People's Deputy Nikolai Babenko illegally enriched himself by more than 18 million hryvnia

The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) has identified significant violations in the declaration of People's Deputy of Ukraine Nikolai Babenko.

According to the results of the audit, Babenko did not declare assets worth more than 18 million hryvnia, which significantly exceeds the established threshold and may indicate illegal enrichment.

This was reported by NAPC and former people's deputy Igor Mosiychuk in his Telegram channel.

In the period from March 25, 2024 to July 22, 2024, the NACP conducted an audit of the declaration of Nikolai Viktorovich Babenko, a member of the “Trust” deputy group. As a result, on August 2, the control body noted in an official document that the subject of the declaration, when submitting the declaration, indicated information that differed from the reliable ones in the amount of UAH 18,218,361.12, which exceeds 2,000 subsistence minimums for able-bodied persons established on the date of submission of the declaration, which are signs of an offense under Part 2 of Art. 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Please note that the audit was carried out regarding the declaration for 2021.

According to the documents presented by the deputy, his family owns significant cash - 550 thousand US dollars (at the exchange rate for 2021, this is 15,003,010 UAH) and 100 thousand euros (at the exchange rate for 2021, this is 3,092,260 UAH). The size of these monetary assets remains unchanged compared to the information provided by the people’s deputy in the declaration for the previous reporting year 2020.

However, according to the State Register of Taxpayers, over the past 20 years the family has received official income of only about 23.66 million hryvnia. In addition, during this period, Babenko and his wife Irina Domanova purchased real estate and cars for a total amount of more than 50 million hryvnia. This indicates a discrepancy between declared assets and real income.

“As a result, these data indicate that MP Nikolai Babenko and his wife Irina Domanova were not able to accumulate cash in the amount of $550,000 and €100,000. In simple words, more than 18 million UAH - they got it “from the air,” Mosiychuk noted.

The audit also found that during the period 2016-2019, Babenko and Domanova purchased five cars with a total cost of UAH 5,962,839.

An interesting feature of the audit is that Nikolai Babenko, a member of the “Trust” deputy group, hid information about the presence of international passports for him, his wife and son. Mosiychuk believes that he did this deliberately, since the lack of information about the international passport does not allow the NACP to identify Babenko and his family members outside of Ukraine.

Let us note that Nikolai Babenko and his wife own real estate in Kyiv and the region worth hundreds of millions of hryvnia. That is, they are active supporters of investing in real estate. Accordingly, it can be assumed that Nikolai Babenko and his family members may have real estate abroad.

“Not providing data on international passports is one of the methods to prevent NACP employees from detecting this real estate,” Mosiychuk noted.