Position : MP, "Servant of the People", deputy head of the "Servant of the People" faction.
The sphere of corrupt activity : illegal enrichment during a full-scale war.
Region of corruption activity: Kyiv, Chernihiv.
Qualification : The specialized anti-corruption prosecutor's office in accordance with the established procedure applied to the general prosecutor to enter the information according to the specified publication into the Unified register of pre-trial investigations and to register the relevant criminal proceedings on the basis of the criminal offense provided for in Art. 368-5 of the Criminal Code (Illegal enrichment, punishable by imprisonment for a term of up to three years with deprivation of the right to hold certain positions or engage in certain activities for a term of up to three years).
Status : At large.
Plot of the case : In January 2023, the country was shaken by a scandal unheard of in its brazenness. In the midst of Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine, Pavlo Halimon, the deputy head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction, purchased a luxurious estate worth millions of hryvnias, registering it for another person.
The agreement took place in June 2022. According to the purchase and sale agreement of the estate on Pechersky Hills in the capital, which is at the disposal of the UP, the house together with the land plot with an area of 10 acres was worth 10 million 300 thousand hryvnias, of which the cost of the house was 6.5 million hryvnias, and the plot was 3 8 million hryvnias.
At the same time, according to real estate sites, houses near the Botanical Garden of a similar area cost about 50-60 million hryvnias.
The mass media found out that the seller was the bishop of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine Oleksandr Drabynko. According to him, his brother was engaged in the sale of the house through a realtor. Drabynko, they say, does not know the identity of the buyers. He allegedly sold the property cheaper because he needed money, and "no one gave the real price for many reasons."
According to the data in the closed register, the owner is not People's Deputy Halimon, but citizen Kotelenets Anastasia Mykolaivna.
There is almost no information about Kotelenets on the network, except for a closed Instagram account. At the same time, according to the UP, in 2021, 45 land plots in the Chernihiv region with a total area of about 80 hectares appeared in its ownership.
At the same time, journalists investigated that Halimon really lives permanently in an elite real estate in the Pechersk Hills.
After that, Halimon was taken up by the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption, which, based on the results of monitoring the people's deputy's lifestyle, revealed signs of a corruption criminal offense, provided for in Art. 368-5 of the Criminal Code, which may indicate illegal enrichment of UAH 10 million.
"The National Agency immediately (after the journalistic investigation "Sluga
in a house on a cave hill. As the deputy head of the SN faction purchased an estate in the center of Kyiv" - ed.) began monitoring the lifestyle of the People's Deputy of Ukraine, deputy head of the Servant of the People parliamentary faction Pavlo Halimon. According to the results of the monitoring, signs of a corruption criminal offense provided for by Art. 368-5 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which may testify to illegal enrichment in the amount of UAH 10 million," the message says.
On the basis of a journalistic investigation, in February 2023, the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office opened criminal proceedings against the People's Deputy of "Servant of the People" Pavel Halimon for illegal enrichment. It was even about the confiscation of the estate on the Pechersky hills in Kyiv.
The leadership of "Servants of the People" reacted surprisingly quickly. The head of the faction Davyd Arakhamiya declared that Pavlo Halimon will be dismissed from the position of deputy head of our faction.
However, when the scandal began to subside, the head of the party Olena Shulyak reported that Halimon remains in the position of deputy head of the faction in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, because, they say, SAP and NABU are investigating only the alleged enrichment of Pavel Halimon.
In fact, a year has passed, and Halimon's case is still stuck in the offices of law enforcement agencies.
Fortune: People's deputy Halimon lived together with a woman who, according to the classics of the Ukrainian corruption genre, acquired a scandalous estate.
This is evidenced by the materials of this journalistic investigation, data from the State Register of civil status acts of citizens, which indicate that the couple has a common son.
At the same time, the official income of the partner of the People's Deputy from 1998 to 2022, excluding taxes, amounted to just over UAH 2 million, and the price of the purchased estate, specified in the official contract, amounted to UAH 10.3 million. In addition, in 2021, it purchased another 68 land plots with a total cost of UAH 1.8 million.
Halimon's declaration for 2020 lists a little more than UAH 20,000 in bank accounts and cash in the amount of USD 210,000, UAH 225,000, and USD 95,500 as monetary assets. in bitcoins. His official income for the period of the purchase of the estate (2021-2022) amounted to UAH 1.5 million.
However, the People's Deputy also bought a BMW R 1250GS motorcycle worth about UAH 750,000 and provided a loan of UAH 6,750,000. That is, taking into account his expenses in the amount of UAH 7,499,161, the balance of monetary assets amounted to just over UAH 220,000.
Therefore, the couple had no legal opportunity to purchase an estate worth more than UAH 10 million.
Scandals : The story of the purchase of an elite estate is not the first corruption scandal of People's Deputy Halimon.
Thus, in July 2020, the Prylutsk local prosecutor's office opened criminal proceedings on the fact of theft of state property by officials of the Ivkivtsi Experimental Farm enterprise.
At that time, according to the version of the investigation, the state enterprise concluded cooperation agreements with STOV "Batkivshchyna" for four years.
According to these agreements, the private man cultivated state lands at inflated prices, and then (according to separate contracts) bought uncut grain from "Ivkivtsi" at underpriced prices. This caused damage to the state of more than 50 million hryvnias.
Former National Deputy Oleg Dmytrenko accused Pavel Halimon of demanding a bribe in the amount of 40 million hryvnias for assistance in closing the case against the agrarian enterprise "Batkivshchyna", which belongs to Dmytrenko's wife and father. Halimon himself gathered a whole press conference at which he refuted these accusations.
He stated that Oleg Dmytrenko himself offered him 40 million to pay off. According to Halimon, it was he who initiated the inspections at SE "Ivkivtsi" and the opening of criminal proceedings for abuse of power by officials of the enterprise. He said that he turned to the Prylutsk police department with a statement about Dmytrenko's offer of a bribe first, on July 20. That is, one day earlier than the former deputy of the People's Republic of Ukraine submitted an application to NABU.
In his turn, the executive director of the non-governmental organization "Anti-Corruption Headquarters" Serhiy Mytkalyk explained in a commentary to "Radio Liberty" that it makes no sense to wait for the results of the investigation into Halimon's extortion or Dmytrenko's offer of a bribe. And all because the Prosecutor General (at that time, Iryna Venediktova — Ed.) decided to enter this information two months later, when it was physically impossible to record the moment of the crime of providing an unlawful benefit to the deputy.
Persons who should have responded to Halimon's corruption schemes during his tenure:
Former Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, who refused to open criminal proceedings against Halimon in July 2020.
In the case of the acquisition of an estate worth more than UAH 10 million, all relevant law enforcement agencies, namely the Prosecutor General, NABU and SAP, reacted in time, but the case has not yet moved.
Sources:
Deputy Halimon's case: NAZK revealed signs of illegal enrichment of ₴10 million