04.04.2025 Kharkiv Utility scams

Dobkin stole millions worth of land from Kharkiv, and judges played along

Добкін оголосив себе націоналістом - Главком

Kharkiv, 2025. The city, which has survived war, occupation threats, and economic turmoil, still cannot get rid of the old corruption tumor that has been eating away at it from the inside for years. The name of this tumor is Mykhailo Dobkin, former mayor and one of the main architects of the “cooperative scheme” that took dozens of hectares of land out of community ownership.

On March 12, 2025, the Supreme Court of Ukraine put an end to one of these schemes, returning 11 hectares in Lesopark worth more than 60 million hryvnias to Kharkiv. However, behind the scenes of this decision lies a whole network of connections and decisions of corrupt judges.

The beginning of the story: how Dobkin privatized Lesopark

It all started back in the days when Mykhailo Dobkin and Hennadiy Kernes were running Kharkiv. The “cooperative scheme” is their signature. The idea is simple but cynical: people close to the authorities create fictitious housing cooperatives, the city council gives them tidbits of land for free, and then these plots “magically” end up in private hands. The community loses both land and money, while “their own” people make millions in profit.

One such episode involved 11 hectares in the Lesopark on Kharkiv Highway, next to the Forest Fairy Tale children’s camp. In the 2010s, the Kharkiv City Council gave this land to a service cooperative, which, according to the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office, had no right to operate there.

The actual purpose of this housing cooperative, its organization and activities did not comply with the law. No construction ever took place there, and the land was transferred to a Kharkiv resident who divided it into smaller plots.

The aforementioned “Kharkiv resident” was Eduard Hryhorenko, Dobkin’s trustee, who was the one who received the land under the scheme. His wife also appears in this story as part of the family “business”. But the main question is how this land could have ended up in the hands of Dobkin and his associates if the legality of the transaction was questionable from the very beginning?

Judicial Epic: Refusals, Appeals, and Connections in the Supreme Court

The fight to get the 11 hectares back lasted for years. The District Prosecutor’s Office filed a lawsuit with the Dzerzhynskyi District Court of Kharkiv, but the local judges, known for their “loyalty” to local elites, dismissed the claim. It seemed that the case was doomed, as courts in Kharkiv have long been a tool in the hands of corrupt officials. However, the Kharkiv Court of Appeal unexpectedly sided with the community and ordered the land to be returned to the city.

But Dobkin was not going to give up. In the Supreme Court, he hoped to pull off his old scheme – to “negotiate”. According to information from inside the court, his interests were represented there by more than just lawyers and friends: Vitaliy Usatyi and Vasyl Kukhar are influential lawyers with close ties to the judiciary. Usatyi is the current chairman of the Economic Court of Kharkiv Region, and Kukhar is its former chairman. Both have been repeatedly mentioned in the context of dubious decisions in favor of local bigwigs.

The lawyer Stanislav Nesterenko, who officially appears in the Supreme Court’s decision, was only a screen – the real “negotiations” were conducted by Usatyi and Kukhar.

That’s why Dobkin was confident that the Supreme Court would overturn any appeal decision, so he would keep a number of land plots. But something went wrong, and on March 12, 2025, the Supreme Court decided to return 11 hectares to the community.

Why? Perhaps the instinct for self-preservation kicked in – the judges felt that the public pressure and attention to the case had become too great. Or maybe some of the “cronies” did not fulfill their promises. In any case, this was the first serious blow to Dobkin’s omnipotence.

Dobkin and land schemes

11 hectares in Lesopark is just one example. Back in 2014, the prosecutor’s office opened criminal proceedings against Mykhailo Dobkin under several articles of the Criminal Code. The investigation found that he, along with other officials, had illegally transferred more than 70 hectares of Kharkiv land worth more than UAH 200 million to private ownership. The case involved six suspects, including Serhiy Chechelnytskyi, Tetiana Ovinnikova and three founders of fictitious cooperatives.

In 2018, the case was transferred to the Dzerzhynskyi District Court of Kharkiv, but it was not considered before the full-scale invasion. The war froze the process, but did not remove the main thing – Dobkin and his team still have a huge administrative resource. They don’t just want to regain power in Kharkiv – they dream of revenge at the national level.

Dobkin is not just a corrupt official, but also a carrier of pro-Russian ideology who is ready to sell the country for another piece of land or a seat in power. That is why it is worth resisting his attempts to regain influence and gain a foothold in power.

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