Sienkevych answered how he fights corruption: not just changing people, but eradicating it systematically

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych said that in the fight against corruption in the city, he believes that the main thing is not personnel, but systemic changes that make it impossible for officials to abuse.

He said this in a commentary to the correspondent of NikVesti at the Conference on the Restoration of Ukraine in Rome, commenting on the corruption scandal at the municipal enterprise GDMB (Self-Supporting Construction Mechanisation Section).

In particular, the city is cooperating with international auditors — Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young — to implement anti-corruption tools at large utility companies. In the future, these practices are planned to be applied to smaller enterprises as well.

«Corruption should not be systemic in the first place. That is, we need to remove all opportunities so that people who want to make easy money do not have it. Today, we are carrying out such systemic actions at large enterprises with the participation of Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Ernst & Young. In the future, we plan to introduce these practices to smaller enterprises. We are also going to introduce new anti-corruption practices, internal audit, and procurement control to make it impossible for anyone to commit these acts,» says Oleksandr Senkevych.

The mayor also added that Mykolaiv was ranked 5th in the Transparency International Ukraine ranking of Ukrainian cities and noted that next year Mykolaiv plans to be among the top three.

«At the same time, Mykolaiv cannot open everything because we are in the war zone. We will work to get into the top three next year. Our task is to make everything as open, transparent and accessible as possible so that journalists, law enforcement agencies and concerned citizens can see it, and then we will work with law enforcement agencies to resolve the incidents,» the mayor added.

According to the mayor, all international partners are aware of the corruption-related cases and are also keeping it under control.

Corruption in the procurement of street lighting for Mykolaiv

On 9 April, it became known that Serhii Bezdolnyi, who works for the municipal enterprise «Self-supporting Construction Mechanisation Section» (hereinafter referred to as the SCMS), and Vasyl Protsyshyn, a businessman from Lviv region, were notified of suspicion of misappropriation of budget funds. He is charged with an offence under Part 4 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. He faces a prison sentence of 5 to 8 years. In addition to working for the utility company, Serhii Bezdolnyi is the brother of Dmytro Bezdolnyi, Director of the Housing and Communal Services Department of Mykolaiv City Council.

According to law enforcement officers, during the purchase of 65 street lighting control cabinets worth more than UAH 5.3 million, the budget of Mykolaiv lost almost 600,000 hryvnias due to the so-called «kickbacks» — 13% of the amount excluding VAT.

The director of Mykolaiv's Department of Housing and Communal Services, Dmytro Bezdolnyi, previously told NikVesti that he was considering resigning from his post for the duration of the investigation due to the suspicion served on his relative. It is worth noting that the wife of the director of Mykolaiv's Housing and Utilities Department also works for the utility company where his brother is suspected of corruption.

The mayor of Mykolaiv, Oleksandr Sienkevych, promised to cooperate with the investigation in the case of corruption in street lighting.

On 15 April, the Vitovskyi District Court of Mykolaiv imposed a pre-trial restraint on suspected corrupt utility worker Serhii Bezdolnyi in the form of arrest with the possibility of bail in the amount of over 4.9 million hryvnias. As it turned out during the hearing, the Department of Internal Financial Control, Supervision and Anti-Corruption of Mykolaiv approved a tender for the purchase of 65 street lighting cabinets at an inflated price in September 2024.

The court also ruled to compulsorily bring the suspect Vasyl Protsyshyn to the court hearing. However, Protsyshyn did not appear at the hearing on 22 April. The court learned that his whereabouts are currently unknown, but he has not crossed the state border. As of the end of April, the suspected businessman Vasyl Protsyshyn continued to hide from the investigation.

NikVesti previously reported on new evidence in the case — CCTV footage captured the moment of transferring funds to an official of the municipal enterprise «Self-supporting Construction Mechanisation Section» (SMS).

Read also: «Everyone should be happy in the New Year». The court heard dialogues between the utility company and a Lviv businessman in the Bezdolnyi case.

It is worth noting that within the framework of this criminal proceeding, Mykolaiv law enforcement officers conducted a number of searches at firms and enterprises related to the implementation of the tender schemes of the utility company.

In particular, it has become known that searches were conducted at JSC «Mykolaivoblenergo» as part of criminal proceedings regarding the possible embezzlement of budget funds allocated for the reconstruction of power grids. And also at the municipal enterprise «Mykolaivvodokanal», where possible embezzlement is suspected in the conclusion of energy service contracts for the maintenance of water supply facilities.