The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on Oct. 6 brought organized crime and abuse of power charges against Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov and Vladimir Galanternik, an influential businessman from Odesa and a former ally of Trukhanov.
Local anti-corruption activists have accused Trukhanov and his alleged business partners Galanternik and Alexander Angert of having turned Odesa into their private fiefdom, awarding the most lucrative land and municipal contracts to their own companies. The properties allegedly linked to the trio are not officially owned by them, and it’s often difficult to trace the links between them and the assets.
They have denied the accusations of wrongdoing. Trukhanov did not respond to a request for comment, while Galanternik and Angert could not be reached.
An Italian police dossier from 1998 identifies Trukhanov and Angert as members of a mafia gang.
Galanternik is believed to have been the power behind the throne in Odesa for years, effectively controlling key top officials and the municipal budget, according to local activists.
“The investigators managed to document the unlawful activities of a broad range of people including the mayor, an ex-chief prosecutor of the region and a businessman who… manipulated them any way he wanted like in a puppet theater,” Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook.
However, in recent years Trukhanov and Galanternik had a falling out, Odesa-based activists and journalists say.
Charges
Trukhanov and Galanternik were charged with illegal acquisition of land plots, causing losses to the municipal budget worth Hr 533 million.
Specifically, they were charged as part of embezzlement cases concerning the purchase of Odesa’s Krayan factory building and the Zastava military airfield, the unlawful acquisition of land belonging to the Shkilny airfield and the unlawful allocation of land to Greenwood, a firm allegedly controlled by Galanternik, according to the Slovo i Dilo online newspaper.
The NABU also charged another 14 people in the case. These include Oleh Zhuchenko, former chief prosecutor of Odesa Oblast; Oleksiy Spektor, head of Odesa City Hall’s municipal property department; Inna Popovska, head of the city government’s legal department, and Vasyl Shkryabai, a member of the city council from Trukhanov’s party.
Krayan case
In 2018 the NABU brought its first charges against Trukhanov in the Krayan case. He was accused of organizing a city council vote to buy the old Krayan factory building for Hr 185 million in September 2016, after it had been purchased at the beginning of the year by another firm for only Hr 4 million, suggesting the deal was a scheme to embezzle money from the city.
In 2019 Odesa’s Malinovsky District Court acquitted Trukhanov in the Krayan embezzlement case. Local anti-corruption activists lambasted the court ruling as a political bargain aimed at whitewashing Trukhanov. They argue that the Odesa court was biased in his favor.
The High Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber overturned Trukhanov’s acquittal in February 2021. Now the case is being considered again by the High Anti-Corruption Court, which may result in either a conviction or acquittal.
Other cases
Trukhanov has also been charged and tried for failing to declare the property of his common-law wife Tetiana Koltunova. However, the case was closed in 2020 due to a controversial Constitutional Court ruling that effectively destroyed Ukraine’s asset declaration system.
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.
Moreover, the Odesa mayor is being investigated for 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 has also hidden his Russian citizenship, which was confirmed by a Ukrainian court in 2019.
