PrivatBank has been trying to auction off the mansion of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev for three years.
But one charitable organization is putting up roadblocks, claiming it has the right to buy the residence without an auction. It is located in Dnipro, the provincial industrial capital home to 1 million people and located 480 kilometers southeast of Kyiv.
The mansion is worth an estimated Hr 98 million, or $3.5 million. The 5,500-square-meter residence was expected to come up for an auction on Feb. 17. But the Economic Court of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has blocked the auction for the fourth time on Feb. 8, following a motion by the charity People, Events, Time.
The last three times this happened, the bank appealed and won each time. The mansion is state-owned and it’s illegal to sell it without a proper auction, according to PrivatBank.
The charity used to rent the place from 2006 to 2018 and has invested Hr 77 million, or nearly $2.8 million, in its renovation, according to the most recent court decision. Now the organization claims it has the exclusive right to bypass bidding and buy the mansion directly.
Though the court canceled the auction, it did not recognize the charity’s claim that it is a priority buyer.
PrivatBank cannot sell the mansion until it wins an appeal. In the meantime, People, Events, Time is occupying the residence without a rental contract, which PrivatBank refused to renew in 2018.
The company pays no rent and doesn’t allow PrivatBank people in, according to bank’s spokesperson Oleg Serga.
“Charitable organization People, Events, Time is actually a raider that seized PrivatBank’s property,” Serga told the Kyiv Post.
Larysa Fediaeva, deputy head of the PrivatBank real estate department, says the bank can’t just kick the charity out by force.
“It’s like someone has been renting your flat, their contract expired, but they keep staying and you can do nothing about it, because according to Ukrainian law, the owner can’t just come and expel the raider,” Fediaeva said.
People, Events, Time couldn’t be reached for comment. The organization doesn’t have a website or a social media page. The only phone number listed for the charity is out of service.
Built in the early 19th century on one of the Dnipro’s central streets, the building used to be the official residence of the Soviet political elite. It consists of a two-story Gothic style mansion, gatekeeper’s house, parking lot, paved backyard, and a modern eight-story office.
It’s unknown how People, Events, Time uses the premises. Even the owner of the residence, PrivatBank, doesn’t know.
According to its government registration data, the organization provides social aid, including counseling and temporary shelter for vulnerable groups of people like refugees and homeless people.
People, Events, Time was founded in 2006 by Mykola Shvets, former Dnipro mayor and former advisor to ex-President Leonid Kuchma.
PrivatBank bought the complex in the early 2000s when it was a private bank. After the bank was nationalized in 2016, the state took over the property rights.
An archive picture of the Dnipro residence of Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Dnipro, the provincial industrial capital 480 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. Brezhnev lived there in 1947–1950 when he was the leader of the regional communist party committee of Dnipro (formerly Dnipropetrovsk). Brezhnev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1964 to 1982.
The property had status as Ukraine’s cultural heritage from 1995 until 2015, when parliament passed the law on decommunization, banning all Soviet symbols in Ukraine.
While much of the country’s Soviet legacy is being removed from the public eye or abandoned, many communist relics continue to exist in Ukraine, including several other residences that belonged to communist leaders.
The Belski mansion in Kyiv served as a residence for Soviet leaders in 1930. Nikita Khrushchev, the communist party leader from 1953–1964, was among them. The place was later dubbed “Khrushchev’s dacha.”
In Crimean Yalta, there’s another Brezhnev’s residence called Hlitsyniia, which is reportedly owned by Russian President Vladimir Putin today.
