«Attention-seeking story»: Sienkevych commented on the actions of law enforcement officers during the searches in Mykolaiv City Hall

Oleksandr Sienkevych believes that the searches in the city council were a PR campaign by law enforcement agencies. Photo: NikVesti

Mykolaiv Mayor Oleksandr Sienkevych has commented on the searches of the city council related to the tender for the construction of a sorting line. He called them far-fetched and not constituting a crime.

He said this on Tuesday, 26 August, while speaking to the media, according to NikVesti.

As you know, on 21 August, the building of Mykolaiv City Council was searched.

In response, the mayor said that the story of the construction of the sorting line has been going on for several years, and if there were objective violations on the part of the authorities, law enforcement agencies could have detected them earlier.

The searches took place on 21 August at the mayor's office and the Department of Housing and Communal Services. Photo: Mykolaiv Region Police, Mykolaiv Region Prosecutor's Office

The searches took place on 21 August at the city hall and the housing and communal services department. Photo: Mykolaiv Region Police, Mykolaiv Region Prosecutor's Office

«I believe these searches are far-fetched, there is no corpus delicti, no costs, nothing but a public attention-seeking story. In general, I am once again appealing to law enforcement agencies. Do your job, not engage in a PR campaign. The city council has removed the draft decisions that could be taken on the website. Will this affect the session? No, not in any way. There is a law on public information, and these draft decisions were published 10 days before the session, six months before the session. One computer of the council staff member who prepared the draft decision. A draft decision is a piece of paper, one A4, another letter of approval, and a descriptive part in 2 parts. The documents on the tender were taken from the housing and communal services department, and the phone of the secretary of the commission and the computer of the deputy director of the department were seized. I don't see any insinuation or crime. The story has been going on for 4 years. After 4 years, it was possible to come up with something better than to remove the draft decisions that could be downloaded from the website. The court ruling, the entry in the register, and the searches took place on the same day. That is, all of this was done in the morning on the same day, and the searches took place at 4 o'clock in the evening. This is how our bodies work in criminal cases,» said Oleksandr Sienkevych.

It should be noted that before the search, for more than a week, all-Ukrainian channels with a million viewers published almost daily posts on Telegram about the implementation of this project, accusing the authorities of trying to implement it through «a ghost company without people, equipment and experience».

Oleksandr Sienkevych called these channels paid-for dumps that acted on someone's order. He added once again that no one is forcing the deputy corps to vote for the current terms of the contract, which can be changed and a new tender held.

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«Reading all this rubbish, even I thought something had happened. The city council approved the terms of the tender. The competition was held for a very long time. Anyone could get acquainted and make suggestions. After the paid telegram channels and specific websites that were not interested in Mykolaiv at all wrote about it, everyone became interested in the conditions. We addressed everyone when we were preparing these terms and conditions: «Friends, give us your suggestions». Today, everyone said that the conditions are not very good. Just as then, so now we are saying, please propose new terms and conditions. If you don't want to approve it, don't approve this contract for the winning company. We are announcing a new tender on the terms that will be announced today by the deputies, Vitalii Kim, the Pope...,» the mayor said.

The mayor noted that the city council has the opportunity to vote to cancel the tender on terms where the winning company will not be able to challenge it in court.

«The Department of Housing and Communal Services will propose some changes to the second decision on cancellation at the session so that it is not appealable in court. We will not approve it and announce a new tender. And then, when we see who else will appear in this competition, it will become clear to everyone who ordered this campaign, that the millionaire washrooms mentioned my name four times a day. I'm curious myself as to who we crossed paths with there. So we will invite everyone from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Dnipro. We want people to come, participate in our competition, work, invest, and sort our waste,» he added.

Earlier, Vitalii Kim, head of the Mykolaiv Regional Administrative Body, said that the tender to select a company to build a sorting line in Mykolaiv was not conducted properly and its terms were unfavourable to the community.

He also added that Mykolaiv needs to build a modern sorting line, but not on the terms that are currently being proposed for approval by the city council.

MSW landfill near Mykolaiv

Back in 2020, in a commentary to NikVesti, the mayor of Mykolaiv said that the city's existing MSW landfill would last for another 10 years, i.e. until 2030.

It is located on the territory of Vesnianske village council in Mykolaiv district. The municipal solid waste landfill was put into operation in 1972 with a 50-year lifespan, i.e. until 2022. It is designed to dispose of 50 million cubic metres of waste.

The report on the strategic environmental assessment of the draft master plan for Mykolaiv, published in 2018, stated that the city's landfill capacity was 98% exhausted. Therefore, they added, it is imperative to build new modern waste sorting and recycling facilities, introduce separate waste collection, and increase the use of recycled materials.

On 20 May 2024, Mykolaiv selected a company to build a sorting line for solid waste processing. The winner of the tender was «Waste To Energy Niko».

In September 2024, the procedure for the operation of the household waste sorting line and the terms of the tender were agreed upon. It was reported that the sorting line will be able to process up to 70% of waste, and the remaining 30% will be buried. The project stipulates that the company that wins the tender will transfer at least 10% of its profits to the maintenance of the landfill.

The terms of the agreement include a 25-year period of cooperation. There were warnings in the city council that this was too long and could limit the community's flexibility. At the initiative of the chairman of the planning and budgetary commission of the city council, Fedir Panchenko, an alternative draft decision has already been developed — to refuse the agreement with «Waste To Energy Niko» for waste sorting. Earlier, in a commentary to NikVesti, «Waste To Energy Niko», which won the investment tender held by the city council, assured that such a system would not only reduce the load on the city's landfill, but would also allow the city to save money, create new jobs and gain access to international «green» financing.