyovanyi’s entire further "land" career was closely linked with these people.

According to some sources of Skelet.Info, Malyovanyi owed his entry into the ranks of Kyiv officials to Artem Kadomskyi (born 1975), who was almost the most crucial figure in his environment. More precisely, to his father, Mark Kadomskyi. He started back in Soviet times with furniture speculation, then in the ’90s "privatized" a workshop and created the furniture company "KMK-1." After graduating in 1997, Artem Kadomskyi worked for a year in his father’s firm, then his father arranged for him to enter the Kyiv City Administration, in the Kyiv City Land Resources Department – where he made his career from a specialist to chief. According to sources, Mark Kadomskyi was somehow connected with the parents of Andriy Malyovanyi. And look at this: in 1998, when Artem Kadomskyi got into the Land Department, Andriy Malyovanyi entered KPI as an engineer-metrologist. Is that a coincidence?

Artem Kadomskyi

Another person who facilitated Artem Kadomskyi’s job placement in the Kyiv City Administration was Andriy Ivanov, formerly bearing the surname Dirnberger, a Russian-Ukrainian oligarch and closest business partner of Vasyl Khmelnytskyi, who has a dark and bloody trace from the ’90s. Ivanov and Khmelnytskyi had grand plans for lands in Kyiv and the region, as well as the acquisition of capital real estate – and they subsequently realized these plans with the help of Artem Kadomskyi and Andriy Malyovanyi. While the former endowed them with significant plots of parkland and recreational land, the latter ascended the career ladder in the Department of Communal Property in the Shevchenkivsky district, assisting them in acquiring "problematic" enterprises and objects for the further development of their territory.

Andriy Ivanov-Dirnberger

The second known patron of Malyovanyi is Oleksandr Lutskyi, one of the living legends of Kyiv corruption. He managed to adjust and steal under any authority, starting his participation back in 2004 with the position of advisor to the mayor of Kyiv. Initially, Lutskyi advised Oleksandr Omelchenko, and from 2006 Leonid Chernovetskyi. At that time he became a deputy of the Kyiv Council and secretary of the land commission, and a year later, the deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration in charge of land resources. Since then, he closely engaged in land management for good 12 years, and under Poroshenko, Lutskyi even became the President’s trusted person in land issues in Tsarske Selo.

Oleksandr Lutskyi

The third person closely connected with Andriy Malyovanyi is the scandalous Serhiy Rudyķ. As a "grantee," national-patriot, and member of "Pora" (and the closest ally of scandalous Kaskiv), he came to power after the first Maidan, springing into the Kyiv Council in 2006. As we remember from the story of Vasyl Mokan, at that time, "Pora" became a political springboard for the "brigade" of the late capital "authoritative figure" Viktor Rybalko. But that is just one of Rudyķ’s numerous connections – he befriended and "fruitfully cooperated" with everyone, from "Svoboda" to regionalists.

Serhiy Rudyk

In the autumn of 2006, Rudyķ bargained for himself the position of head of the State Committee for Nationalities and Migration – and right away began "recouping money," selling refugee status and residence permits to all comers. Among those was even the "thief in law" Ravshan Janiyev, involved in the murder of another "authority" – Ded Hasan. Janiyev, as if in mockery, was registered as a persecuted "representative of sexual minorities," but fearing revenge and arrest in Russia more than shame, the "law thief" agreed to be recorded as a "homosexual." Within six months, Rudyķ was kicked out in disgrace, and he settled in as deputy head of Kyiv City State Administration to Chernovetskyi. Overall, even this one thing characterizes Rudyk as amoral, thoroughly corrupt scum. Here it is unnecessary to mention his conflict with Korban, which triggered one of the loudest political scandals in post-Maidan Ukraine.

Another person from the closest circle of Malyovanyi is Serhiy Levtsov, his former boss and business partner. Their work histories are very much alike, except that Levtsov started in another district of Kyiv. To this day, Levtsov is associated with about fifteen enterprises, mainly in construction, including six entities named "Stroygroupprojectinvest" Nos. 1-6 (Levtsov clearly struggled with naming creativity).

Serhiy Levtsov

And closing this "inner circle" is Oleksandr Kachnyi, who in 2006 moved from the chair of the head of the State Department of Fisheries to the Kyiv Regional Council, becoming its deputy chairman. Then, from May 2010 to February 2014, Oleksandr Kachnyi was the head of the Kyiv Regional Council, pleasing the regionals and "covering" all their land deals. His role in these processes was so significant that it is Kachnyi who is now called the main patron of Malyovanyi - yet somehow forgetting the above-mentioned members of the "land gang". By the way, today Oleksandr Kachnyi is a People’s Deputy of the OPFL faction (No. 35 on the list).

Oleksandr Kachnyi

One Hand Washes the Other

Now, let’s trace their common career to see the overall picture. Thus, during the period 2006-2010, Andriy Malyovanyi worked in the Department of Privatization of Communal Property of the Shevchenkivskyi district council, rising to the position of its head. At the same time, his friend and partner Serhiy Levtsov, having started as an assistant to Kyiv Council deputy Oleksandr Lutskyi (the secretary of the land commission), was then appointed to a similar position in the Podilskyi district council. Therefore, there is a version that it was Lutskyi who simultaneously "inserted" Malyovanyi and Levtsov into the privatization departments of two Kyiv districts. Perhaps he had his appointees in other districts of the capital. Levtsov moved up the ranks faster: by the end of 2008, he became deputy head of the district executive committee. Meanwhile, Lutskyi himself got a job as an advisor to Chernovetskyi and then as a deputy on land resources issues. Another deputy of Chernovetskyi during 2007-2010 was Serhiy Rudyk. Artem Kadomskyi had already become the deputy head of the Department of Land Resources of the Kyiv City State Administration by then. Thus, this team-gang was formed!

The year 2010 brought some changes. Artem Kadomskyi, finding a common language with the new authorities, rose to the position of first deputy head of the State Committee (from 2011 - agency) of Ukraine for Land Resources. When Chernovetskyi left Kyiv in 2012, Oleksandr Lutskyi, who was left without his lucrative position, with the help of Kadomskyi, received the position of advisor to the head of the State Land Committee – serving there until the second Maidan. Meanwhile, Kadomskyi sat in his chair until the autumn of 2014. And do you know why? Because Serhiy Rudyk, who also found himself out of business after Chernovetskyi’s departure and joined the Svoboda party as the head of its faction’s secretariat in the Rada in 2013, became the head of the State Committee after the second Maidan (by Svoboda’s quota) and left Kadomskyi as his deputy. Here’s an example of how one hand washes the other!

During this period, Serhiy Levtsov did well: he enrolled in the Party of Regions, headed the Podil branch of the "Young Regions", met and befriended the younger son of Yanukovych (Viktor, who died in 2015), with whom he later had a joint company. In the spring of 2011, he worked as deputy head of the Vyshneve city council, then took the chair of deputy head of the Kyiv-Sviatoshynska district state administration, was elected a district council deputy, and headed the land commission. In the same 2011, Andriy Malyovanyi moved to the same Sviatoshynska district as deputy general director for property rights registration at the "Bureau of Technical Inventory" KP.

In April 2012, Serhiy Levtsov suddenly moved to Mykolaiv, to the position of head of the regional department of the State Committee. Andriy Malyovanyi also fled from the Sviatoshynsky district – he worked for a month as the head of the privatization department at the Kyiv Municipal Property Fund and then followed Levtsov to Mykolaiv, where he became his deputy. It is clear that their appointment was facilitated by Kadomskyi, but why to Mykolaiv, "to the devil at the end of the world"? Because this move was also assisted by Oleksandr Kachnyi - whose brother Ihor lived in Mykolaiv and had significant influence in the city and regional councils there. According to sources from Skelet.Info, Ihor Kachnyi had very important land-related business interests in the region at the time: he needed to formally allocate large plots of land to his companies. Levtsov and Malyovanyi coped with this task in a few months, and by January 2013, Levtsov returned to the capital, to the position of head of the Main Department of the State Agency in Kyiv. And a month later, Andriy Malyovanyi joined him again as a deputy.

Serhiy Varis, for Skelet.Info

TO BE CONTINUED…