Odesa’s Malinovsky District Court on July 9 acquitted Odesa Mayor Gennady Trukhanov in an Hr 185 million embezzlement case.
Trukhanov’s press office could not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trukhanov had previously denied the accusations of wrongdoing.
Trukhanov is accused of organizing a city council vote to buy the old Krayan factory administrative building for Hr 185 million ($7.04 million) in September 2016, when it had at the beginning of the year been bought by another firm for only Hr 4 million ($152,000), suggesting the deal was a scheme to embezzle money from the city.
The court recognized part of the evidence in the Krayan case as inadmissible. This includes an expert assessment that established the price of the Krayan factory’s building and evidence collected abroad as part of international assistance.
The investigators’ report on searches at the Krayan factory building was also recognized as inadmissible due to alleged procedural violations.
Trukhanov was arrested as part of the Krayan case in February 2018 and released without bail.
The verdict triggered indignation from anti-corruption activists in Odesa.
Kathrin Madens, an activist at the AutoMaidan anti-corruption watchdog’s Odesa branch, said on Facebook that the court had allowed Trukhanov to “keep robbing us.”
Odesa anti-corruption activist Oleg Mykhailyk described the decision as “an indictment of Ukraine’s entire law enforcement system.”
“The court issued a license to kill the city of Odesa,” ex-Odesa Oblast Governor and former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili said in front of the court building. “Odesa has been seized by people who hate it and who are robbing it.”
In June Saakashvili published what he claimed to be a “black ledger” of the Trukhanov administration’s alleged bribes to government bodies. He tried to present it in court but was not allowed to attend court hearings. Trukhanov’s press service did not respond to request for comment on the issue.
Other cases
In March 2019 the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, also charged Trukhanov with failing to declare assets worth Hr 51 million owned by his common-law wife Tetiana Koltunova. In June the case was sent to a court.
Trukhanov had also been investigated over alleged illicit enrichment. However, that case was closed in March after the Constitutional Court canceled the illicit enrichment law.
In another NABU investigation, Trukhanov and Odesa City Council are accused of embezzling funds during the purchase of the Zastava military airfield, according to the court register.
Moreover, Trukhanov is under investigation over allegedly embezzling funds by inflating the price of road repairs and channeling the proceeds to offshore firms, a NABU source who was not authorized to speak to the press told the Kyiv Post.
Trukhanov, then head of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions’ faction on the Odesa City Council, is also under investigation by the NABU for allegedly unlawfully selling Odesa International Airport in 2011, according to the official court register.
There is evidence that Trukhanov has had a Russian citizenship until 2017, which he denies. Dual citizenship is banned in Ukraine.
The site of Russia’s Federal Tax Service shows that Trukhanov used to be a Russian citizen. In 2017, Russia’s Sergiyev Posad Court annulled his citizenship due to alleged procedural violations he made while obtaining it.
