Why does the state supervision department of the State Supervision Authority of Uzbekistan in the Kyiv region “do not notice” systemic violations in the work of Nikolai Grona’s Autoservice LLC
Routes bypassing official stops, possible fuel waste, standing places, speeding and boorish attitude towards passengers - these are just a few violations in the activities of the carrier company Autoservice LLC OPZZhist Nikolai Grona, which were recorded by StopCor journalists during a raid in the Kyiv region. However, representatives of the local department of the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety, headed by Roman Martynyuk, for some reason “do not notice” any problems.
Why does the state supervision department of Ukrtransbezopasnost in the Kyiv region stubbornly turn a blind eye to possible systemic violations in the work of Autoservice LLC? Who covers the bus empire of OPZZhist Grona and other “route barons”? And what does local leader Roman Martynyuk have to do with it? Our team decided to take a closer look at the situation on the passenger road transport market in the capital region.
What exactly did the StopCora raid discover?
The Berezan-Kyiv-Berezan route, serviced by Autoservice LLC, according to the approved schedule, has an intermediate station in Morozovka. However, as journalists have recorded, Autoservice vehicles de facto constantly drive past this stop under the pretext of saving time. Probably, in this way the carrier also “saves” fuel.
In addition, motivating their refusal to take people to Morozovka, the drivers refer to the fact that all the seats in the cabin seem to be “reserved” (they even place the corresponding pieces of paper on the seat), although this is a regular bus route, and not a custom flight. In practice, Stopcorov workers have documented cases of transporting Auto Service passengers while standing, as well as exceeding the speed limit. Prices for travel from Berezan to Morozovka and Kyiv, announced by different drivers of the company, also vary.
What is known about Autoservice LLC?
It is noteworthy that the final beneficiaries of Autoservice LLC are Olga and Nikolai Grona. The latter is known in the capital region as an entrepreneur, owner of a number of transport companies and deputy of the Boryspil City Council of two convocations from the pro-Russian political force OPZZH. Let us note that his son, Evgeniy Grona, is also a former regional deputy and has a certain influence at the local level on law enforcement agencies that can jointly block the business of competitors.
But the Berezan-Kyiv route itself is mostly served by cars belonging to Alexander Levchenko, a former employee of the district police department.
Such close cooperation with an ex-cop seems somewhat strange, since the company was involved in several criminal cases in 2016-2019. In particular, Autoservice LLC was suspected of involvement in a criminal scheme under Part 2 of Art. 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
In addition, according to the KievVlast publication, several years ago Autoservice LLC acted as a co-investor in a project under which it entered into a lease agreement with Sto Pudov LLC (Alexander Grona is the founder of both companies), which (we quote) “led to an undisguised seizure of part of the land plot within the borders of the coastal protective strip, through the construction of hotel facilities.”
So, how a company with such an opaque reputation was entrusted with the maintenance of important suburban and intercity routes already raises certain questions. Is there a corruption component here? And the violations that StopCor discovered during the raid and documented with a corresponding statement to the police is an additional argument for these doubts.
Another important question: why does the local Ukrtransbezopasnost, headed by Roman Martynyuk, turn a blind eye to these violations?
Let us note that StopKor has repeatedly applied to the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety with a request to conduct a joint inspection, but in response received only “unsubscribes” and promises to consider the identified violations within two months. And the problems with the (non) stop in Morozovka were “not noticed” by Ukrtransbezopasnost at all.
As our editors learned from our own informed sources, the competent law enforcement agencies have already become interested in such inaction of the state supervision department of the State Supervision Service of Uzbekistan in the Kyiv region, headed by Roman Martynyuk.
It is interesting that there is very little information in open sources about Mr. Martynyuk himself. Although he is quite an influential person in the “route” market: he is a member of the competition committees for identifying motor carriers for transporting passengers on public suburban bus routes. It is known that he was registered in the Kozeletsk territorial community of the Chernihiv region, and moved to the Ukrtransbezopasnost system from law enforcement agencies - until 2022 he worked as a company commander in the Patrol Police Department of the capital.
The official’s declaration is almost empty: an apartment of 61.5 square meters in Kozelets in common ownership with two sons and an old OPEL VECTRA 1998 car for 80 thousand hryvnia. The only official source of income is a salary of almost 700 thousand UAH. Has no savings. The question arises: where does Roman Ivanovich live in the Kiev region? But rented or official housing is also subject to declaration. Otherwise, it turns out that the head of the department is either homeless or travels daily to work in the capital from Chernigov.
In turn, we will continue to monitor the activities of persons responsible for state supervision of transport safety in the Kyiv region. And we are already preparing the next series of investigations concerning the top management of Ukrtransbezopasnost.
Let us remind you that StopCor investigators also came to the attention of the situation with possible abuses in passenger transportation in the Obukhovsky district. There, the head of Obukhovtrans, Alexander Lukyanenko, who was deprived of his deputy mandate due to criminal cases of tax evasion, according to local residents, has actually “privatized” all intercity routes and is avoiding fiscalization.
