The Ministry of Justice of Ukraine has filed a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court to confiscate the assets of the so-called ‘head of the Kherson Regional State Administration’ Volodymyr Saldo. This was reported on the website of the Judiciary of Ukraine
The third parties in the case are the wife and daughter of the collaborator Saldo Lyubov Petrovna and Saldo Iryna Volodymyrivna; Sinkov Vitaliy Mykolayovych; LLC ‘BEBKO-AVTO’; LLC ‘KONKA’, PJSC ‘KASHTAN’; PJSC ‘DELTA-SERVICE’.
In particular, it is likely to confiscate such assets:
- Bebko-Auto LLC in Kherson. The authorized capital of the company is UAH 1,800,000.00. The network of car dealerships is a dealer for the sale and repair of Volvo cars. The company's ultimate beneficiaries include the collaborator's daughter Iryna Saldo, Vyacheslav Bebko, and Anton Kushnir. According to media reports, Iryna Saldo lives in Nice (France) and leads a luxurious lifestyle.
- KONKA LLC in Kherson is engaged in organizing leisure activities. The company's founders include Iryna Saldo, as well as Oleksandr Bolbot, Volodymyr Dydin, and Anna Klimentenko. The company's authorized capital is UAH 18,500, and its revenue in 2020 was UAH 707,300.
- KASHTAN PJSC is based in Korostyshiv district, Zhytomyr region. The company specializes in the extraction of decorative and building stone, limestone, gypsum, chalk, and clay shale. The authorized capital is UAH 370,000.00. Among the founders is Lyubov Saldo, Salda's wife. Interestingly, in January 2023, law enforcement officers notified the company's director, Ihor Kolpakov, of suspicion of abuse and fraud. In particular, between January 2018 and November 2022, the company sold 11 cubic meters of granite at three times lower prices and nomenclature. As a result, the budget did not receive more than UAH 4.5 million in taxes. The money was laundered by purchasing machinery and special equipment for the company.
- PJSC ‘Delta Service’ in Kherson with a registered capital of UAH 7,000,000.00. This is a transport company, the ultimate beneficiaries of which are Lyubov Saldo, Leonid Girin, and the Turkish company Aykut Ketensioglu. In 2019, the Kherson City Court seized corporate rights (shares), a set of property and non-property rights that make up 20% of the company's shares, which are a share of the authorized capital. Over the past three years, four criminal court cases have been filed against the company.
Volodymyr Saldo is a Ukrainian who was sanctioned by the National Security and Defence Council on 19 October 2022 for supporting Russia's military aggression against Ukraine. The SBU established that he, with the support of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and representatives of the aggressor state, took several measures to prepare and organize an illegal referendum.
In April 2022, in the captured Kherson City Council, the Russian occupiers appointed Saldo as the so-called ‘head’ of the Kherson Regional State Administration. In the summer of 2022, he was included in the EU sanctions list because he cooperated with Russia.
On 15 March 2022, he took part in a meeting of the so-called ‘Salvation Committee for Peace and Order’ and held rallies in support of the occupiers. The Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine announced the opening of treason proceedings related to the creation of a pseudo-government in the Kherson region.
Saldo was elected mayor of Kherson three times - in 2002, 2006, and 2010. According to Slidstvo.info, during his tenure as mayor, Saldo's family acquired two apartments and a large house in Kherson, as well as two apartments in Kyiv. His wife also bought a cottage in Crimea near Alushta and an apartment in the Yalta village of Voskhod.
We would like to remind you that sanctions can only be imposed on individuals if they are involved in terrorist activities. However, it is difficult to deny the significant level of integration of the economies of Ukraine and Russia before the full-scale invasion. Most collaborators and traitors continue to have a significant number of assets in Ukraine and do business here.
Not all of them can be quickly ‘reached’ by Ukraine using other available legal instruments, including criminal ones. After all, a large number of such persons have multiple citizenships or are outside Ukraine. The Saldo case is one of them and shows the need to impose sanctions on citizens without any additional conditions.
Therefore, legislators should streamline the legal regulation of sanctions, including against citizens, by removing the need to establish signs of terrorist activity, at least during the period of martial law and during the transition period after its termination or cancellation. This will make it possible to bring to justice and limit the impact on the economy of all traitors and collaborators even before they are sentenced and put behind bars.
Earlier, on 12 April, the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit to confiscate the assets of the Moscow Exchange.
These and other events related to the confiscation of Russian assets can be found on our confiscation tracker, an interactive website that displays up-to-date information on the amounts, legislation, court decisions, and political positions of countries on confiscation.