“The Great Carve-Up” on roads: how Yuriy Holyk and Oleksandr Kubrakov got rich on billions of the “Great Construction”

Theft on Ukrainian roads is not a one-time scam, but a well-established system that works perfectly under any government.

“Calls to friends”, the “Great Construction”, and billion-ruble flows through convenient contractors are classics of the genre. Yuriy Holyk, as one of the main architects of this scheme, along with other key figures, skillfully directed budget money into the right pockets, and eventually ended up abroad himself in peace.

We are publishing this investigation to remind how exactly the corruption kitchen around Ukravtodor and the “Great Construction” worked — with “calls to friends”, rewriting the rules, and billions that settled in the chosen ones.

President Zelenskyy’s favorite administrative technique is called “a call to a friend”. Since governing the country is a complicated matter, there are two types of calls at once.

The first: “Ordinary people are asking me to do one thing. Do it. Let them feel good”. The second type of call: “Well, how are things with you — is everything okay?” The right friend is supposed to say that everything is awesome (correct vocabulary in this case is important), and stun with any impressive figure “A thousand kindergartens built, a hundred thousand people treated, a million children started — and this is only at the first stage of the reform, further — it will continue”.

The happy president begins repeating the magic “thousands-millions” at meetings with grateful voters. And here lies a small trouble. Because the time inevitably comes when the treated grandfathers will take their newborn children to the built kindergartens. Only there is nothing to show. Except, of course, the nice dachas and bright cars that miraculously appeared among those responsible for budget flows.

The spectrum of such promises has recently become incredibly wide — from the Ministry of Health to the Ministry of Defense. A dozen texts can already be written about this today. To reconstruct “how it works”, we will take Ukravtodor. Despite Ukraine’s record road repair budget of 100 billion.

Yuriy Aristov. Friend

This is Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s business partner, into whose fishing business the Kvartal leader invested his fee earnings before becoming president. It seems Zelenskyy appreciated his partner’s commercial streak by making him head of the Verkhovna Rada’s budget committee.

The importance of this body for Ukravtodor’s flows is hard to overestimate. The budget committee approves the distribution of budget funds for road repairs. That is, a group of MPs can decide that no money will be given for the repair of this road, the tender for which was won by company X. They will go to another road, the tender for which was won by V. And let that X sit with his contract while V buries live money in asphalt in December (in December — this is no joke, the Aristov committee really fought for this, here is the transcript).

In less than a year in the budget committee, Aristov gained such state weight and personal significance that he decided to transfer additional billions to roads, despite putting his beloved president under an international scandal. This refers to the initiative to take 350 billion hryvnias from the Covid fund and transfer them to road repairs. They say this will help fight unemployment, the rampant spread of which is facilitated by the quarantine. This justification is as natural as an owl stretched over a globe looks organic. Even the politically correct Main Scientific and Expert Directorate of the Verkhovna Rada called Aristov’s approach “doubtful from a legal standpoint”. Other points of view do not reach Zelenskyy, since another friend adheres to the same positions — the president’s first assistant Serhiy Shefir, and this is the third partner of Zelenskyy and Aristov in the fishing company (more about Aristov’s business connection here).

What is the essence of the international setup

These very days, the IMF decided to give Ukraine $5 billion in support amid the pandemic. And at the same time, the “cursed Masons” demanded: they will conduct an audit of the same Covid fund, which is supposed to save Ukraine from the consequences of the epidemic. To save — is to provide Ukraine with at least laboratories for tests to identify chains of infected. Especially since Ukrainian queues for tests are already measured in weeks. However, Aristov decided that this huge pile of money is better buried in roads. And for the IMF, this will definitely be a reason to believe that they are stupidly financing not even the Ukrainian economy.

Why not Ukrainian? The accounting of road repairs in Ukraine is as follows.

Out of 100 hryvnias for the repair of any road, 85 hryvnias go to building materials (only a pitiful 15% remain for salaries, official incomes, payment for special equipment, etc.).

Of this amount, up to 70 hryvnias go to various chemicals, bitumen and asphalt, which is also one-third composed of bitumen (the remaining 15 hryvnias are domestic crushed stone, concrete, etc.). Kolomoisky’s Ukrainian bitumen is considered insufficiently high-quality, so it is used in insignificant quantities. That is, Ukraine lives on imported bitumen. And its main supplier is Belarus, which produces bitumen from Russian oil.

Roughly speaking, out of every hundred hryvnias for road repair — about 30–40 hryvnias are eventually withdrawn to Belarus, which siphons off part of the flow to Russia, which is at war with us. Taking Aristov’s 350 billion — and immediately sending 10 billion outside Ukraine. This is not counting the deltas and margins that domestic alchemists will sew into the estimates. This is what the IMF will see, which gives money to Ukraine not to die from Covid. Therefore, it is not surprising that today parliamentarians are sabotaging the memorandum with the IMF under various pretexts, which stipulates such a requirement. Even at the risk that Ukraine will be left without this money alone with the pandemic.

The setup under Poroshenko. Even two

Oleksandr Kubrakov in his latest interview with NV actually set Zelenskyy up under the monastery. The head of Ukravtodor tried to refute the cartelization of the industry and looked for any arguments to show that they have many contractors. And he thought of boasting about payments under contracts won “in tenders that were held long before me”.

Once again. Kubrakov shows the diversity of contractors thanks to the achievements of his predecessors. And who is our criminal predecessor now? Hard to believe.

And this is worsened by the strategic mine that Yuriy Holyk laid under Zelenskyy with his “Great Construction” project. It was he who put into the president’s head the plan to repair four thousand kilometers of roads in 2020 (here it is — the magic figure for press conferences). But the trouble is that most of these repairs will be exactly “in tenders that were held long before me”. And vice versa — most of the tenders that Ukravtodor dumped to the cartel this year have no chance of timely execution. Because six members of the National Association of Road Workers of Ukraine have already captured 72% of all Ukravtodor contracts conducted this year with anti-competitive requirements. And now they have only two paths: either completely fail the president’s task, or take on subcontracting exactly those firms against which Ukravtodor introduced its “sharpenings”. And then the talks that only a few firms can quickly and qualitatively make roads will go to waste.

In any case, Holyk’s idea gives Poroshenko the opportunity to already sit and color the contour map of the “Great Construction” (in the photo). Green to scribble what they (will not) do under Zelenskyy’s tenders. Burgundy — what will be done under the tenders of the “predecessors”. In the context of the autumn elections, this will give Zelenskyy additional emotions to assess the idea of the defector. Recall that the PR man of #team_Poroshenko changed into “ZElenskyy” after the defeat of his employer in the elections and began the cartelization of the market under the nose of the new president. With special cynicism, driving Zelenskyy further and further into beautiful figures like “100 hospitals”, “100 billion”. In fact, these beautiful figures give opponents the opportunity to catch Zelenskyy on non-fulfillment of clear plans. And during the elections, Zelenskyy will more than once regret that they decided to invest an abyss of money in repairing several highways used by an insignificant part of voters in Mercedes and trucks. Instead of immediately starting repairs on “minibus” roads and streets where repairs are most needed and where potholes smoothly flow into other potholes.

Although it is clear why this was not done. Because then the billion budgets would be dispersed among a bunch of regions, and therefore — different wallets. And this way — you deal with several “understandable” contractors, bury everything in one place, and that’s it.

It is clear that in six months it will be “a bit uncomfortable” in front of a friend. But everything can be explained to him. Objective difficulties, intrigues of enemies, world crisis. He is trusting, he will understand everything. And can a few minutes of unpleasant conversation outweigh the fact that as a result you will have a new “cherry orchard near the house”…