ODESA, Ukraine – Of more than 386,000 crimes recorded in Ukraine in 2018 so far, about 29,400 were committed in Odesa Oblast, according to Odesa Oblast State Statistics department data published in October.
Maybe that is why Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov dubbed Odesa the criminal capital of Ukraine during his Dec. 4 visit to this Black Sea port city of 1 million people located 437 kilometers south of Kyiv.
Most of the crimes, some 62 percent, involved property rights violations or corporate raiding.
Avakov and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko promised to use the period of martial law, set to expire on Dec. 26, to bring law and order back to the city.
Martial law was imposed on Nov. 28 in Odesa Oblast and nine other regions that border Russia, Russian-controlled territories, or oblasts with sea coasts threatened by Russia. It will be in force until Dec. 26.
The Ukrainian parliament imposed martial law three days after Russia openly attacked three Ukrainian navy ships in the Crimean territorial waters of the Black Sea, and captured 24 Ukrainian sailors on Nov. 25.
Lutsenko said tackling criminality in Odesa’s notoriously shady construction sector is the top priority.
“First and foremost, we will stop all construction for one month and check the documents of the construction firms. Only those who have the (proper) permits will be allowed to continue working,” Lutsenko said on Dec. 4.
The seizure of dozens of land plots in the city’s historical, park and seaside zones for construction – backed by the city council – has indeed led to a rise in criminal activity in Odesa, and numerous violent attacks on activists who oppose shady construction projects in their city.
Lutsenko and Avakov came to Odesa not long after a violent clash between activists and thugs on Nov. 29 near the Haharinske Plateau construction site in Odesa – a huge housing development next to the city’s Yunist Park.
But local construction firms and the Odesa City Council appear to be ignoring Avakov and Lutsenko.
After the nation’s top law enforcers left Odesa, the city council continued to allocate land plots for private construction and construction continued all over Odesa.
With martial law in force, local authorities have also allocated the Viktoria children’s camp as housing for reservists. It is the scene of a criminal investigation into negligence and corruption that lead to the death of three children in a fire in 2017. But a court lifted an arrest order on part of the camp, using martial law as an excuse, a couple of days before Viktoria was to host 500 soldiers.
Police have also failed to prevent the allegedly illegal seizure of Odesa Medical University.
The team of rector Valeriy Zaporozhan, who was an aide to fugitive former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and was fired from his post by Health Ministry of Ukraine in July, seized the building with the help of a dozen heavies from a private security firm.
“For local law enforcers and the authorities, martial law has become a window of corrupt opportunities,” Mykhailo Kuzakon, the local activist who survived an assassination attempt in August, told the Kyiv Post on Dec. 11.
“Lutsenko stopped construction. Ha! Big construction business can’t survive without corrupt deals with the local authorities in Odesa.”
The local council, led by the controversial Mayor Hennadiy Trukhanov, is blamed by many activists for acting as political cover for construction mafia interests and even masterminding attacks against them.
The mayor has denied all accusations.
“I’m against the attacks on anyone. But not everything about the construction that activists don’t like is illegal,” Trukhanov said during a Dec. 17 meeting of the Temporary Investigative Commission of the Ukrainian parliament in Odesa. The lawmakers came to the city to investigate assaults on activists.
Out of 50 attacks on activists all over Ukraine in 2018, a dozen happened in Odesa. All 12 activists attacked, along with opposition lawmakers, have criticized the local council and the chaotic construction work going on in their city – mostly by a construction firm Budova. Many media and activists have linked the firm to local business mogul Vladimir Galanternik, whom Odesa activists suspect has business ties to Trukhanov.
Trukhanov confirmed that he has close ties with Galanternik, as well as many other businessmen of Odesa, in an interview with the lb.ua news website in March. The Kyiv Post asked Budova for comments, but its PR department refused to give any.
A Dec. 14 view on the construction of Arkadia district of Odesa, what used to be a neighborhood of resorts by the seaside. (Veronika Melkozerova)
Construction chaos
On Dec. 12, lawmakers of the Odesa City Council voted to allocate a dozen land plots, including one bomb shelter, for private construction. Some 50 of 59 lawmakers registered in the meeting hall supported one decision after another.
At one point, Samopomich Party lawmaker Olha Kvasnitska argued that a land plot offered for private construction by the public property department, headed by Oleksiy Spector, has important heating communications on it and can’t be used for construction.
But Spector argued that if the architecture department said the land was good for construction.
Only after a debate did it emerge that the architecture department hadn’t even studied the land plot, and Trukhanov was forced to remove it from the agenda.
“I don’t like the chaotic construction that has put pressure on our city either,” Trukhanov said.
Trukhanov, a suspect in a corruption probe by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, or NABU, into the laundering of city budget money during the purchase of crane plant Krayan, blamed Odesa residents for the chaotic construction situation in the city he runs.
Residents fail to ask where developers are planning to build schools, parks, and sidewalks before they buy apartments in new tower blocks, Trukhanov said.
The city has no money to build better infrastructure, according to Trukhanov. The 4 percent tax that real estate developers are supposed to pay to the city budget makes it some Hr 100 million a year – not enough to fund new infrastructure, the mayor says.
However, according to Samopomich’s Kvasnitska, even the city’s 4 percent construction tax is not fixed. The current rules mean construction firms pay up to 4 percent, but a firm can pay as little as 0.5 percent.
“It depends on the deal a developer makes with the (city council’s) architecture commission,” Kvasnitska said.
Meanwhile, public protests are forbidden when the city is under martial law, and the council goes on allocating building land as usual.
“Every city council session costs millions in losses to the city budget.” Kuzakon said. “Trukhanov controls the council and uses it to allocate land for construction almost for free.”
New campers
The martial law regime hasn’t brought much change to the streets of Odesa – only some more police patrols around the railway station and city center.
However, on Dec. 10 dozens of men in military uniform were spotted in the state-owned Viktoria children’s camp, located on the outskirts of Odesa. A banner on a gate reads that it is now a base of the 122nd Territorial Defense Brigade.
In September 2017 three girls died in a fire that broke out in a wooden building of the camp. Although the authorities claimed they had spent more than Hr 11 million on fire safety equipment, firefighters found no water in the camps hydrants.
For more than a year, the camp was closed for public as it was the site of an investigation into a crime.
A year later, the investigative show Slidstvo.info showed that the official investigation had missed some important evidence, such as the fact that the camp’s wooden buildings had been constructed without the use of fire-retardant materials.
In the burnt-out ruins of a camp building, independent experts recovered some of the remains of the victims that state investigators had missed.
So when the city authorities decided to house 500 servicemen for a month in the camp, parents were afraid more important evidence could be destroyed. The city council has promised that the wooden houses of the camp will not be used and has even surrounded the burned-out houses with a fence.
However, on Dec. 9 Oksana Lishchuk, the head of the Viktoria parents committee, posted a video of municipal workers smoking and carrying beds out of the wooden houses.
Later the authorities explained there were not enough beds for all of the servicemen.
“We offered several objects in the city for housing the reservists, but the army chose Viktoria,” Deputy Mayor of Odesa Oleh Kotlyar told journalists on Nov. 30.
“During martial law they can occupy any premises they want,” he said.
Municipal workers carry the beds out of one of the wooden houses of the children’s camp Viktoria on Dec. 9. (Alexey Kostrzhytskiy\Facebook)
Seized university
Another incident with an armed group happened on Dec. 10 at the Odesa Medical University. In the morning, men from a private security firm called Phoenix along with members of the team of former rector, Zaporozhan broke into the university administration building and blocked its doors.
The building was guarded by police who watched, but did nothing as professors tried to get access to their workplaces, the Health Ministry of Ukraine wrote on its website on Dec. 10.
Later the police said on their website that Zaporozhan’s team had court warrants reinstating them at their posts.
Police aided the enforcement service in gaining access into the building.
“Then the police left and had nothing to do with what happened after,” the police said in a statement published on Dec. 10.
The Health Ministry, in contrast, said the enforcement service had no right to break into the building without informing the ministry, and accused the police of inaction.
The conflict over the university began in July, when acting Health Minister Ulana Suprun fired Zaporozhan from his post after the rector and his deputies refused to provide financial documents to a commission.
Instead, the ministry, the main body in charge of medical universities in the country, appointed Kostyantyn Aymedov as the Odesa university’s acting rector.
The old team of deputy rector Yuriy Sukhin and pro-rector Kostyantyn Talalayev refused to obey the Health Ministry’s decision and lodged several appeals in court. They also refused to recognize Aymedov, and chose Sukhin to be the new acting head of the university instead.
The administrative building entrance was guarded by four officers of the Phoenix security firm on Dec. 14. The University signed a deal with Phoenix the same day, four days after the seizure of the university.
However, Talalayev insisted the armed men in black uniform were only police officers.
“We didn’t seize the building, we enforced more than 10 court decisions that proved the Health Ministry had no rights to appoint or fire anyone here. We hoped people would obey the court,” Talalayev told the Kyiv Post on Dec. 14.
Aymedov told the Kyiv Post that the court orders granted no permission to block the university, seize its financial documents and stamps, or fire its professors.
“It’s not true. The staff waited until the enforcement service finished its job, and then they were let in, although many decided to go on medical leave,” Talalayev said.
Aymedov said the main reason the police gave for not admitting him to the university premises was the fact that Sukhin is still listed as its acting rector in the Justice Ministry’s registry.
“But the registry was forged by a private notary,” Aymedov said. The Health Ministry confirmed his claim.
Although the police first stated that they were helping to enforce court decisions, later they backtracked and opened a criminal case on the seizure of the university.
“Now that we have martial law in the city, I thought there would be more order and discipline in Odesa,” Aymedov said. “So I thought the police and National Guard would come and take control of the situation. But nobody came.”
A post the Odesa Medical University spokesperson Yaroslava Vitko published in the morning on Dec.10, during the seizure of the university.
