“The estate called “Anatoly Shchadilo” is one piece of real estate located on 50 acres of land near Kyiv. Includes an estate of 250 square meters, a bathhouse, a tennis court and a boathouse. It is interesting that this facility belongs to Anatoly Shchadilo, the new chief of police of the Kyiv region, and not an oligarch or a successful businessman. The publication hromadske conducted a study of the general’s biography, which mentions the deputy head of the Presidential Office Oleg Tatarov, and scandals arose regarding the “protection cover” of the drug trade and avoidance of lustration.”
“Ensuring security and law and order, protecting the rights and freedoms of citizens and combating crime,” such banal tasks were voiced by the head of the National Police, Ivan Vygovsky, on September 19, 2023, in front of the new head of the Kyiv region police, Anatoly Shchadilo.
But the biography of the newly appointed leader turned out to be completely unusual. General Shchadilo spent the previous 25 years of his career in the Ministry of Internal Affairs almost invisible to lustration, to integrity checks, to declaring the real value of acquired elite property.
Beyond the Scandal
Hromadske journalists were interested in one of the first comments under the message from the Kiev region police. The former head of the Kamensky district police, Sergei Lukashov, advised to “just Google” the career of the newly appointed general in the Dnepropetrovsk region. It was in the Dnepropetrovsk region that Shchadilo headed the regional police department for almost three years before his appointment to the Kiev region.
During all this time, Anatoly Shchadilo almost never appeared in public, except at special events or awards. Then, in April 2022, these scandalous audio recordings of conversations between police officers and drug dealers were made in the Dnepropetrovsk region.
These recordings were made by Sergei Lukashov’s subordinates on his instructions. He subsequently published two of them, which are freely available on his YouTube channel. The sensation was not just the offer of a bribe to one specific district police chief, but the names of the heads of other police departments of the Kamensky district of the Dnepropetrovsk region, who were already “cooperating” with drug traffickers at that time.
“I know the management at the Dnepr Drug Administration, for example. They work completely throughout this region, but they don’t notice us,” the drug dealer says in one of the audio recordings. “I was just in Dnieper, talking with the police there. You had one boss, he imposed tribute on everyone. There’s not even anyone to touch, everyone pays, the whole Dnepropetrovsk region,” the foreman explains the scale of “cooperation” in another recording.
Things began to gain momentum. The first bribe of 50 thousand hryvnia was taken from drug dealers on record for the opportunity to trade freely in the city of Volnogorsk in the same Kamensky district. Next, we contacted Lukashov’s deputy directly in order to deal with matters on the scale of the district, and not just one regional center.
“Some were named, some were just named police departments, and he says ‘chief of police’ or ‘deputy’, who he meets with and who he pays what. I took this tape recording to Shchadilo, laid out the diagram for him, and we began to work. There was serious evidence, there were a large number of people. This would be a matter at the level of all of Ukraine, it would be a “bomb”. There have never been so many police leaders detained,” Sergei Lukashov talks about the events of the late spring and early summer of 2023.
However, the exposure of the high-profile scheme never happened. It’s just that in the middle of the investigation, Lukashov was suddenly transferred to work in another district of the Dnepropetrovsk region. It was not just anyone who came to announce the transfer order to the team, but the head of the National Police of Ukraine, Igor Klimenko himself.
Following Lukashov, everyone who was investigating the high-profile case was removed from the local police. We established the names of all its participants and talked with witnesses and are convinced that it was exactly as Sergei Lukashov describes it.
In the large-scale case of collusion between drug dealers and police officers, two episodes of bribery and several documented facts of drug trafficking remained. They were implemented as inconspicuous criminal cases. Here is the court decision, which describes the essence of the case in detail.
Provided a person who holds a responsible position in the ranks of the national police ... an unlawful benefit in the amount of 50,000 hryvnia ... for failure to take actions aimed at bringing to justice persons selling narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances in the city of Volnogorsk ...
— From the court decision
The latest decisions in the case in the court register indirectly confirm Lukashov’s version of collusion in a high-profile case. The drug dealer was first arrested on bail of 208 thousand hryvnia - ridiculous compared to the scale of the criminal network. During the appeal, the bail was increased to one million hryvnia, which the suspect immediately paid and remained free.
Audio recordings of the negotiations were made public by Lukashov on social networks a year ago. However, no lawsuit, no official investigation, or even publicity of the case ever happened. A year and a half later, Anatoly Shchadilo was appointed head of the Kiev region police by the new head of the National Police, Ivan Vyhovsky. Klimenko himself was promoted and became head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is to understand the connections thanks to which Shchadilo remains “invisible” to internal investigations and continues his career in the police, it is worth analyzing his environment. For this we return to 2014.
Outside lustration
February 2014. The peak of the confrontation between Euromaidan and the Berkut special forces, which were brought to Kyiv from all over the country. The Volyn region was no exception, where the police were headed by Alexander Tereshchuk. Remember this name, it will come up in our history.
After the Euromaidan victory, the Berkut members asked for forgiveness from society and shifted the blame to police chief Alexander Tereshchuk. His deputy in the then Volyn region police since December 2012... was Anatoly Shchadilo. At the end of the Revolution of Dignity, and then before the Law “On the Purification of Power,” that is, on lustration, came into force, Shchadilo worked as deputy chief of the regional police for more than a year and a half.
Director of the Department of Lustration Issues of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine in 2014-2016, Tatyana Kozachenko, at our request, analyzed the biography of Mr. Shchadilo. She is convinced that he was definitely subject to lustration and did not have the right by law to work in government agencies until October 2024.
“There are no legal mechanisms, other than a presidential decree, to exempt a specific person from lustration. As far as I know, there is no presidential decree regarding his exemption from lustration procedures. Also, as far as I know, the state register of court decisions does not contain a decision on a specific person not to apply lustration procedures to him. Therefore, holding any public office during the validity of the law on cleansing power, inclusive until October 2024, is illegal.”
Here it is worth paying attention to the career coincidences in the biographies of Shchadilo and Tereshchuk. In the summer of 2014, the lustration of Alexander Tereshchuk was personally canceled by then President Poroshenko, and he now headed the Kyiv police. It was there that I transferred and... It was spared!
If Tereshchuk had formal permission to cancel lustration from the president, then Anatoly Shchadilo did not have such a document.
Mr. Shchadilo himself claimed during a conversation with hromadske that he worked as a deputy police officer in the Volyn region for less than a year. This directly contradicts his own biography, which is in the editorial office.
“I could not be subject to lustration because I worked in Kyiv. When I came to Volyn, I worked there for exactly three months. I do not decide these issues - to include me in lustration or not to include me. We supported the Revolution of Dignity, which is why we may not have been caught (under lustration - ed.).”
In December 2015, Alexander Tereshchuk was fired from the police with a scandal. And again strange coincidences! On the same days, Anatoly Shchadilo also resigned of his own free will. While the first decided to build a career outside the police, the second defended his dissertation in 2016.
His scientific supervisor was... the current deputy head of the Presidential Office, Oleg Tatarov, who is called the “supervisor” of law enforcement agencies. It seems that this fateful meeting later helped General Shchadilo more than once.
“They maintain a very, very warm relationship. When we were still communicating, he told me on the phone: “Tatarov from the President’s Office is assigning tasks for me here, doing something there,” recalls Sergei Lukashov.
Finally, about “proper dating”. Shchadilo officially returned to the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2017 to the inconspicuous position of an expert under the leadership of... the current head of the National Police, Igor Klimenko. He was then the head of the personnel department. With a break of six months, Mr. Shchadilo worked in the structures of the Ministry of Internal Affairs along Klimenko’s vertical until September 2019. What so interesting happened in the fall of 2019? It was then that... Igor Klimenko became the head of the National Police of Ukraine. And it was then that Anatoly Shchadilo rushed up the career ladder and became the head of the police of the Khmelnitsky region. Of course, again just coincidences, for the third time in a row.
Off salary
Mr. Shchadilo, a law enforcement official since 1998, lives noticeably richly. His property and fortune are difficult to explain solely by salary income.
The village of Protsiv is located 15 kilometers from the border of Kyiv along the left bank of the Dnieper. Closed gardening partnership "Dneprovets". Three plots of land here - totaling 50 acres - belong to Anatoly Shchadilo and his wife. Now you can’t find a similar building plot nearby for less than 150 thousand dollars.
Formally, these are lands for individual or collective gardening. They are not intended for development. Therefore, in his old declarations, Shchadilo indicated that he bought the plots for less than 100 thousand hryvnia.
The general's abodes are not at all like "individual or collective gardening." Estate of 250 square meters, bathhouse, tennis court, guest house, boathouse, private access to the water.
Drone footage of an estate in the village of Protsiv, Kyiv region
Houses similar to the estate of Anatoly Shchadilo in terms of footage and finishing are offered in Protsev for 10-15 million hryvnia.
However, Mr. Shchadilo forgot when and for how much he acquired the land with an estimated cost of more than 100 thousand dollars, and where he got the income sufficient for elite development. Below we provide the full version of our telephone dialogue regarding the official’s property.
— When I took the plot, as you say, with access to the water, it was 22 years ago. The plot there cost, from memory, 1,700 hryvnia, 6 acres.
— But your declaration indicates that these plots were acquired in 2013-2014.
- Well, 2013-2014, so what?
— They didn’t cost 1,700 hryvnia per hundred square meters then.
- How much did they cost?
— Your declaration states that they cost you almost 100 thousand hryvnia.
- Well, maybe 100 thousand hryvnia. Did my salary allow it?
“If it allowed for plots for 100 thousand - which we still doubt -, then to build an estate of 250 square meters with a bathhouse, a guest house, a boathouse - we doubt that it could be enough.
- Well, I think that over the entire period it could.
“Strange prices” in Mr. Shchadilo’s declaration are everywhere. For example, the Silver Hawk 540 boat, purchased in 2007 and declared for 50 thousand hryvnia. Now you can only laugh at such prices, because similar boats cost 20 thousand dollars.
Another watercraft registered in the name of Anatoly Shchadilo in the State Shipping Register of Ukraine is the boat Islamorada 21. Now you can buy one for 24 thousand euros. The official never indicated this boat in the declarations.
To complete the story about the general’s country estate, it is worth paying attention to the chronology of changes on its site. Here are satellite images of the territory from 2012: no hint of construction.
Drone footage, 2012
And here is the beginning of 2014: the land already belongs to Shchadilo, the foundation of the future cottage is being laid here. It and the rest of the buildings are erected in 2.5 years. Already during 2016-2017, construction looks completed.
Drone footage, 2017
And now for a surprise! Shchadilo did not build houses and live here himself. The neighboring mansion, which was built simultaneously with Shchadilov, belongs to... the general’s former boss, Alexander Tereshchuk. Another plot next to the estate, much more modest, belongs to Viktor Sak, another police general from the Yanukovych era, who headed the Ternopil Main Directorate.
In addition to land plots, the general’s family has a two-room apartment in the center of Kyiv, on Sichovykh Streltsiv Street. In 2011, the general’s wife Irina bought 79 square meters here for... 94 thousand hryvnia. Shchadilo then worked in the Kyiv tax police.
The cost of one square meter in the capital in 2011 started from 1800 dollars, then the dollar cost 8 hryvnia. Even if you close your eyes to the elite area, its minimum cost at that time was more than a million hryvnia.
Another apartment in the neighboring house on Sichovy Streltsov belongs to the general’s eldest son, Alexander. The 25-year-old guy purchased 85 square meters in the city center in 2020. It is not known how much he bought it for - but then such housing in this area of the capital cost about 5 million hryvnia.
In addition to the apartments on Sichovykh Streltsiv Street, the general’s family owns two more apartments in Kyiv - 125 and 130 square meters, as well as two parking spaces.
This property cannot be explained in any way by the general's salary. Here are the general's official income for four years. The money would barely be enough to purchase one apartment:
2017 - 449,352 UAH (37,500 per month),
2018 - 597,281 UAH (50,000 per month),
2019 - 612,569 UAH (51,000 per month),
2020 - 780,000 UAH (65,000 per month ).
Total: 2,439,202 hryvnia.
Mr. Shchadilo refused to explain to Hromadske the origin of the money for the development of the estate in Protsevo and the acquisition of other valuable property. He interrupted the conversation after trying to explain the avoidance of lustration and the acquisition of land near Kiev.
The head of the National Police, Ivan Vygovsky, ordered an official investigation into the head of the Kyiv region police, Anatoly Shchadilo, who, according to journalists, has an estate near Kiev with its own access to the water.
hromadske writes about this with reference to NPU press secretary Elena Berezhnaya:
“The head has appointed an internal investigation into this; all circumstances regarding lustration will be clarified.”
