Maksym Mykytas, a former lawmaker and infamous Kyiv developer, was removed from a plane by detectives from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau while attempting to leave the country on Jan. 20.
Mykytas was on bail for an alleged $3.3-million land plot fraud.
According to Ukraine’s State Boarder Guard Service, Mykytas was bound for London. In Ukraine, a person’s passport is typically held by prosecution when he or she is on bail in a criminal case.
The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAP) has charged Mykytas with illegally seizing property meant for service people of Ukraine’s National Guard using Ukrbud Development, a company owned by Mykytas and named after the state-owned construction company he headed between 2010 and 2016.
Before Mykytas took charge of state-owned Ukrbud, the company bought a land plot from the National Guard in the upscale Podil district in downtown Kyiv. In return, the National Guard was meant to receive 50 apartments and 30 parking spaces on the property after Ukrbud constructed a residential building.
According to prosecution, in 2016, Mykytas colluded with Yuriy Alerov, then-head of the National Guard, to swap the 50 apartments in downtown Kyiv for 65 apartments in Kyiv’s suburbs at a price difference of over Hr 81 million ($3.3 million).
In May 2019, Alerov and Oleg Maiboroda, head of Ukrbud Development, were arrested on charges of embezzlement. Maiboroda was released on $85,000 bail, while Alerov was released on $200,000.
In parliament, Mykytas represented the 17-member People’s Will faction and enjoyed parliamentary immunity from prosecution. In July 2019, he failed to win reelection and two months later was charged with fraud.
Mykytas was later released on Hr 5.5 million ($230,000) bail despite the prosecution’s demand that bail be set at $12.5 million.
Mykytas is accused of maintaining close ties to Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko, whose party he represented in Kyiv City Council between 2014 and 2016.
In September 2017, Schemes, the investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, caught Klitschko traveling on a private jet with Mykytas. Klitschko later claimed that he ran into Mykytas on the streets of Naples while on vacation and that the lawmaker offered him a flight back to Kyiv.
In 2018, Mykytas took on a new project, winning a bid to build a bridge in the Shuliavka neighborhood after the previous bridge, which was in need of reconstruction, crumbled.
Schemes reported that a company linked to Mykytas won the tender for constructing the new bridge for Hr 600 million ($23 million). However, only two companies took part in the competition, and both were linked to the lawmaker.
These two companies were later fined Hr 150 million ($5.5 million) by Ukraine’s Anti-Monopoly Committee for collusion in another tender to reconstruct a hospital in Kyiv.
Mykytas didn’t respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for comment.
