Although the Eurovision Song Contest held in May significantly boosted Ukraine’s image abroad, it didn’t turn a profit for the organizers.
However, a new BBC investigation has found that the event may have generated a windfall for people close to Ukraine’s disgraced ex-president Viktor Yanukovych.
Yanukovych associates earned at least Hr 1 million ($35,700) from the Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Kyiv in May 2017, by renting out the Parkovy entertainment complex to the event’s organizers.
Parkovy, a luxury entertainment complex in the heart of the city with views over the Dnipro River, a helipad, restaurants and a data center, was used as the main venue for after-show parties during the Eurovision event.
Parkovy received more than $35,700 from Ukrainian public broadcaster UA:PBC to host Eurovision after-show parties, according to the procurement system ProZorro.
Link to Yanukovych
The building of Parkovy is owned by a Ukrainian firm called Amadeus Co., which is in turn owned by a British company called Fineroad Business LLP.
According to the BBC investigation, Fineroad Business is registered in Potters Bar – a town in Hertfordshire, England, 13 miles north of London – together with more than 100 other companies.
Fineroad Business’s significant person in control (SPC) is Ukrainian citizen Sergii Moskovskyi, who is now living in Germany. Moskovskyi became the company’s owner in December 2017, according to the UK state registry.
However, during the Eurovision Song contest Fineroad Business was in control of Iashar Khodzhaiev, who is allegedly linked to the Yanukovych family. Ukrainian prosecutors have arrested Khodzhaiev’s bank account in 2017, saying that the real owner of the money could be Yanukovych’s son Oleksandr.
According to various news reports, Khodzhaiev also bought the office of the Tantalit, the company that formally owned Yanukovych’s Mezhyhirya residence, soon after EuroMaidan Revolution driven Yanukovych from power, Ukraine in February 2014.
Khodzhaiev couldn’t be reached for comment.
Yanukovych and his allies are estimated to have stolen around $40 billion from the state through various schemes during the ex-president’s rule in 2010-2014.
In August 2017, a Kyiv court arrested the land where Parkovy is located and transferred it to the management of state company Financing Infrastructure Projects – it was done on request of the Prosecutor General’s Office that has been investigating Yanukovych’s corruption.
However, Schemes, an investigative unit of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, found out that three months later, in October, the complex was still managed by Fineroad Business. The company paid salaries to the workers at Parkovy and received rent from restaurants and the data center – which, according to the journalists, could have been up to Hr 1 million ($35,700) per month.
Eurovision scandals
There were other scandals surrounding Ukraine’s hosting of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2017 as well.
Part of the event’s organizing team quit in February 2017, less than four months before the contest, accusing the public broadcaster of non-transparency. Those who quit said that one of their main complaints was that the Eurovision budget had been increased from $24 million to $32 million without proper justification. According to Kyiv authorities, the city earned around $20 million from tourists who visited the contest.
The sale of tickets, a process costing the organizers $2.6 million, also generated a scandal. After ticket website Concert.ua won a tender to become the official distributor of the nearly 70,000 Eurovision tickets, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine on Feb. 6 declared the tender to have been non-transparent, and demanded that another be held.
However, the public broadcaster signed a contract with Concert.ua anyway for the symbolic sum of Hr 1.20 – a contract value much lower than the threshold for which a tender must be held. Concert.ua will earn around $158,500 from the deal, as the servicing fee paid by the customer is 6 percent of the tickets’ total value.
Another scandalous tender concerned the seats for the Eurovision audience. Germany’s Nussli construction company initially won the tender to set up some 9,200 seats and 50 commentator’s booths, bidding 1 million euros.
But the national broadcaster later annulled the agreement, saying the company didn’t meet Ukrainian construction standards, Nussli officials later told the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Instead, a Lviv-based company set up fewer than 7,000 seats and no booths at a cost of around $900,000 The company is allegedly linked to the head of UA:PBC Pavlo Hrytsak, although he has denied this.
