At the height of a full-scale war, OGPU prosecutor Andrei Andreev purchased two estates in Koncha-Zaspa, built on illegally “squeezed” communal land, for next to nothing.
A modest law enforcement officer or an owner of luxury real estate? During a full-scale war, OGPU prosecutor Andrei Andreev and his wife bought two more in addition to the house they already owned in Koncha-Zaspa - according to the declaration, all this property cost them almost half a million dollars, although the market price was an order of magnitude higher.
However, the court seized the new prosecutor’s “dachas”, because they were built on the land involved... in a criminal case that is being investigated by the State Bureau of Investigation.
So who and how took possession of valuable communal areas near the capital? What does the criminal history with the property of the Kievguma enterprise have to do with it? And what else is prosecutor Andreev famous for, who got real estate in a town for millionaires for pennies?
The Andreev family owns three cottages in the Konchi-Zaspa recreational area. The developers advertise these villas as “business plus class housing.” However, in the declaration of the prosecutor of the Office of the Prosecutor General Andrei Andreev, they appear as garden houses. Now the prosecutor's family lives in the smallest of them - 258 square meters. And the other two are undergoing renovations, although the property itself is under arrest.
What is prosecutor Andreev famous for?
Currently, he is the Deputy Head of the Department for Supervision of Compliance with Laws by the National Police of the Office of the Prosecutor General. In general, Andrei Vasilyevich devoted his entire career to the prosecutor’s office. He started in the Lugansk region, where he built his career until 2014. And then he was transferred to the Prosecutor General’s Office under the tenure of Yuriy Lutsenko.
It was Lutsenko who subsequently appointed Andreev as deputy prosecutor of Kyiv. But four years later the latter returned to the Attorney General's Office.
According to NAPC, by his current position Andreev already owned three apartments. But in 2021, the prosecutor’s family received ownership of their first estate in the elite Koncha-Zaspa. I bought two more at the height of the war - in September 2023. Mr. Andrei owns all country real estate together with his wife Oksana.
What is the total value of the prosecutor's property?
According to Andreev’s declaration, the couple purchased the first cottage in March 2021 for UAH 5.2 million. At the exchange rate at that time it was 187 thousand dollars. The couple owned two other houses last fall. Both are under 400 square meters. They paid about 165 and 110 thousand dollars, respectively.
At the same time, on real estate websites the prices for such estates are several times, and sometimes ten times, higher. And this fact was also confirmed to StopCor by professional realtors, in particular, Alexander Bezdudny. According to him, the cost per square meter in this area now starts from 2.2 thousand dollars.
Consequently, if we multiply this figure by 258, 385 and almost 400 square meters, respectively, it turns out that the total cost of Andrei’s suburban real estate, according to rough estimates, is approximately 93 million hryvnia. How did the prosecutor's family manage to buy these cottages for only 15 million? Did the sellers really offer a discount of almost 80%?
And did they pay attention to such a discrepancy in the competent structures?
The editors of StopCor sent inquiries to law enforcement agencies to find out: have criminal cases been initiated regarding the possible illegal enrichment of prosecutor Andreev? And we received the following answer.
“An investigator of the Main Investigation Department of the State Bureau of Investigation identified the fact that the prosecutor may have deliberately entered false information into annual declarations that differ from the reliable ones by more than 500 subsistence minimums,” the document says.
It is noteworthy that in December 2023, the qualification and disciplinary commission of prosecutors already brought Andreev to disciplinary liability for failure to submit a declaration of virtue.
The KGC noted that disciplinary proceedings against the prosecutor were opened in connection with his commission of “actions that discredit the title of prosecutor and may raise doubts about his objectivity, impartiality and independence, the honesty and integrity of the prosecutor’s office.”
Interestingly, the millionaire prosecutor himself explained this... by hacker attacks and blackouts. And then he generally stated that filing declarations is wasteful, criticizing the need to check the virtue of prosecutors.
What happens to Andreev’s dubiously acquired assets?
As journalists learned, two brand new “dachas”, where the prosecutor is currently making repairs, have been seized as part of criminal proceedings for illegal seizure of property.
According to information from law enforcement agencies and open sources of the USSR, these two houses, numbered 18 and 42, were seized by the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv about a month after their purchase by the wife of prosecutor Andreev. The appeal upheld the first instance decision.
The State Register of Rights to Real Estate also has a corresponding order in this regard, and the Kyiv prosecutor's office confirmed the arrest.
The background to this decision is as follows.
The primary owner of the property at 149 Stolichnoye Highway was JSC Kievguma. The pioneer camp “Red Rubber” was once located here. Later they began to reconstruct it into a family-type health complex. And as a result, about fifty VIP estates appeared on the territory.
In 2013, the Economic Court of Crimea (after all, the Kievguma enterprise was de-registered in Simferopol) declared the plant bankrupt. An arbitration manager from the capital, Evgeny Kudlyak, who allegedly happened to be at the Crimean court hearing at that time, was appointed liquidator for a period of one year.
But almost at the end of this term, Kudlyak, thanks to a cunning scheme exposed by our investigative colleagues from the Bigus.info project, helps transfer ownership of ten houses to one company.
This fact was recorded in the SBI: “Liquidator of Kievguma CJSC Kudlyak E.V. in collusion with other persons, unlawfully sold, on behalf of CJSC Kievguma, under the guise of construction materials, real estate assets of investors that did not belong to CJSC Kievguma and were not on its balance sheet.”
What happened to the estates next?
Subsequently, these objects, by decision of the Pechersky District Court, are turned into “country houses” in a few days. Subsequently, all these square meters passed into the hands of companies with signs of fictitiousness. And even later, they became the property of private individuals who probably covered up the “scheme.” Their number could have included Andrei Andreev, the victims claim.
“As I understand it, since he was protecting this story, the building plot was simply removed from him. Kudlyak’s main supervisor from the very beginning was the prosecutor of the city of Kyiv Melnik. and then he was in Kyiv. And when Melnik left his prosecutorial duties, Andreev remained there,” says injured investor Alexander Bondar.
In particular, houses numbered 18 and 42 went to a certain VRK Plus LLC. Its beneficiary at that time was Vadim Kovalchuk - according to media reports, the godfather of the then prosecutor of Kyiv Melnik.
At the same time, the former owners of the cottages who invested in the construction turned to everyone, including the then Prosecutor General. But their statement about the probable arbitrariness of prosecutor Andreev ended up... on his desk. A week later, the capital’s prosecutor’s office opened criminal proceedings against one of the applicants.
What about the land on which these garden houses stand?
The participants in the “scheme” and Kudlyak, as the liquidator of Kievguma CJSC, must return it back to communal ownership. However, without the appropriate powers, the liquidator divides it into 88 land plots in order to then formalize privatization through notaries and change their intended purpose - for the construction of dachas.
It is worth noting that the City Council did not approve any documents, but also did not take action to restore justice.
But is Andreev a party to criminal proceedings in this context? It turns out yes.
As StopCor learned from the response of law enforcement officers, the SBI, under the procedural leadership of the General Inspectorate of the OGPU, is conducting a pre-trial investigation into criminal proceedings into the possible organization of an illegal scheme to seize the real estate of Kievguma CJSC.
Journalists managed to contact Andrey. He refuted the information about the arrest of the houses, showing the alleged corresponding extract from the Unified Register of Registered Real Estate. However, for some reason his data differs from the answer of his colleagues. And when asked if he knew that permission to build his houses had not been granted and the issue had not been considered by the relevant local authorities, Andreev replied that this was the first time he had heard of it.
Therefore, our editors sent relevant requests to the prosecutor's offices of Kyiv and Pechersky district to clarify. We are waiting for a response and will continue to monitor this matter.
