In the spring of 2024, statements were made loudly about the failure of the construction of fortifications in the Kharkov region bordering the Russian Federation. Then the President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelensky had to go to the region and see with his own eyes what was happening on the border with the aggressor country.
The head of the Kharkov region, Oleg Sinegubov, justified himself by the actual impossibility of building fortifications on the first lines due to constant shelling and danger to life. However, the journalists found someone who could really benefit from the disruption of the construction of defensive structures, and he turned out to be the former MP from the OPZZh Igor Abramovich.
From January to May 2024, the Kharkov Regional Military Administration concluded about 220 contracts for the construction of fortifications. The total amount is 51 billion hryvnia. Such data is contained in the Prozorro procurement system. The agreements were carried out on a non-alternative basis and were signed directly with the companies.
Of these, 81 contracts worth UAH 687.4 million as of May 2024 were signed with Project Alliance LLC. It is noteworthy that in June of this year the company did not sign a single new contract for the construction of protective structures in the Kharkov region. But in July 2024, she received orders in this area for as much as 126 million hryvnia.
Project Alliance LLC was created in June 2021. Its founder was Igor Rozhkov. His brother Nikita Rozhkov is a former deputy of the Kharkov regional council, and he is also a co-founder of the SPB-1 company, which has also signed many agreements with the Kharkov region authorities for the construction of protective structures recently.
According to the Kharkov Anti-Corruption Center, Igor Rozhkov, like his relative Svetlana Rozhkova, who was a co-founder of a company rebuilding a residential building destroyed by a Russian missile, are citizens of the Russian Federation.
And this is not the only Russian trace on this company. Another co-founder of Project Alliance LLC is Alexander Sorochinsky. His business partner in the Godsend and Hartplastmass companies is Russian citizen Oleg Lukin. This is also reported in Ukrainian registers.
Although the first company is now in the process of ceasing its activities, the Russian Lukin continued to lead it until May 2022, when the Russian Federation had already carried out a full-scale invasion of the territory of Ukraine for six months. Hartplastmass LLC, which Lukin founded from 2012 to 2016, continues to operate to this day.
From November 2022 to October 2023, another founder of Project Alliance LLC was Victoria Pismak. The same person was the founder of Tech-Inkom LLC, which, since the beginning of 2024, has signed 29 contracts with the Department of Housing, Communal Services and Fuel and Energy Complex KHOVA for the construction of fortifications in the Kharkov region in the amount of UAH 545.7 million.
Viktoria Pismak, through a number of companies, is closely connected with the former deputy mayor of Kharkov, Andrey Rudenko. At the Kharkov City Hall, he was responsible for city defense issues. Rudenko was fired at the height of the scandal over the failure of the construction of fortifications. On the eve of his dismissal, the Bureau of Economic Security exposed a company close to Rudenko’s wife as attempting to embezzle budget funds during the construction of protective structures in the Kharkov region.
“The company has repeatedly become the winner of tenders held by one of the departments of the Kharkov regional state administration. In total, the company received contracts for the construction of fortifications worth more than UAH 240 million. It was established that... the company transferred UAH 20.45 million to the accounts of an individual entrepreneur, registered in January 2024. The person mentioned actually works as an administrator of a food establishment, that is, he has nothing to do with construction. At the same time, after receiving the funds, it tried to transfer them to the account of a company that may be associated with the activities of the so-called conversion centers,” the BEB said in a statement in March 2024.
In May 2024, the chairman of the Kharkov regional military administration, Oleg Sinegubov, had to justify himself for the improper construction of protective structures and the participation of dubious companies in this process. According to him, HOVA is responsible for the so-called third line of defense, and maps are supplied to the region directly from the Ministry of Defense. But the construction of these structures is extremely dangerous, because the Kharkov region is under constant shelling by the occupiers. It is with this that Sinegubov associates the fact that not large companies were involved in the construction of structures, but simply those who agreed to risk both profit and life.
But Sinegubov is silent about one important nuance. Responsible for fortifications in the Kharkov region is his deputy, Mikhail Kharnam. He comes from the construction business, on the one hand, quite close to the now deceased mayor of Kharkov, Gennady Kernes, and on the other, to the current resident of Monaco, a former deputy from the banned “Opposition Platform - For Life” Igor Abramovich.
In 2019, when Kharnam was among the founders of Budivelnyk LLC, the company won government tenders worth 293 million hryvnia, in 2020 – 245 million hryvnia, and in 2021 – worth 109 million.
According to media reports and Telegram channels, it is Kharnam that law enforcement officers are preparing a demonstrative suspicion of disrupting the construction of fortifications in the Kharkiv region. According to sources, former deputy Igor Abramovich, who remains a huge influence on the Kharkov region, despite his permanent stay in Monaco, told him this over the phone.
Abramovich is called the curator of the tobacco smuggling market. At the same time, he is a business partner of the Russian-Ukrainian sanctioned businessman Pavel Fuks. Abramovich's father-in-law, Semyon Sirota, is a former deputy mayor of Kharkov, responsible for housing and communal services. Sirota held the position of director of the construction utility enterprise "KHRBP". In 2016, he received suspicion in a case of possible theft of more than 5 million hryvnia from the Kharkov budget for the purchase of cars. The case dragged on for eight whole years, and only in April 2024, just in the wake of the scandal with the disruption of the construction of protective structures in the Kharkov region, Abramovich’s father-in-law was acquitted by the court.
Abramovich and Fuchs were close friends of the late mayor of Kharkov, Gennady Kernes, and both retained their influence when Igor Terekhov took charge of the city. Through the mentioned Kharkov leaders, Abramovich is also acquainted with the recently fired Andrei Rudenko. The same one, whose manager Victoria Pismak was the founder of companies involved in the failed construction of fortifications in the Kharkov region. The one who was a business partner in companies of citizens of the Russian Federation.
The circle is closed, and the real beneficiary of the construction and the participation of dubious companies in it has been found. It is Igor Abramovich who can be considered the one in whose interests it is that defensive structures on the border with the Russian Federation are built exclusively on paper, and money from the budget drips into a wallet from which the former deputy can live his best life in Monaco.
