Government officials or underground millionaires supported by rich women?
The wife of the head of the State Customs Service, Sergei Zvyagintsev, recently became the owner of a new car worth more than one and a half million hryvnia, and this despite the fact that the family’s official income is quite modest. The director of the “tariff department”, Dmitry Padun, is not far behind the boss; law enforcement officers conducted searches and found $100,000 in cash. And all this is probably just the tip of the corruption iceberg.
What secrets are hidden in the declarations of Zvyagintsev and his subordinates? And could we be talking about dubious enrichment? Details of the rich life of the country's top customs officers - in the exclusive investigation of Maria Vinnichenko
Since the State Customs Service became an independent body, six leaders have already changed at the head of the structure. February 1, 2023 acting position Sergei Zvyagintsev took over as chairman. However, 20 days after his appointment, he suddenly submitted his resignation. Why? As insiders suggest, the new leader at first could not appoint his own personnel either at regional customs or in the central office. That’s why I asked to “go out.”
However, it seems that Zvyagintsev still received this opportunity, because in the end he remained to work in the State Customs Service. And one of his first appointments was the director of the legal department, Olga Kravchenko, whom the media calls a former ally of state traitor Dmitry Tabachnik. And these are just the “flowers”, and the following high-profile scandals became the “berries”.
“This summer information appeared that the highest echelon of customs wanted to buy positions at the most delicious customs. An unprecedented sale: $1 million for Lvovskaya, 500 thousand for Volynskaya, 200 thousand for Chernivtsi,” comments journalist Maria Vinnychenko.
Who and what exactly are law enforcement agencies interested in?
Dmitry Padun is known as the director of the department of control and administration of customs payments of the State Customs Service. People call the division he heads the “tariff department.” Surprisingly, Dmitry Petrovich is absent from official photos and videos of the customs service. In general, his face appears in only three publications on the network.
This summer Padun was searched. On July 3, 2024, more than 100 thousand dollars, gadgets and 96 thousand hryvnia were seized from his car and apartment.
As evidenced by the official’s declaration, in 2023 the total amount of savings of Padun and his wife amounted to 175 thousand hryvnia, 5.5 thousand dollars and 5 thousand euros. Although the family's monthly income, according to the same document, is only 82.5 thousand UAH. So how did Padun find huge amounts of “cash” during searches in just a year?
“We sold two cars this year. And they sold the apartment. Now we will sell the house. We are moving to Kyiv. This money is honest. I will prove this to my colleagues from law enforcement agencies. And I don’t consider myself a person who is involved in corruption scandals. and cars are not for me. I asked my colleagues who are working on this issue. I asked my colleague - I’m sure this is correct,” Dmitry Padun himself explains this “collision”.
What exactly could Mr. Padun’s wife, Yana Kalyuta, sell for more than 4 million hryvnia?
According to the declaration, two cars are registered on it: a 2012 PORSCHE CAYENNE (average market value is about 23 thousand dollars) and a 2017 SUBARU FORESTER ($16,850). But what kind of apartment was Dmitry Petrovich talking about from his wife’s property? There is no such object in his declaration for 2023. And in general, all real estate objects are still shining on the wife.
Since 2023, Dmitry Padun has been working in the Central Office of the State Customs Service, located in Kyiv. However, he does not declare a single place of residence in the capital.
“Of course, everyone understands: it is impossible to travel 500 km one way from the Dnieper to work five days a week. And where then does the country's top customs officer live? It took us two hours of observation to find a clue. Mr. Dmitry worked conscientiously that day, because it was then that searches were carried out in his department. And at 17:30 he was already on his way to the Park Avenue residential complex,” says the investigator.
This is a premium class residential complex, where there is absolutely everything for a comfortable life: a sports ground, a children's playground, a recreation area and barbecue facilities. The infrastructure on site includes supermarkets, a cafe, a restaurant and even a deluxe fitness club with a swimming pool.
One of the main features of this complex is that it is completely closed, there is a lot of security not only at the entrance and check-in, but also on the territory itself, 410 cameras, entry and check-in exclusively through personal electronic cards. However, for our team, the most closed residential complex in the capital is a challenge that we have successfully overcome and are already rushing to the territory. We go up to the 9th floor - and here is the apartment where, as we managed to find out, Dmitry Petrovich and his family should live,” notes the journalist.
However, no one opened StopCora. To confirm that Dmitry Petrovich really lives here, media workers went down to the parking lot.
There, the film crew recorded two cars. Journalists managed to document one of them while leaving the State Customs Service, and Dmitry Petrovich declares the second car as the property of his wife. This is a 2012 Range Rover.
And in the evening the Stopkorovites met Mr. Padun in the parking lot, where they managed to ask him a direct question about such a place of residence.
“I moved here four days ago. I took my family from Dnepr and we moved to this residential complex. We will live here. We sell everything in Dnipro. We rent an apartment. It costs 60 thousand UAH here. Absolutely real price,” said the customs officer.
But do his words correspond to reality?
After all, as investigators have established, the official does not live here for four days. StopCor managed to get a video of him entering the territory of a very closed residential complex and applying a card. The footage is dated August 6, and Padun already has a key to the complex. And the meeting with StopCor took place 23 days later. In addition, we have information that parking spaces have been assigned to these cars for a month now. And the parking spaces themselves belong to the owner of this apartment, the area of which is 174.4 square meters.
So how much can such an apartment in such a residential complex really cost?
If we now open external resources where real estate is rented out, such as OLX, for example, or LUN.UA, we will be able to see positions there starting from $1,000, in this area approximately up to $5,000, depending on the renovation and configuration of the object. If it’s a renovation, the equipment is more modern, more expensive, then the rent could be 2,500, 3,000, or 5,000 dollars a month,” comments realtor Alexey Gnuchikh.
Why didn’t Dmitry Petrovich declare his place of residence in Kyiv for the entire year? Perhaps the head of the service set such an example for him?
After reading the declarations of Sergei Zvyagintsev in the editorial office of StopCor, a question arose: how did it happen that for eight years he did not declare a single income of his wife, except for a gift, probably from her father, in the amount of 600 thousand UAH? And how did the housewife manage to save 51 thousand dollars and more than 40,000 euros? After all, if you add up all the monetary assets that Alena Zvyagintseva owns, the amount will reach more than 4 million UAH.
In addition, the woman bought a car, the cost of which Sergei Borisovich indicated as 1,559,665 UAH. and although his wife has had an open sole proprietorship for three years, for some reason Mr. Zvyagintsev is in no hurry to declare his wife’s business income.
To communicate with the country's chief customs officer, the Stopkorovites went to the address where the man should live. But they didn’t see him there either on the first day or on the second.
“We didn’t spot his car near the house, and we also didn’t notice his wife’s car. And the official car, obviously, didn’t come for him either, because Zvyagintsev never came out of the entrance,” notes Maria Vinnichenko.
Perhaps the Zvyagintsev family has other, less obvious assets, including real estate?
In the center of the capital, Sergei’s wife bought an apartment in 2008, and in 2019 her father bought the one next door. But no one opened the door for journalists there either. As neighbors reported, both apartments actually belong to Alena herself, but the family has not lived here for a long time.
In addition, two weeks before the start of the full-scale invasion, Sergei Zvyagintsev bought a car for almost 2 million hryvnia. Our film crew recorded a very similar car on the territory of a house belonging to the customs officer’s father-in-law. The house is located in the village of Ivankovichi, Kyiv region, in a closed cottage town: a swimming pool, a lawn, a well-equipped area, something like a gazebo and a terrace.
How much could it cost?
“We don’t see the equipment inside. I can tentatively say that it is from 250 thousand dollars to half a million dollars. Depending on what documents there are for the land, what documents are there for the house itself, and the repairs,” notes the realtor.
By the way, as investigators have established, the photo of the official’s wife on Facebook seems to have actually been taken in this yard. I managed to honestly put aside 4 million. But all this is just speculation. calls have still not been answered.
