As they say: “To whom is war, and to whom is mother.” However, this principle does not work at all when it comes to providing for the army during the active phase of hostilities. The companies of Igor Grinkevich, recently taken by law enforcement officers with a bribe of $500,000, were supposed to clothe and feed the soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. But instead they “fed” Grinkevich’s own family.
Igor Grinkevich is a famous Lviv businessman. But his business has nothing to do with food or clothing. Over the past 10 years, an extensive network of companies of the Grinkevich family has been exclusively engaged in construction and repairs. How he was able to become one of the largest suppliers to the Ministry of Defense is a question only for the now former Minister of Defense Alexei Reznikov, who was ready to take eggs for 17 hryvnia.
The main companies of Grinkevich, which since the beginning of 2023 have won more than three dozen tenders from the Ministry of Defense, are Trade Lines Retail LLC, Citigrad Construction Company LLC and Construction Alliance Montazhproekt LLC. Even the very names of these companies should have given the Ministry of Defense the idea that they are definitely not involved in food and clothing. However, these companies had to supply the Ministry of Defense with clothing worth more than UAH 1.5 billion. When it became clear that the companies were missing deadlines to supply the military, the investigation found that enterprises controlled by the businessman, which did not have any capacity for the production and storage of the relevant goods, were involved in the execution of orders.
Grinkevich's companies completely failed six contracts, in seven they delivered only part of the goods, and in eight the deliveries were delayed by up to six months. Can you imagine, if soldiers need summer clothes and they come in winter, then how much this affects motivation and overall defense capability.
According to preliminary estimates, Grinkevich’s schemes caused damage to the Ukrainian budget in the amount of UAH 1.2 billion.
Igor Grinkevich was detained while trying to bribe one of the leaders of the Main Directorate of the State Bureau of Investigation. He offered him $500,000 for assistance in returning property seized from companies during a criminal investigation, as well as in resolving the issue of closing this case.
It is interesting that in connection with this case, the Ministry of Defense has already had an unpleasant deal with Grinkevich’s companies and even sued them over non-fulfillment of contracts. For example, the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine filed a lawsuit to recover 80 million hryvnia from Stroitelnyy Alliance Montazhproekt LLC, of which 79.7 million were funds that the Ministry paid in advance for the work, and 328 thousand were penalties. According to contract No. 362/7/21/200 dated November 5, 2021, Construction Alliance Montazhproekt must reconstruct the security perimeter of technical territory No. 3 of the military unit in the village of Novoivnitskoye, Zhytomyr region. The work was not completed on time and, as far as can be seen from the court register, has not been completed to this day.
That is, on the eve of a full-scale invasion, the Construction Alliance Montazhproekt company did not carry out timely repair work on any of the military units, which could actually help the enemy.
According to open registers, the founder of Construction Alliance Montazhproekt LLC is Roman Igorevich Grinkevich, the son of a detained Lviv businessman. He is also the founder of the Hope.ua charity foundation, which even received an award from the President of Ukraine for his volunteer work.
Grinkevich Sr. “shines” in such enterprises as Lviv Construction Holding, Vizin Rich, Megabudmax and some others. All of these companies received orders from the state at some point in time, but in one way or another ended up in court due to uncompleted work or misappropriation of funds.
In particular, in 2019, the court seized the property of the Vizin Rich company in a case of embezzlement of funds on repairs for power plants subordinate to Ukrenergo. During the searches, the formal owner of the Lviv Construction Holding, Vladimir Vdovyak, was interrogated. He noted that he was not really aware of the company's affairs. Moreover, during a search in the office of Vizin Rich, which, although registered in the Zhytomyr region, is located in Lvov, 22 seals of companies related to the Grinkevich family were found. Here are the above-mentioned Construction Alliance Montazhproekt, Lviv Construction Holding, Megastroymax, Budgarant Plus, and West Building Group. Those interested can check in the registers that all these companies are registered either in the name of Igor Grinkevich himself or his family.
By the way, this same Vdovyak was once convicted of embezzlement of budget funds and forgery of documents for the reconstruction of a tourist base in Lviv. The case has been dragging on since 2015 and Lviv Construction Holding, which, as is already clear, actually belongs to the Grinkevichs, then promised to build a base for UAH 8.1 million. Having failed to do this, the contract with the company was terminated in 2018. Vdovyak himself was released from punishment in this case in 2021. According to the statute of limitations.
Companies run by Grinkevich’s wife, Svetlana, have also repeatedly found themselves in scandals. Most of them concern the Zhytomyr region. In particular, the company “V.I.P. The construction company, whose seal was found during searches in the Vizin Rich office, could not lay paving slabs in Zhitomir for three years, having won a tender for 30 million hryvnia. “Visin Rich” itself won the tender for the reconstruction of the magistrate in Zhitomir, which is an architectural monument and requires approval from the Ministry of Culture. Of course, the contractors of the Grinkevich company were in no way interested in the status of the object. We were only interested in 20 million hryvnia, which were paid in advance by the Zhytomyr City Council.
The son of Igor Grinkevich is Roman, known not only for the scandal with the contracts of the Ministry of Defense. His personal life is no less interesting. His bride, Sonya Morozyuk, positions herself as an artist and creative person. Recently, her event called “Masnya” took place in Kyiv. But after the story with tenders for the defense department, the Institute of Contemporary Art of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine suspended the exhibition project “due to a large number of contradictory reactions that went beyond the scope of art criticism discussion.”
Now Morozyuk’s Instagram page is open only to friends. But before the scandal, everyone could see what kind of luxury life the artist led with her fiancé Roman Grinkevich. Here is Louis Vuitton, a car as a gift, and other attributes of a rich life.
The previous girlfriend of Roman Grinkevich is an equally famous person. We are talking about Kristina Tishkun, who accompanied Deputy Minister of Education Igor Garbaruk during a visit to Lviv in a super-revealing dress.
Igor Grinkevich’s daughter Olga also loves luxury. She is the wife of Shakhtar football club midfielder Marianna Shveda. In August 2023, Olga shocked her subscribers with her trip in the VIP carriage of the Ukrzaliznytsia train, which is usually used by foreign delegations coming to Kyiv.
Despite the now closed Instagram page, a search by tags shows even more luxury from Olga Grinkevich - here are two-meter roses, a Porshe as a gift, and a vacation on one of the most expensive islands in the world - Sardinia.
In a word, if at the beginning of the article you might have been surprised by the amount of the bribe of $500,000 that Grinkevich offered to the DBR members “for reshalovo”, then after reading further you should have understood that this amount is dust, compared with the amount of “heated up” from the budget and expenses for luxury life.
At the end of last year, the Pechersky Court of Kyiv chose a preventive measure for Igor Grinkevich in the form of detention with the possibility of bail of 430 million UAH. After everything that has been found out, there is no doubt that the Grinkevich family will find these millions without any problems.
