Underground school in Kherson costing nearly ₴90 million: court orders seizure of contractor’s documents

The unfinished ‘underground school’ in Kherson. Photo: Kherson City Council.

In Kherson, law enforcement officers have obtained a court order to seize documents from the contractor who was due to build a fallout shelter for one of the city’s schools.

The relevant ruling was issued by the Zavodskyi District Court of Mykolaiv, according to NikVesti.

Law enforcement officers are investigating possible misconduct by officials from the Kherson City Council’s capital construction department and contracting organisations.

This concerns a contract signed at the end of December 2024. The company was awarded the contract to build a fallout shelter. The total cost of the work was 87.3 million hryvnias.

According to the publication «Most», the contractor is Tensens LLC, which was to build the shelter on the grounds of School №55 on Kost Hordiienko Street.

Previously, NikVesti reported that the city’s capital construction department had signed a contract for the construction of a fallout shelter with the Kyiv-based company «Tensens», which does not have its own equipment, office or staff.

According to the investigation, the company reported on part of the work carried out and received around 26 million hryvnias from the city budget under four certificates of completion. In July 2025, the contract with the contractor was terminated.

To verify the actual scope of work carried out, investigators commissioned a construction and technical expert assessment. However, the experts lacked the necessary documentation, so the police applied to the court for temporary access to the company’s documents.

The investigating judge partially granted the application and authorised the seizure of the original contract with its annexes, design and cost estimate documentation, site-specific cost estimates, certificates of completion, construction and supervision logs, as well as documents confirming the use of materials and equipment.

At the same time, the court refused access to some of the requested materials — in particular, samples of the company director’s signature, incorporation and personnel documents, and financial statements — as the investigation had not demonstrated their necessity for the expert examination.

It should be noted that the ruling is valid until 13 July this year and is not subject to appeal.

As a reminder, there were plans to build an underground school for 500 pupils in Kherson. It should be noted that proposals to build underground schools have also been put forward in Mykolaiv. Mykhailo Vynnytskyi, Deputy Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, noted that educational institutions in frontline cities, particularly Mykolaiv, need to switch to offline learning in order not to lose pupils.