Gated areas, heated pools and luxury living. A cottage town near the capital of Green Hills with estates worth at least half a million dollars. It is here that the head of the Department of Economic Support of the SBU, Andrei Padalka, recently settled
DHZ SBU is an interesting and closed structure. It is she who purchases transport, clothing, food, and now also weapons and various military equipment for the needs of the SBU. This structure controls canteens, hotels, shops, cultural centers and preschool educational institutions for children of SBU employees. That is, all purchases, and therefore money, are concentrated under the roof of this department. And its head decides how to spend it.
For example, Padalka’s predecessor, Alexander Provotorov, was fired from his position amid criminal proceedings for the purchase of fuel for official cars and armored vehicles of the SBU at artificially inflated prices. He and his deputy attracted several companies from Kyiv that were engaged in trading in petroleum products and entered false information into financial, economic and reporting documentation. Losses from this operation are 26 million hryvnia.
Provotorov, according to the latest data, is now in pre-trial detention. Actually, after that they found Padalka to replace him.
Before Provotorov, the DGZ was headed by Vladimir Kiptenko, who was appointed by Yanukovych. Year after year he was accused of inefficient use of public funds.
Hidden Declaration
Andrei Padalka’s declarations are not publicly available. But we managed to get one. In it, Padalka’s love for a beautiful life is visible to the naked eye.
As of 2020, before his dismissal from the State Fiscal Service, he declared his own apartment of 55 square meters, purchased in 2019, 25% of an apartment of 136 square meters, purchased in 2018, 66% of an apartment of 47 square meters, purchased in 2012 .
3 watches: Omega, Hublot and Ulysse Nardin, worth more than 30 thousand dollars. Also valuable is the 1646 Gospel, which is difficult to accurately value. Toyota Land Cruiser for more than 2 million hryvnia, 2 trailers and 2 boats. Also, the then head of the State Fiscal Service security department purchased cryptocurrencies worth 107 thousand hryvnia. The official salary, according to the declaration, for 2019 was less than 55 thousand hryvnia.
In the same year, Padalka received more than a million in income from the alienation of some movable property and 520 thousand hryvnia as a gift from his father, the former head of a warehouse in one of the clinical centers of the State National University of Ukraine.
Since then, the employee’s property in open registers has increased significantly. In 2020, Andrei Padalka purchased a 2013 Harley Davidson Softail motorcycle, which he wanted to sell for $20,000 a year later, but the vehicle is still owned by an official. Also in May 2023, he bought an old Toyota Land Cruiser. This one on the market is valued at about 15 thousand dollars.
In 2021, even before his appointment as head of the department, Andrei Padalka acquired an estate on the banks of the Dnieper in the elite cottage town of Riviera Sunrise of 300 square meters. On an area of 36 acres there is a heated swimming pool, a sauna, a garage, a boat shed, a guest house and direct access to the Dnieper.
Now this farmstead has been posted on a real estate advertisement website. For the estate they are asking 400 thousand dollars.
Mother-in-law's cottage
Why did Andrei Nikolaevich decide to sell such a beautiful house? Because now he has moved to a new house, more expensive. Another side of the Kiev region, another cottage town - Green Hills: with turnstiles, security, a British school and combed landscape designs.
The house itself is also almost 300 square meters, two plots with a total area of 14 acres with a guest house of another 120 meters. Own gas boiler room, laundry room, garage for two cars, large terrace. Spacious kitchen with premium appliances and wooden cabinetry. Three large bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, dressing rooms and an office on the ground floor. This is exactly how this farmstead is described in the advertisement for sale, which apparently they simply forgot to remove from the site. The cost of the mansion is also indicated here - 600 thousand dollars.
But Padalka decided not to register this house in his name. And in order to unravel this scheme, we had to think a little, because Padalka divorced his wife a long time ago, and there is no official information about the existence of a new one.
According to our information, Andrei Padalka is now in a relationship with Elena Zelenskaya. No, not the first lady, just the namesake. The couple has a child together. Elena Zelenskaya has a mother - Larisa Pandey. It turned out that it was this woman who registered the house, which stands on two plots with a total area of 14 acres, purchased on October 26, 2023. In this cottage town she has 2 more houses and 4 plots of land.
Larissa's husband, Jaideep Pandey, unlike the rest of the family, is a person known in the registers. In particular, in the register of court decisions, where he is a defendant in the case of the former head of the National Bank Kirill Shevchenko. We are talking about involvement in the seizure of more than 200 million hryvnia from the state-owned Ukrgasbank.
According to the investigation, Jaideep Pandey was involved in the scheme as an accomplice in entering deliberately false information into acts of services provided, as well as in money laundering. As an individual entrepreneur, he received government money into his own accounts, and later entered false data into the acts of services provided. In the verdict, he was found guilty on two counts and sentenced to 5 years in prison, but Pandey admitted his guilt and this punishment was replaced by one year of probation. Although in the end it was canceled too, because while the investigation was underway, the statute of limitations had expired.
And now Jaydeep continues to live for his own pleasure and has a sole proprietorship for consulting on commercial activities. And also - two apartments in the Sofia residential complex in the suburbs of the capital, another in Kyiv itself and two cars - a Volvo XC60 2021 and a Mercedes-Benz GLC-Class 2019, purchased in January 2023.
We also did not find any business with the so-called “mother-in-law” of Padalka, where she works or what she did is unknown. Therefore, we decided to ask where, exactly, the funds for all this came from and why she needed so much real estate. In particular, a house purchased in October 2023.
“We bought this house because our granddaughter was born, and when she was born, they lived with us for a while. I am sure that children should live separately. I had money, I sold the apartment, took a little from my daughter, my husband and I also had savings, we have a house in the same cottage town, so we bought more for them so that the children could live separately. I’m already retired, but my husband worked for a long time and had some income,” Larisa Pandey told us over the phone.
In various ways we tried to communicate with Andrei Padalka himself. The employee decided to ignore it. However, the SBU responded to our request. And this is what they say: during our investigation, Elena Zelenskaya received the surname Padalka and, accordingly, a place in Andrei Nikolaevich’s declaration.
But the employee moved to the house, which officially belongs to his mother-in-law and was purchased in 2023, this year, so he did not have time to declare it. They say he will declare it next. But again, we won’t be able to check this, because under martial law, military personnel’s documents are removed from public access, even if military service is carried out on business procurements of the SBU.
