“Enemy correctors”, anti-church activists and “Sadovyi’s lawyers”: a few stories about “Our Money: Lviv”

“Our Money. Lviv, which got into a scandal for whitewashing the reputation of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi in the war with Telegram channels, has been repeatedly noted for “working for the mayor’s team” and for high-profile scandals in general. We remind you of just a few of the most striking cases…

CONFLICT BETWEEN ANDRIY SADOVYI AND TELEGRAM CHANNELS

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi is very sensitive to criticism. Although he hardly reacts to it in public, he actually gets terribly angry and stomps his feet when he reads some truth to himself. This is what happened this time, when various people who were fed up with Sadovyi’s corrupt whims and wishes to invest in advertising for his own TV channel decided to make some information about the Lviv mayor public.

To do this without a trace, they used anonymous telegram channels. This is right and logical, because Sadovyi will definitely not find any ends. The mayor of Lviv did not like this very much and decided to use “independent journalists” to dig up some dirt against the owners of the Telegram channels. By the way, Sadovyi’s nerves have not been good lately either, because even on his official pages he has begun to refute some of the information. This indicates at least that the exposers of the truth about Lviv’s little Pu are on the right track.

This time, a large fish, Trukha, got into Sadove’s field. And he decided to catch it with the hands of small-town “independent” grant recipients, “Our Money,” which, of course, officially has nothing to do with Sadovyi. Not at all, not at all. Now, the former editor-in-chief of Zahid.net is somehow working as the editor-in-chief of Nashi Groshi. Coincidence! Well, it can happen to anyone! And Sadovyi did not buy Oleh Onysko an apartment in the past. No, no!

And the head of “Our Money” is also quite coincidentally “mentally ill” Iryna Podoliak, who before that was the head of culture in Lviv and a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the glorious Samopomich party. Do you remember “Lviv speaks in Russian”? She was one of the initiators.

By a strange coincidence, the arrival of Oleh Onysko and Iryna Podoliak coincided with a complete rebranding of the publication. I wonder how much it cost the donors and whether it was held at a time when there was a full-scale war in the country. Perhaps the rebranding was an opportunity to “draw from the pot.”

Oleg’s wife Natalia Onysko and her close friend Oleksandra Hubytska, who were also part of the Sadovykh holding team not long ago, also work there.

And why does Sadovyi need ‘Trukha’, you may ask? It’s very simple. Sadovyi is terribly averse to not having control over something. Thank goodness, he hasn’t had a telegram in Lviv yet. So, what you can’t control, you can shit on.

In August, the news feed of the Telegram channel “Trukha” published several reports about alleged corruption by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi.

In particular, on August 9, the administrators reposted an investigation by journalist Volodymyr Horkovenko entitled “Corruption in the Law in Lviv”. The article was about pressure from Andriy Sadovyi’s team and forcing Lviv developers to “cooperate”. On July 19, a video appeared in which the mayor of Lviv himself said that life was better during the active policies of Ukrainophobe Viktor Medvedchuk, but now he says there are problems with the tax authorities. And on August 30, Trukha journalists explained why Andriy Sadovyi is escalating the situation that there will be massive power outages in the fall, contrary to the official statements of the Ministry of Energy. According to journalists, the company of Sadovyi’s wife Kateryna Kit-Sadova had previously purchased generators worth 17 million euros.

“And as you can imagine, there were no more problems with electricity, and the €17 million worth of generators were purchased and nobody needs them, so they could sell them for 3 times more. Andriy Sadovyi realizes that this winter will most likely be much easier, and no one will need his purchased generators, so he stupidly starts to nightmare people into buying his generators, because he is almost a monopolist in this area in Lviv.” – Trukha writes.

And on August 31, it was reported that Andriy Sadovyi and his wife face up to 15 years in prison for corruption. After that, the Telegram channel “Trukha” claimed pressure from journalists associated with the mayor of Lviv. They say that the so-called investigators have suddenly become interested in the flow of funds and how the public is financed.

“I find out that all these mom’s investigators are media outlets controlled by Andriy Sadovyi! And it all started perfectly after we exposed his corruption schemes on the channel,” the statement reads.

And then Trusa released documents stating that Andriy Sadovyi was involved in closing his criminal case with the NABU in the first days of the war.

At the same time, Nashi Hroshi. Lviv” has repeatedly been involved in scandals.

“OUR MONEY. LVIV” – “ENEMY ADJUSTERS”?

The authorities have repeatedly appealed to all persons, including journalists, to not publish information, photos and videos on social media and websites that could provide the Russian aggressor with additional information about what a particular enterprise is doing or is going to produce or repair.

This message also applies to journalists who consider investigations of commercial and public procurement to be the main content of their publications. And in order to attract the reader’s attention to their publications, they “forget” about the war and look for that magic needle of “corruption” in the haystack with which they want to prick, in their opinion, the direct participants in tender procedures.

At the same time, the “fighters against corruption” forgot that such public showdowns can provide the enemy with additional information to adjust their fire.

Accidentally or not, on March 17, the Nashi Hroshi website published information under the heading “Wartime Tenders: Aircraft Repair and Fuel .” It was about the conclusion of contracts through the Prozorro public procurement system, their number and total amount of contracts. And, as the title implies, about strategic aircraft and fuel in time of war. They say we need to be careful who can profit from these vital operations.

But today, on March 18, in the morning, four racist missiles flew into Lviv and bombed a Lviv company. This is despite the fact that the head of the Lviv regional military administration, Maksym Kozytskyi, immediately noted at a briefing that there is not a single military facility in Lviv region .

“The “investigation” from the Nashi Groshi website suddenly disappeared. This was noted by social media user Naliya Malinovska: “Yesterday, the Nashi Hroshi website posted an ‘investigation’ about aircraft repairs at the Lviv Aircraft Repair Plant, today missiles arrive there, and yesterday’s news is hastily deleted from the site. Arrest those f*ckers who think they are journalists.”

“OUR MONEY. LVIV” – AGAINST THE CHURCH

Back in 2020, a scandal erupted in Lviv over the alleged construction of a wooden chapel on the territory of the Shevchenkivskyi Hai Museum, which led to the project initiator, Father Justin Boyko, being called an illegal developer.

“Nashi Hroshi was one of the first to demand that the chapel be demolished, but at the same time they were not concerned about the city council’s construction of concrete monsters in Shevchenko’s Grove. Justin Boyko, the monastic affairs synkel of the Lviv Archeparchy of the UGCC, wrote on his Facebook page about his own experience of interaction with the publication’s journalists.

“Do you remember the summer chapel that I was forced to take from St. Ivan’s Lavra in Lviv? Do you remember the information discrediting campaign against me personally developed by a well-known media holding owned by a well-known person in Lviv? I will reveal the details of this epic one day, because I still keep the details and behind-the-scenes secret on purpose. But I will say one thing today, because one cannot remain silent about evil and treachery all the time. In the midst of the harassment, the editor-in-chief of Nashi Hroshi called me and asked for documents and money for the restoration of objects in St. Ivan’s Lavra. She spoke to me from a height of a formidable tone, oh, from a height. And what a great one.” he writes .

On December 29, 2020, an open letter from employees of the Klymentiy Sheptytsky Museum of Folk Architecture and Life, known among Lviv residents as Shevchenkivsky Grove, was posted on Facebook, stating that representatives of the Church, led by the abbot of the Lavra, Father Justin Boyko, are carrying out illegal construction on the territory of the museum, installing a chapel. At that time, the father himself confirmed the lack of the necessary documentation and referred to verbal agreements between him and high-ranking officials of the Lviv City Council.

“My personal mistake was that we achieved many things through verbal agreements. And it was when it came to the construction of a summer chapel over the skete of St. Gennadius that the people who gave this verbal guarantee simply fell silent, as did officials from the Lviv City Council” says the clergyman.

Deputy Mayor of Lviv Andriy Moskalenko confirmed the creation of a working group on this issue, and Father Justyn himself announced a joint press conference with representatives of the city council, which, however, did not take place. As a result, the chapel was dismantled and moved to the so-called Ukrainian Calvary, a pilgrimage complex of the UGCC near the village of Hubychi in the Sambir region, which in Stalin’s time became the place of martyrdom for many clergy and believers.

“OUR MONEY. LVIV”: WHO ARE THE JUDGES?

The Lviv-based anti-corruption publication Nashi Groshi Lviv, which is engaged in investigative journalism, was founded in 2012 by Oleksandra Hubytska, Natalia Onysko and Iryna Zaletska as the Lviv Group NGO. Natalia Onysko is the wife of the now former editor-in-chief of the Zahid.net news agency, Oleh Onysko. The same agency that is part of Kateryna-Kit Sadova’s Lux media holding.

It is worth noting that in 2014, the Nashi Groshi website (Lviv Group NGO) was a defendant in a civil case together with Lux shopping mall. Then Zahid.net and the Nashi Hroshi website published a journalistic material that damaged the business reputation, honor and dignity of the heroes of the article. Other media outlets belonging to the Lux media holding also disseminated the story.

After analyzing the investigations of the Nashi Groshi publication, an interesting conclusion can be drawn: they primarily concern those public figures who are opponents of the mayor of Lviv. Among the publications, you will not see any investigations into the sudden change of contractors for the construction of a waste processing plant in Lviv, which has been“built” with credit funds for 5 years, but cannot be completed. There is also no information about the misappropriation of taxpayer funds worth more than 6 million during the Hrybovychi landfill revitalization project, which is one of the most important and at the same time most painful for Lviv, given the circumstances of the Hrybovychi tragedy. To understand why, the investigators tried to study in more detail the personality of Ms. Oleksandra Mykolaivna Hubytska, who is one of the founders of the publication and is actively involved in investigative journalism.

At first acquaintance, one is struck by Ms. Oleksandra’s ability to work, because, in addition to her journalistic work, she appears to be actively engaged in entrepreneurial activities. As of the beginning of 2022, according to the YouControl system, Oleksandra Hubytska, in addition to the Lviv Group NGO, also ownedAgency 112LLC, whose main activity is “security system maintenance.” The company was founded in the same year as Lviv Group on 06.06.2012. The journalists then decided to check whether the company was doing well. According to theAnti-Corruption Monitor portal, between 2019 and 2022, the firm won many procurements from municipal institutions in Lviv and the region. Among them are many institutions subordinated to the Lviv City Council, such as the municipal utility company or educational institutions. Of these, 27 procurements had a red FOX rating (Formalized Signs of Corruption). This means that potentially more than half of all procurements involving a company owned by the Lviv investigative journalist had high potential signs of corruption. Let us analyze some of these procurements in more detail.

An interesting fact is that in the vast majority of procurements in which Agency 112 LLC participated, it was the only bidder. For example, on January 12, 2021, ProZorro published a procurement for services for round-the-clock monitoring of fire automation in the second city clinic in Lviv. At 11:18 a.m., the procurement documents were uploaded, and at 11:24 a.m., the winner, who was also the only bidder, was announced. The other procurement is for fire and rescue services. The essence of these services, which the Central Library System of Lviv ordered for UAH 44,640, has not been explained. It is only known that the procurement had one participant. After the publication of the procurement conditions on February 3, 2021 at 11:51 a.m., Agency 112 LLC was declared the winner at 11:59 a.m. In principle, a similar situation can be observed in all procurements of this company, where the FOX index reaches more than 40%.

It is worth noting that the practice of such quick procurement for small amounts is completely legal and common. The issue here is not so much the letter as the spirit of the law. After all, when a firm associated with an investigative journalist who writes only about the opponents and competitors of the mayor regularly wins procurement contracts from the entities he manages, it looks strange, to say the least. The journalists tried to find out more about the owner of the largest share of the authorized capital, Oleksandr Volodymyrovych Lutsenko, who is registered in the village of Bryukhovychi, on Parkova Street. Judging by the man’s Facebook page, he is the owner of Agency 112, and to top it all off, he is also the husband of Oleksandra Hubytska, an investigative journalist from Nashi Groshi. Not much is known about him, except that he uses Russian in his social media and sometimes mocks the changes that are taking place in the “land of the dead”…

According to our sources, the couple lives in the elite village of Bryukhovychi, in their own house on Parkova Street, which belongs to Gubytska’s husband. How many investigative journalists live in such places is, of course, a rhetorical question.

In conclusion, we can see that the slogan “we changed the logo, but not the principle” is indeed in line with the information policy of Nashi Groshi.