Kyiv Lawyer Gains Island and Ten Piers With National Police Letter — Skhemy

Kyiv authorities immediately turned to law enforcement.

Lawyer Konstantin Boyko gained control of Oboloni Island and ten piers in Kyiv solely thanks to a letter from the National Police, “Skhemy” investigators reported.

We explain how the scam was pulled off and how Kyiv authorities reacted to the investigation.

“Lost” Property

In 2018, lawyer Konstantin Boyko told police he had found “lost property rights” to a pier in Obolon. He later reported that the same had happened with 16 other objects located in Kyiv and on its outskirts.

Boyko approached police as the representative of Olga Lukyantseva, a development partner of the Obolon Olympic Reserve Children and Youth Sports School in Kyiv. She complained of property theft from the school, but police later reclassified the case as “unauthorized construction on a seized plot.”

Her acquaintances advised her to contact Konstantin Boyko, who introduced himself as a lawyer and boasted of connections in law enforcement agencies. It turned out that Boyko filed the police report without Lukyantseva's knowledge.

He proposed a solution to the police: under the law, a person who finds a lost item has the right to temporarily store it.

Boyko's letter was answered on December 18, 2018 by Olga Momot of the investigative department for especially serious crimes of the Main Directorate of the National Police of Kyiv, then headed by Andriy Kryshchenko.

She told Boyko that she had reviewed his complaint and confirmed that the objects listed by Boyko indeed were not owned by anyone, and therefore asked him to become the custodian of all 16 specified objects.

In response to a Skhemy journalist's question, Momot said she did not even know and had no idea who Boyko was.

That same time, Boyko, armed with this letter from the National Police, applied to private registrars, and they successfully entered into the state register a record of his property rights to 11 objects that he had received for storage at the police's request.

Lawyer Bohdan Borovyk explained to Skhemy investigators that the letter is not a document establishing ownership, and therefore such actions were illegal.

After obtaining property rights to the objects, Boyko “sold” them to a company of which he is a co-owner.

Link to Kryshchenko

In addition, Skhemy uncovered Boyko's connections leading to Andriy Kryshchenko, then head of the Kyiv National Police and now deputy mayor of Kyiv under Vitali Klitschko.

Two other companies of his are registered at the same address as the company to which Boyko registered the piers, and one of them is co-owned by Yuriy Shalnev.

Shalnev himself is from Horlivka and worked in the local police until 2007. In Horlivka, living in the house next to his was the future head of Kyiv police Andriy Kryshchenko, who at the time also worked in the Interior Ministry agencies.

In his declaration, Kryshchenko stated for six years that he drives a Hyundai Santa Fe SUV that belongs to Shalnev. Shalnev reportedly was Kryshchenko's driver, and their wives are “friends” on Facebook.

Reaction of Kyiv Authorities

The Kyiv City State Administration states that all islands of Kyiv are owned by the community and cannot be transferred into private hands. 

“City authorities state that all islands of Kyiv are owned by the capital's community, have never been transferred into private ownership and cannot be transferred under the law,” the KCSA said.

Regarding the transfer of the piers, the KCSA explained that the work of so-called “black registrars” has become systematic.

“Therefore, city authorities are turning to law enforcement agencies to step up the fight against “black registrars” and verify the information published by journalists,” the KCSA concluded.

Meanwhile, Kryshchenko, as current deputy to Klitschko, appealed to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) to verify the journalists' information about the transfer of Obolon Island into private hands, and also stated that he has no connection to the assumptions from the investigation.