Suspected of attempting to steal funds from Ukrzaliznytsia, Maxim Gaevoy makes money by subletting offices subordinate to the State Property Fund
Luxury real estate, expensive cars and holidays abroad: as it turns out, working in a public utility company, even during war, can earn a good fortune. And a dubious reputation is not a hindrance here. Maxim Gaevoy, a defendant in a multimillion-dollar theft case at Ukrzaliznytsia and director of the Kyiv Regional Council, is subletting offices belonging to the State Property Fund.
What possible shadow schemes with state property are the capital officials “promoting”? And does Maxim Gaeva declare all his luxury assets? Details in a new journalistic investigation
In 2022, it became known that NABU reported that six persons were suspected of attempting to steal almost 5 million UAH when purchasing PCR tests for COVID-19 at an inflated price for Ukrzaliznytsia. One of the defendants in this case was Maxim Gaevoy, now the head of a utility company subordinate to the Kyiv Regional Council.
We are talking about the Kyiv regional agricultural brokerage and commercial company "Horizon", which is engaged in leasing its own or leased property.
How profitable is this activity?
Judging by his declarations, the modest “utility worker” Gaeva really lives quite richly: three houses, an apartment, a Tesla car, valuable watches, the average cost of which is more than half a million hryvnia per unit, as well as a couple of rare paintings. There is Mr. Maxim and savings: approximately 120 thousand dollars and 1.3 million hryvnia. This condition interested journalists.
“We decided to look behind the fence of his yard with an expensive house. And do you know what we saw there? An undeclared Nissan 2023, which now costs approximately 37 thousand dollars,” says Igor Dotsenko.
But where does the money for all these assets come from? As the StopCor team discovered, none of Gaevoy’s declarations submitted to the NACP contain a word about his income. The official himself claims: he declared everything, but he simply doesn’t remember the missing lines.
But the Internet remembers everything, and on the Internet you can find many references to possible schemes in which Gaeva was “seen.”
According to the registers, the official’s name appears in three criminal cases. The first of them concerns the probable theft of millions in Ukrzaliznytsia. In this case, NABU carried out a pre-trial investigation into the fact of an unfinished attempt to seize money from the Healthcare Center Branch of Ukrzaliznytsia JSC on an especially large scale through abuse of their official position.
We are talking about an attempt to seize almost 5 million UAH. when purchasing PCR tests for COVID-19 at an inflated price. In short, Gaevoy and his team seem to have “helped” purchase tests at a cost that was one and a half times higher than the market price - 1280 UAH per test instead of 837 UAH.
As can be seen from the court materials, it was Maxim Gaevoy who carried out the search for a business entity that could be used to simulate public auctions. And the panel of judges generally noticed that he was trying to avoid liability. Using his authority, he could influence witnesses.
In 2022, the anti-corruption court chose a preventive measure in the form of a bail of more than a million hryvnia and ordered him not to leave the locality in which he was registered. Last fall, the bail was reduced to 200 thousand. The investigation is still ongoing.
But, despite this loud resonance, Gaeva officially still holds the position of head of the Horizon utility company.
However, there are probably corruption risks here too. KP Gaevoy rents out premises belonging to the State Property Fund to other structures. One of these buildings is located in the center of the capital, at the address: Bolshaya Vasylkivska Street, 13/1.
The owner of the building is the State Property Fund of Ukraine. He leases part of the building to the agro-industrial development department of the Kyiv regional state administration. And she rents it out to KP "Horizon", according to sources, only for... 1 hryvnia. And Horizon itself rents out these premises at market prices.
Our editors submitted a request to the Kyiv Regional State Administration and received an interesting response. After all, as the document says, the owners of this building are not only the Kiev Regional Council, but also such enterprises as Golden Gate Asset Management LLC and Autohouse Kyiv LLC. And this despite the fact that the house is state property.
“That is, it turns out that in fact the entire first floor has already been completely privatized. Thanks to such schemes, state property is already being alienated, which is likely to only grow over time,” notes the author of the investigation.
Can’t local authorities independently manage such property, the rental of which should replenish the state budget with millions of hryvnias during the war?
The StopCor film crew saw with their own eyes that there are many rooms in the building where people conduct their business. The workers themselves confirmed that rent is provided to them by KP “Gorizont”. Therefore, journalists wrote to the utility company to clarify the details.
However, all the requests that Stopkorovites sent to the legal address of Horizon were for some reason returned. Therefore, the media workers decided to deliver the letter personally to the company’s registration address. And it turned out that they had never even heard of Horizon.
That is, it turns out that the company is officially registered at one address, but actually carries out its activities in a completely different place. Because of this, it is not possible to obtain at least some reliable information about the enterprise.
However, as it turned out later, the office of Maxim Gaevoy himself is located in the same communal building where Horizon provides premises for rent.
Perhaps the department that rents out these square meters, that is, the department of agro-industrial development, could shed more light on this topic? However, even there the employees turned out to be taciturn. They only informally said that “Gaeva is a painful topic.”
It is noteworthy that the official is also involved in the beating case. But already as a victim.
StopCor spoke with Vladimir Beklemyshev, accused of causing moderate bodily injury to Maxim Gaevoy. However, according to him, everything was somewhat different.
“This person went to LBP, an emergency hospital. And there is such a doctor Makovetsky, the head of the neurosurgery department, he bought from him “a broken skull in five cities.” And, of course, I was convicted because he went to an expert, and he determined that the injury was of medium severity,” says Beklemyshev.
Gaevoy was even given a certificate of incapacity for work, where he was prescribed an inpatient treatment regimen. However, as journalists learned, on these dates the official was probably... in Antalya.
Indeed, our editors came across a document confirming that Maxim Gaevoy was in the resort town of Antalya in Turkey. However, it is interesting to pay attention to the dates. He was abroad at the time when he was allegedly receiving inpatient treatment.
“But it’s even more interesting to see when the doctor examined him: May 7, 2015, 9:00. But if we look again at the response from the State Border Service, we see that on May 7 he enters the territory of Ukraine only at 16:59! that the doctor performed a medical examination of the patient without his presence? A very dubious situation,” comments Igor Dotsenko.
In addition, StopCor learned of another interesting story involving Gaevoy.
Thus, in the building already mentioned above on Bolshaya Vasylkivska Street 13/1, a dental clinic was recently located, the premises for which were rented out by Horizon since 2019. At that time, the director of the enterprise was Alexander Poryadin, with whom the dentistry entered into an agreement. It was supposed to be valid until April 30, 2022.
However, subsequently a real “revolution” begins to take place at the enterprise.
In 1919, Poryadin was suddenly dismissed from his position without explanation. Moreover, the appointment of Poryadin as leader was a collective decision of the council, and the first deputy chairman of the Kyiv Regional Council, Tatyana Semenova, decided to fire him independently.
And soon after this, the newly appointed acting chairman Maxim Gaeva appeared, accompanied by young men of athletic build with pepper spray, knives and balaclavas. And then he began to establish his own rules.
“At the end of October, a new director came to us - Maxim Valerievich Gaevoy... “Yes, I see you are not paying enough money.” Well, little or no little, but we have an agreement. He says: you won’t pay that amount, you will pay another amount in cash and pay extra,” said Boris Monarch, director of dentistry.
And as it turned out, because the owners did not want to agree to the new rental price, because under the contract they had the legal right to continue to pay an amount lower than the proposed one, Maxim Gaeva, according to the victims, took unpredictable steps: the clinic’s water and electricity were turned off, and all of its property was taken out. And the owners still can't find it.
This story demonstrates how one person, taking advantage of his official position, can bring real hell to an honest business. Will justice be restored? The question is open, because, despite possible abuses, Maxim Gaevoy continues to continue to head the utility company of the Kyiv Regional Council.
