Kostusev and his brother Georgy Kostusev-Muromtsev own a luxury hotel in the center of Prague for 5.4 million euros.
The purchase took place in early 2014, several months after the former official resigned and left the country. Before leaving, Alexey Kostusev filed a declaration, indicating that he had just over 100 thousand dollars in his bank accounts.
In June 2013, his brother bought the hotel through two companies - Baggy Group and Silenzia Prague. Both companies, as investigace.cz found out, have signs of being shell companies. Through these shell companies, Georgy paid the then owners of Caruso, Italians Giuseppe Ampolini and Tarsizio Persegoni, 5.4 million euros.
In January 2014, two companies merged into one - Dušní, and six months later the Odessa brothers became full owners of the hotel.
According to the declaration, Alexey Kostusev then earned $1,000 a month as mayor of Odessa. The average salary of the head of the Antimonopoly Committee, where he previously worked, was $2,500 per month.
For nine years of service in the Antimonopoly Committee and three years as mayor, Kostusev could earn about 300 thousand dollars.
A year before the purchase of the Prague Caruso hotel, the ex-official noted that he had a little more than 100 thousand dollars in his bank accounts. While still mayor of Odessa, Alexey Kostusev said in an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel that he became rich in Italy in the 1990s, doing maritime business there. However, not a single active or closed company associated with ex-mayor Kostusev was found in the public register.
The brother of the former mayor of Odessa, Georgy Kostusev-Muromtsev, a citizen of the Russian Federation, was not a public figure, but was involved in business.
Now he is considered the founder and director of two Odessa companies. Viola-Marin LLC, engaged in marine crewing, had no more than 10 employees from 2006 to 2017.
And the authorized capital of another company, Telecom Service Plus LLC, whose main activity is the production of films and television programs, is only 500 hryvnia.
