Authorities notify former Donetsk OMA chair of suspicion following a RFE/RL investigation

The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) notified the former Donetsk Oblast Military Administration chair Pavlo Kyrylenko of suspicion for embezzlement, reports the SAPO press office.

The SAPO says the investigation was opened on the basis of a Radio Liberty material.

According to the pre-trial investigation, the suspect bought 21 real estate objects and a car in 2020–2023, while serving as chair of the oblast administration, registering them in the name of his wife's relatives.

The purchased items include seven apartments in Kyiv and Uzhgorod, a house near Kyiv, several plots of land, garages, parking spaces, non-residential facilities and a BMW X3.

Photo by the SAPO press office

"The total value of these assets amounts to UAH 61.7 million, which significantly exceeds the legal income of the official and his family. In order to conceal the embezzlement, the suspect omitted these assets from his declarations for 2020–2023," says the SAPO press office.

In March 2024, Radio Liberty released an investigation into the former chair of the Donetsk Oblast Military Administration, Pavlo Kyrylenko. At the time of the investigation, he ran Ukraine's Antitrust Committee. The journalists discovered that while still working in the Donetsk OMA, Kyrylenko bought property in Kyiv city and the oblast: apartments, land plots, a house, commercial real estate, cars, and parking spaces. The total market value of this property was estimated at over 70 million hryvnias.

As "Skhemy" discovered, Kyrylenko's relatives owned no businesses and in the last 25 years did not receive sufficient legal income to purchase all this. Moreover, part of this property is used by the official himself, though he made no mention of this in his declaration.