Odesa Mayor Hennady Trukhanov, who has been charged with organized crime, has had his bail set at Hr 30 million ($1.1 million) by the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine on Oct. 11.
Trukhanov, who has not been arrested, has five days to pay up. If he does not, the court will consider detaining him.
The court denied the prosecution’s request to arrest Trukhanov and set bail at a much steeper Hr 120 million ($4.4 million).
“The mayor of Odesa doesn’t have such money,” said Trukhanov.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) on Oct. 6 charged Trukhanov with organized crime and abuse of power. Three members of the Odesa City Council and Volodymyr Galanternik, an influential businessman from Odesa, were also charged.
Trukhanov and Galanternik are accused of illegally acquiring land plots, causing damages of Hr 689 ($25.5 million).
The charges are 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.
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Those charged 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.
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.
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 on Oct. 6.
All have denied the accusations of wrongdoing in the past.
