New details in a high-profile crime story
On June 10, a month has passed since the National Anti-Corruption Bureau registered a high-profile criminal case against its employees. The plot of the case concerns the disclosure of data from pre-trial investigations and operational investigative activities in criminal proceedings and operational investigative cases of the NABU during 2021-2023. Documents related to the investigation into corruption during the implementation of the presidential program “Big Construction” were leaked.
The main beneficiary of these leaks, as the media found out, was the curator of “Big Construction” and former freelance adviser to the head of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Yuri Golik.
At the beginning of Vladimir Zelensky’s presidential term, the “Big Construction” project was born. It is expected that he was aimed at supporting the high rating of the head of state. In 2020, about UAH 100 billion passed through road tenders (in 2019 – UAH 55.5 billion).
The lion's share of funds from the tenders was received by companies from the National Association of Road Builders of Ukraine. The “golden” pool of road workers included six companies (Avtomagistral-Yug LLC, Rostdorstroy LLC, Onur Construction International LLC, Joint Ukrainian-German Venture Avtostrada LLC, Techno-Stroy-Center LLC and LLC “Road construction “Altcom”), which had 65% of all contracts of “Ukravtodor”.
In the Office of President Zelensky, Ermak’s deputy, Kirill Tymoshenko, was responsible for the “Big Construction” project. The media called Yuri Golik the ideologist and later the curator of the “Great Construction”.
The case with “origins” involves a colorful character - the head of the Brovary district state administration in 2020-2021, and now businessman Georgy Birkadze. Recently, it was his correspondence with the person “Japanese Valera” (this is senior detective and head of the NABU detective department Valery Polyuga) that was illustrated by Bihus.info investigators.
In fact, Valeriy Polyuga is so far the only officially identified NABU employee who was searched by the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and the National Police as part of this super-scandalous criminal story.
However, there is one more important detail. On May 24, NABU Director Semyon Krivonos suspended his first deputy Gizo Uglava from his official duties “to ensure an objective pre-trial investigation launched into a possible information leak.” The head will not have influence on a number of divisions of the anti-corruption agency until the end of July.
So, during a month of pre-trial investigation, detectives from the NABU internal control department were able to seize some of the property of Birkadze and Polyuga. At the same time, the two gentlemen mentioned are still not suspects.
The editors tell new details that became known as the case progressed through the courts.
Birkadze’s daughter’s tablet was arrested, but the flash drives... remained with the driver
On May 22, the investigation conducted simultaneous searches of the defendants at different locations. For example, an iPad Pro tablet was seized at the place of residence of Georgy Birkadze. According to an elderly woman who was in the apartment, the computer equipment belongs to her granddaughter and daughter Birkadze Kristina. At the time of the search, the tablet was lying on the children's table in the kitchen.
Already in the petition for arrest, the prosecutor of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office questioned whether the found iPad was the property of a five-year-old child. “Although the tablet is in the use of a young daughter, it is possible to assume that the father gave this device to his daughter and most of the time it is he who uses the tablet. An electronic device may contain information that may be important for the pre-trial investigation, therefore, in order to prevent the destruction of material evidence, the tablet was seized,” the decision of the High Anti-Corruption Court says.
In the end, Themis arrested Birkadze’s daughter’s gadget; he was sent for computer technical examination to the Kiev Scientific Research Institute of Forensic Expertise.
Law enforcement officers were no longer able to repeat the “trick” of arresting two flash drives seized from the car used by Georgiy Birkadze and his wife’s Apple laptop. Flash drives with a capacity of 4 Gb and 256 Gb, as the lawyer noted, belong to the driver Birkadze, who stores personal music on them. Moreover, during the search, the investigators were asked to examine the specified flash drives, but they did not do this. Taking this into account, the court concluded: “... the fact of the presence of flash networks in the car that Birkadze uses does not provide the indicated things with signs of material evidence.” And therefore there are no grounds for arrest.
It’s a similar story with Olga Birkadze’s wife’s laptop. NABU detectives “caught” him in the trunk of the ex-official’s wife’s car. According to the lawyer, Olga Birkadze uses this laptop for work purposes; a woman works as a department assistant at a university in the capital. In this case, the court also believed the defense version and refused to seize the property from the anti-corruption prosecutor's office.
The former official Giorgi Birkadze himself responded to the scandal with several video interviews. In one of them, he laughed it off, saying that the investigation was looking for 37 billion UAH from him. Let us remind you that Birkadze himself became known to the general public because of the embarrassment he recently found himself in on the air of the United News telethon. The studio guest unexpectedly revealed the following on camera: “If we take the restoration, then today we stole 37 billion... oh, we invested in fortifications.”
In another interview, Birkadze admitted correspondence with a NABU detective, but categorically rejected the claim of access to secret documents of law enforcement officers. He also called Yuri Golik a “specialist” of “Big Construction” and confirmed that he shared correspondence with him from his sources in law enforcement agencies.
“I’m not an official, I can write whatever I want and to whomever I want,” the former head of the Brovary district state administration sharply snapped in response to the journalist’s reproaches.
In general, according to Birkadze, the story of “leaks” from NABU was “brewed up” by two persons: former Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Kubrakov and the owner of the Avtostrada group of companies, Maxim Shkil. Over the past four years, Shkil’s company has earned more than UAH 150 billion from road tenders, the ex-official calculated.
“There are no questions for him (Maxim Shkil – “Glavkom”) (the investigation – “Glavkom”). For this reason, there are questions to Golik about the alleged theft of money in Dnepropetrovsk, and to Birkadze about personal correspondence. NABU should conduct an honest investigation and put everyone, including me, on a polygraph,” complained Georgy Birkadze.
Apple smart watch of the son of a NABU detective is under arrest
The seizure of property also affected the already mentioned NABU detective Valery Polyuga (Japanese). At the end of May, the High Anti-Corruption Court granted the request of the prosecutor of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office and arrested two Samsung and Redmi mobile phones and an Apple Watch smart watch.
In court, Polyuga defended himself: the seized devices are not related to the case of “leaks” of data from NABU. According to him, he used a Samsung phone until 2019; now a child uses it as a toy. As for the Redmi phone, it was purchased in January 2023. Polyuga uses it to communicate with her young son, who has an Apple Watch.
In addition, the detective, whom his colleagues suspected of leaking money, continued to stick to his line: he was not part of the group of detectives in criminal proceedings No. 42022000000001543 (the case was opened in November 2022 after a series of media revelations related to the disbursement of almost 1.5 billion UAH on the roads of the Dnepropetrovsk region in the midst of a full-scale war. Later in this proceeding, searches were carried out at the home of Yuriy Golik, the girlfriend of the ex-leader of the Dnepropetrovsk region Yana Khlanta and other defendants), in which information was leaked. Therefore, he did not and could not possess the data of the pre-trial investigation. But the court noted: the purpose of arresting Polyuga’s property is not to deprive him of access to phones and smart watches, but to temporarily restrict the right to use until the expert study is completed.
Golik factor
All the current commotion around NABU arose because of the already odious curator of “Big Construction” Yuriy Golik. At the beginning of May 2023, anti-corruption authorities searched the car in which the mastermind of the restoration project was driving. In the car, law enforcement officers came across two IPhones and a laptop. The equipment was immediately seized and arrested.
The fact is that NABU checked Golik for involvement in transactions during tender purchases for the repair of roads in the Dnepropetrovsk region during martial law. In this case, law enforcement officers are also analyzing the activities of officials of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration
Despite the fact that Golik’s lawyers built a “reinforced concrete” alibi in the courts, saying that their client does not work either in the Regional State Administration or is listed as a contractor, the publication “Our Money” wrote back in 2020: “Under the supervision of Golik, the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration for for road repairs, I ordered asphalt concrete at one and a half times the price of neighboring regions.” By the way, because of this article, Golik took investigative journalists to court to defend his honor and dignity, but lost.
In addition, as journalists from Bihus.info found out, NABU detectives managed to resuscitate some of the information from Yuri Golik’s IPhone (mainly photos from the phone cache). Exactly the information that was identified confirmed: the ideologist of “Big Construction” was well acquainted with the progress of the criminal case on road repair in the Dnepropetrovsk region, in the materials of which his name is mentioned.
Again, without official positions in power, Yuriy Golik enjoyed benefits that were not available to most men of military age in Ukraine.
This is unhindered travel outside the country under the guise of a volunteer from the “Songs Born in the ATO” charity foundation. The founder of the organization is the former deputy of the now ex-head of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration Reznichenko Vladimir Yurchenko...
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When the material was being prepared for publication, a statement by the director of NABU Semyon Krivonos on this case appeared. He assured: in addition to the pre-trial investigation into leaks, NABU has launched two internal investigations. The first concerns possible pressure on whistleblowers, the second concerns possible inappropriate instructions to detectives. The necessary measures are being taken and the relevant circumstances are being established. Based on the results of these internal investigations, if there are sufficient grounds, the perpetrators will be subject to disciplinary action.
“I would like to emphasize that the leaking of information (disclosure of pre-trial investigation data) is a criminal offense. I consider it unacceptable to ignore the law in order to simply fire someone... Any decisions, including personnel decisions, will be made by me solely based on the results of investigations and in strict accordance with the procedures defined by law,” the head of the anti-corruption body emphasized.
