The mayor of Uzhgorod, Bogdan Andriiv, has become the latest head of the regional center to come under the radar of law enforcement. On November 1, the SBU conducted searches in his office and the premises of the city council. The official reason was the illegal travel of some deputies abroad, but the case most likely has certain political motives
The Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police conducted a series of searches in the Uzhgorod City Council, including in the office of Mayor Bohdan Andriiv. Law enforcement officials claim that city council officials issued fictitious official business trips to local deputies, which they used to travel abroad on vacation during the war.
To arrange such a foreign trip, officials allegedly used fictitious invitations from affiliated foreign organizations. Officials did not register such “correspondence”, and signed letters for foreign “business trips” were not entered into the electronic document management system.
Many view the searches near Andriiv as a start to replacing the government in the city. This year, at least four mayors from Chernigov, Poltava, Rivne and Sumy have already lost their positions due to various types of corruption cases. It is too early to say with confidence that Andreev will join this cohort. However, trends and prospects for the emergence of some kind of corruption case in the future are still visible.
The searches in Uzhgorod are far from the first during a full-scale war. In the summer, the SBU already visited the Uzhgorod City Council and seized documents about the work of the Bozdoshsky Park utility company. Then the security forces detained the deputy director of the CP for taking a bribe from an entrepreneur for the trouble-free placement of entertainment attractions. At the same time, the head of the park, Anatoly Kovalsky, escaped with only a search, during which a considerable amount of cash was found in the official’s house.
Kovalsky is a very scandalous Uzhgorod developer, a city council deputy from Batkivshchyna, a fellow party member, comrade-in-arms and secret business partner of Andriiv. In particular, shortly before the start of a full-scale war, both were suspected of attempting, without an auction and through their own laying companies, to launch the former territory of the Module plant for construction, with a total area of more than 13 hectares and costing more than $15 million.
In the situation with Uzhgorod, the central government hardly aims to replace Andriiv with some loyal secretary of the city council - acting. mayor from Servant of the People. The positions of the “greens” both in the regional center and in the region are not very strong, so the chance of carrying out successful changes is very small.
In principle, the searches at Andriiv can be considered as revenge from the central government for the 2020 elections. Then, in the race for the position of mayor of the city, Andriiv defeated the government candidate Viktor Shchadei with a very, very minimal margin of 1.4 thousand votes, effectively depriving the Servant of the People of winning in the promising Uzhgorod and the opportunity to get at least one “green” mayor. Andriiv’s “grid” and the possible purchase of votes for 500 UAH, which was then reported by the SBU, could have played a significant role in this.
However, another motive seems to be the most realistic. The searches at the Uzhgorod mayor's office should be seen as an opportunity to weaken the position of Mykhailo Lanyo, the chairman of the Mukachevo district council, the leader of a powerful political and business clan in Transcarpathia, as well as the patron of the same Bogdan Andriiv. Andriiv himself came under Lanyo’s protectorate back in 2015, when he defected from another influential Ukrainian politician and businessman, Viktor Baloga.
By the way, the Balogh clan is also going through difficult times now. The son of Viktor Baloga, the mayor of Mukachevo Andrei Baloga, was also recently searched. Andrei Baloga is suspected of abuses in the sale of land.
Transcarpathia is, to a certain extent, a very isolated region politically. Local political movements have always played a major role here. If one of the regional politicians joined the national political project, then he only sought organizational and financial support there, while always remaining relatively independent.
The central government has always sought to take financial and political control over the local elites of Transcarpathia. True, if earlier the authorities built their positions in the regions through “negotiations”, now more serious methods have been used. As we see, two serious political groups in Transcarpathia—Balogy and Lanyo—have now come under powerful pressure from the security forces.
As you can see, the general trend in relation to mayors, which Regionnews has already written about, continues. Representatives of local government are under the watchful eye of law enforcement officers controlled by the Bank. And although Ukrainian mayors are by no means saints and many complaints against them may well be justified, this whole trend has one big risk - local government in the country is becoming less and less independent, which does not bode well for Ukraine in the long term.
