The Zavodskyi District Court of Mykolaiv granted investigators permission to access the documents of the contractor company that is carrying out the reconstruction of the village of Posad-Pokrovske in the Chornobaivka community. The contractor is suspected of embezzling budget funds.
This is stated in the relevant court ruling.
Thus, in November 2023 the Service for the Restoration and Development of Kherson Infrastructure signed with the Kyiv-based LLC “Spec Bud Development” a contract for the construction of new private houses in Posad-Pokrovske in the amount of over UAH 40.6 million.
In July 2024 law enforcement opened proceedings under the article on embezzlement or misappropriation of property through abuse of official position (Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).
As stated in the court documents, the trigger for the investigation was a MOST article “Where is the money? Or why the reconstruction of Posad-Pokrovske ended before it began”. After that the investigation began to examine the actions of officials of several construction firms and state institutions that may have artificially inflated the cost of materials and work.
Law enforcement has already conducted nine construction-technical expert examinations, which confirmed that in the reports for completed works the company inflated expenses and included excess VAT. Because of this the budget lost over UAH 1.4 million.
Now the police plan to carry out additional expert examinations, including a handwriting examination. This is necessary to verify the authenticity of management’s signatures on contracts, estimates, defect reports and certificates of work value.
The village of Posad-Pokrovske is located in the territory of the Chornobaivka community of Kherson region. Most buildings in the village were destroyed during the hostilities on the right bank of the region in 2022.
In spring 2023 the settlement was included in the comprehensive reconstruction project. The village’s reconstruction is still ongoing. Already more than one billion hryvnias have been spent on it.
In February this year the court already ordered one of the contractors to return more than UAH 1.8 million to the state budget, which he received as part of the housing restoration in Posad-Pokrovske.