Position: former People's Deputy of Ukraine.
Sphere of corruption: land issues.
Region of corruption activity: Kyiv city and Kyiv region.
Qualification: the actions are qualified under Part 5 of Article 191 and Part 3 of Article 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Status: at large, wanted.
Case story: in early September 2025, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office exposed a scheme for the illegal appropriation of 18 hectares of state-owned land worth over UAH 160 million.
The former People's Deputy of Ukraine from the "Party of Regions" and two persons controlled by him, a metropolitan developer and a person controlled by her, as well as the former head of the regional department of the State Geocadastre of Ukraine, are involved in the implementation of the transaction.
According to NABU documents, the person in question is Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a deputy during the time of fugitive President Viktor Yanukovych. While media outlets indicate that the developer in question is Vladyslav Molchanova, co-founder of Stolitsa Group. The case concerns the land of the Stolitsa agricultural market, located on the outskirts of Kyiv.
Investigators established that in the spring of 2021, a corporate conflict arose between Molchanova and Ivanyushchenko for control of the market, during which the ownership of the land plot was transferred from the Kyiv-Svyatoshyn District State Administration to the Main Department of the State Geocadastre in the Kyiv region and leased to a company controlled by the developer.
After that, the head of the company refused part of the leased land in favor of 9 predetermined people who, based on the order of the acting head of the Main Department of the State Geocadastre in the Kyiv region, in violation of the norms of land legislation, received ownership of land with an area of 18 hectares. Subsequently, these plots were sold to three companies associated with the developer through fictitious transactions.
In the process of resolving the conflict, the developer and the former MP signed a "memorandum of understanding" on the joint use of land, in particular for development. And in September 2021, the former MP's confidant became one of the beneficiaries of the companies that owned the plots.
Further disposal of the land plot was stopped by an arrest imposed at the request of SAPO prosecutors.
All those involved in the fraudulent scheme were informed of the suspicion.
Subsequently, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau put a former MP from the Party of Regions on the wanted list, suspected of legalizing 18 hectares of state land worth over UAH 160 million.
The department traditionally does not name the person involved, but earlier, Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a deputy from the time of fugitive president Viktor Yanukovych, was suspected in this case.
In October, the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) in absentia chose a preventive measure in the form of detention for Yuriy Ivanyushchenko.
The decision was made by Judge Andriy Bitsyuk, granting the motion of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office (SAP).
Persons potentially involved in corruption schemes: co-founder of the construction company Stolitsa Group Vladyslav Molchanova. The Anti-Corruption Court applied a preventive measure to Molchanova. She was set a bail of UAH 100 million with the following obligations: to appear upon each demand; to report a change of her place of residence and work; to refrain from communicating with other suspects in this criminal proceeding, as well as such witnesses; to hand over her international passports for safekeeping.
At the same time, Molchanova's lawyer filed a petition with the court for permission to temporarily travel abroad. He indicated that the suspect's child needed specialized treatment in Switzerland. In addition, the lawyer claimed that her client was performing her duties properly.
The prosecutor of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office objected to the request and pointed out that no evidence was provided to confirm the need for specialized treatment of the child and the impossibility of providing alternative treatment in Ukraine. In addition, Molchanova has still not complied with the decision on a preventive measure in terms of paying a 100 million UAH bail.
The motion is denied. The decision is not subject to appeal
After the decision for Molchanova was announced, she stated that she "in principle will not post bail."
At the same time, another person involved in the case, the director of Oilsea LLC Yuriy Tsvihun, posted bail in the amount of 5 million hryvnias. After that, he was released from the pre-trial detention center. He is currently under obligations, including surrendering his passport and wearing an electronic bracelet.
In general, the scheme involved a former MP from the Party of Regions, two individuals under his control, a metropolitan developer, and the former head of the regional State Geocadastre.
Wealth: There are no declarations of Ivanyushchenko’s income in open sources. However, according to media reports, in 2010–2013, Ivanyushchenko was credited with enormous influence, power, and wealth. He was even called a possible buyer of the Dynamo Kyiv football club from the Surkis brothers. Although before that, he had neither high positions nor big business. He even became a People’s Deputy of Ukraine in 2007, taking 111th place on the list of the “Party of Regions”. He himself said in a comment to the Left Bank that everything in Yenakiyevo, Yanukovych’s homeland, rests on him. “Everything there rests on me: sports palaces, hospitals. And you write that I am generally a “zero” there,” Ivanyushchenko said in December 2012.
A year earlier, in September 2011, he named the Mariupol machine-building holding Azovmash and the Kyiv Zhulyany airport among his main business assets.
However, according to rumors and journalistic investigations, the main capital of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko and his business partner Ivan Avramov was made in completely different areas of the economy. Formally, he owned a coconut chemical plant in Yenakiyevo since the early 1990s and at the end of 2012 sold his share to Rinat Akhmetov's SCM company. Informally, it was believed that a lot of money was earned from coal mining and trading. Moreover, we were not talking about large mines, but about illegal mining in Donbas and services for transporting coal mined in mines of other owners, in particular the state. Thus, in December 2012, it was reported that companies close to the people's deputy began to manage railway tracks that were on the balance sheet of the state-owned Stakhanovpromtrans. These tracks connected the mines of Luhansk region with the infrastructure of Ukrzaliznytsia.
Subsequently, almost all of the businessman's assets were united under the umbrella of PJSC Closed Non-Diversified Venture Corporate Investment Fund New Technologies.
The full list of companies that the mysterious businessman from Donbas was involved with became known only in 2012. The companies were revealed to the Ukrainian magazine Forbes by his business partner Ivan Avramov. He spoke about businesses in the gas and coal industries, construction, agriculture, transport, banking, and metallurgy. For example, about Zakhidinkombank and TK Credit Bank.
And before the Revolution of Dignity, this list was regularly replenished.
For example, in 2013 it became known that Yuri Ivanyushchenko's son Arsen became a co-owner of the large scrap metal procurement holding Euro Finance Ltd., created by a Ukrainian businessman of Iranian origin Ali Omran. The company then planned to build an electrometallurgical plant in the Kyiv region. But over time, Ivanyushchenko's name and the names of companies close to him disappeared from the list of founders of Azovmash, Zhulyan, Euro Finance Ltd. and many other companies.
In the companies that were 100% owned by Ivanyushchenko and Avramov, new shareholders also appeared after 2014, mostly South African citizens. Legally, Yuriy Ivanyushchenko now owns only a few small companies registered in temporarily occupied Yenakiyevo.
In 2015, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine announced the seizure of 72 million euros in Ivanyushchenko's accounts in Switzerland. His Swiss real estate was also seized. At the end of 2018, it was reported that the seizure may be lifted.
As of 2020, Ivanyushchenko's main asset was considered to be Promryslovy Rynok LLC (Promrynok). The same one that owns the 7th kilometer market, and which in 2011 Ivanyushchenko did not even consider as a business.
The media also wrote that after Viktor Yanukovych and the leadership of the Party of Regions fled abroad, significant assets belonging to them remained in Ukraine. Among the fugitives was Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, known as Yura Yenakievsky, who was considered the second most influential person after Yanukovych. There is no reliable information about his past, but there are rumors that he was a Donetsk bandit who achieved high positions in the criminal world through contract killings and racketeering.
Be that as it may, under the rule of the Donetsk clan, Yuriy Ivanyushchenko became a very wealthy man who amassed significant state assets. After the 2014 revolution, Ivanyushchenko disappeared along with Yanukovych, and Ukrainian law enforcement officers put him on the wanted list, seizing the assets they discovered.
Among the latter was Yuriy Ivanyushchenko's estate near Kyiv, in the elite Koncha Zaspa, which he began to build when Viktor Yanukovych came to power. But, despite the arrest, in 2016, Swiss citizen Paolo Urfer was able to buy out 15 hectares of the estate with the most valuable buildings, including the main residence, which is compared to Versailles.
According to the documents, Paolo Urfer paid $135,000 for 15 hectares of protected land and all the property located on it. This is at least six times lower than the real price. How it happened that the seized asset was sold is still unknown. The prosecutor's office is trying to appeal the deal, but the problem is also that Paolo Urfer transferred the purchased property to his company Orbita Holdings UA.
Although formally the founder is Ivkov Sergey Ivanovich, he is an obvious figurehead, picked up by Ivanyushchenko’s people somewhere in Luhansk. In 2023, the company changed hands – it became a Cypriot offshore. But the beneficiary, as before, is considered to be Paolo Urfer.
Persons who should have reacted: Ivanyushchenko's criminal activities should have been reacted to even earlier – in particular, the heads of law enforcement agencies during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko. During this period, a number of criminal proceedings were opened against Ivanyushchenko, but the investigations were sabotaged, halted or closed due to the inaction of investigators, court decisions in favor of the accused and, according to experts and journalists, political pressure from above.
Specifically, the investigation and prosecution of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko should have been handled primarily by the heads of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine, since before the 2019 reforms, it was the Prosecutor General's Office that was the main body for pre-trial investigations into cases of high-ranking officials and serious crimes during the Yanukovych era.
Scandals: according to media reports, Ivanyushchenko is a well-known criminal authority nicknamed "Yura Yenakiyevsky".
In 2011, the media credited Ivanyushchenko with $102.3 million (108th place in the ranking of the 200 richest people in Ukraine).
On January 16, 2014, the politician voted for “dictatorial laws” that expanded the government’s ability to punish protesters and labeled civil society as “extremists” and “foreign agents.” He fled Ukraine after the Revolution of Dignity.
In February of the same year, photos were released of one of the largest mansions in Koncha Zaspa, with an area of 8 thousand m2, located on a territory of 35 hectares, which was built by Yuriy Ivanyushchenko.
Ivanyushchenko was placed on the Swiss “black list.” And in April of the same year, 28 European Union countries included him on the sanctions list of individuals involved in the embezzlement of state funds.
In early 2015, Ivanyushchenko was put on the wanted list by the Ministry of Internal Affairs for organizing the embezzlement of other people's property and illegal enrichment on a particularly large scale.
The then Minister of Internal Affairs, Arsen Avakov, also claimed that Ivanyushchenko organized and financed the "titushok" who kidnapped, beat, and killed Euromaidan activists in February 2014.
Already on February 28, 2017, it became known that the Supreme Court of Ukraine had closed all criminal proceedings against Yuriy Ivanyushchenko at that time.
In addition, as it turned out, the price of the lifted sanctions on Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, an associate of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, is almost 5.4 billion hryvnias.
Also in 2017, the European Court of Justice ruled to lift sanctions against Yuriy Ivanyushchenko.
In early June 2019, it became known that the Odesa Prosecutor's Office closed the case against Ivanyushchenko, which concerned the possible embezzlement of state budget funds in particularly large amounts, as well as the raiding of the Odessa market "7 Kilometer".
In June 2019, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine canceled the closure of cases against former regional politician Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a close associate of Viktor Yanukovych. And in July of the same year, Ivanyushchenko was returned to the wanted list.
In September, the Primorsky Court of Odessa ordered the prosecutor's office to close the criminal case about the "raiding" of the Odessa market "7 Kilometer" by Yuriy Ivanyushchenko.
In October 2019, it became known that a Latvian court recognized the criminal origin and decided to confiscate over $30 million, which is associated with former Ukrainian high-ranking officials.
The authorities did not name the owners of the money. However, as the Ukrainian Police Department was able to establish, it is money that the investigation links specifically to Ivanyushchenko.
Already in February 2021, Latvia lifted the arrest and credited to its state budget $30 million, which the Ukrainian investigation links to businessman and former deputy Yuriy Ivanyushchenko.
Sources:
https://zaxid.net/kolishnogo_narodnogo_deputata_yuriya_ivanyushhenka_ogolosili_v_rozshuk_n1619449
https://tsn.ua/ukrayina/vaks-zaochno-areshtuvav-eksnardepa-ivaniushchenka-detali-2934518.html
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2014/11/11/7043857
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2019/06/09/7217610
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2019/07/05/7220121
https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2019/07/15/7220957