The assets of A. Wojciechowski were seized

Recently, the media spread the news about the extradition from Spain of the famous Kyiv developer A. Wojciechowski. According to Ekonomichna Pravda, A. Wojciechowski had been hiding from the investigation for five years, being on the international wanted list. 

Following the current state of the seized assets that were transferred to ARMA for management, we could not help but investigate the issue of seized property within the framework of the criminal proceedings initiated against A. Wojciechowski.

Let us recall what is known about the essence of the criminal proceedings and why it is important.

From the content of the court rulings available in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, it appears that in the course of the criminal proceedings investigation it was established that the actual head of the Ukogroup group of companies, A. Wojciechowski in the period 2011-2014, organised a group and committed crimes within it, together with unidentified persons (intentional evasion of taxes, fees (mandatory payments); unauthorised occupation of land plots and unauthorised construction of buildings on them; seizure of other people's property by abuse of office in large and especially large amounts, by an organised group and other crimes). In addition, during 2012-2014, officials of the Ukogroup group of companies, acting as part of an organised group, illegally occupied land plots in Kyiv and illegally began unauthorised construction of residential, office, commercial and residential complexes (the ruling mentions 40 such objects).

The decision of the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv of 14 January 2019 in case No. 757/1175/19-к decided to transfer the property to ARMA for management, namely the completed and unfinished construction of 11 residential complexes, 3 sales offices of residential complexes, an office centre, non-residential premises and the unfinished construction of an apartment (multi-storey) building.

In other words, after the seized assets were transferred to ARMA, the relevant property should have been transferred under management agreements to preserve the assets and their economic value. 

However, the logical question is how to manage the assets under construction and who will be willing to do so?

These questions were answered back in 2020 by one of the heads of the ARMA of previous years, Vitalii Sigidin, who explained in an interview with Mind that nothing can actually be done with property that is not in civilian circulation, and there are no people willing to take over construction projects, for example, where there is no land. 

Unfortunately, as of the moment of extradition of A. Wojciechowski from Spain to Ukraine, the situation with the property seized and transferred to ARMA has not changed.

We hope that the new approaches of the ARMA leadership to solving complex and atypical challenges will eventually bring results in similar cases.