Kazarov: There has never been such a level of theft as under Andriy Sadovyi!

Corruption horror in Lviv: finally, all the sins and “dealings” of Mayor Sadovyi have come to light and have been made public. Now the whole of Ukraine is focused on one of the most corrupt mayors in Ukraine.

Sadovyi got along well with everyone: with Svoboda, with Batkivshchyna, with the Party of Regions, and stayed afloat because he shared! And now there is scandal after scandal, scandal after scandal, and I thank the investigative journalists, Lviv civic activists who have been tirelessly recording all this time what Sadovyi and his accomplices were doing, and finally we have done everything possible and brought everything together.

The authorities have only one option – Sadovyi should be suspected. Total corruption in Lviv – Andriy 15%. This has already become a proverbial saying in the mouths of every Lviv businessman. If you need something from Sadovyi, from the city council, you won’t get any positive decision for yourself until you give a kickback. And this was the case year after year, year after year. And somehow, you know, the Lviv community lived its own life. But the war changed everything.

During the war, we saw this viperous, corrupt, criminal gut of the Sadovyi and Lviv City Councils, the deputies who, united in one corrupt enterprise with the mayor, began to rob Lviv at the drop of a hat. They started robbing the community, writing off money wherever they could get a penny, and the community demands money for the front, money for the boys, money for the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yesterday, I described in detail what Lviv residents demand from Sadovyi, and soon they will ask Sadovyi: “Why are you shoving the budget of Lviv into the pockets of your wife, your pockets and the pockets of your accomplices from the construction mafia and the private business mafia, which helps to lay tiles, change asphalt all over the city for a kickback?”

In general, after those scandals, I thought Sadovyi would come to his senses. But no, he throws out another post in a telegram saying that he will change the tiles again, you know, take them out of the ground, grind them, and put them back. Well, not for budgetary funds, no, it’s private funds. What kind of bastards are you, what difference does it make whether it’s private or public money now? No one needs that money for tiles for repaving, even if it is from private business and goes to the front line. Why is it that Filatov, the mayor of Dnipro, can find a mechanism to transfer 260 million hryvnias for drones, ammunition, cars, and other things.

Sadovyi can’t do it, you see, he went crazy with that tile, the last term of the mayor is over or no one will ever elect him, political retirement, because Samopomich will not reach the national level, with Sadovyi’s corruption and his background. And the second option is a prison for decades of robbing the city, but Sadovyi hasn’t given up on the tiles.

Yes, now is the time to make Lviv an accessible city, during the war, it’s time to start with Rynok Square, tomorrow they will start removing the pavement, it will be polished and leveled and returned to its place by the end of the year, but we will not restore everything at the expense of the budget, everything will be financed by grantors and philanthropists.

Why are they doing this? Sadovyi has found a mechanism and a scheme to have a stake even with non-budget funds. I see negative feedback on social media, but it’s not negative feedback from Lviv residents, it’s just a flood of people asking him to resign and get out of the mayor’s office. But Sadovko’s term as mayor hasn’t ended yet, so we need to steal everything that is lying around badly, and we need to make it lie around well, so that the community’s eyes are drawn away from it and steal it too.

They’re already removing tiles, they’re already removing paving stones, it’s not clear what they’re doing. They are already stealing non-stop! I don’t know what needs to happen for Sadovyi and his cronies to stop stealing. Even the war did not stop them. The suffering of people, the deaths of people did not stop. They looted the city with even more rage. But that’s okay, you won’t be long, so dry your breadcrumbs, because the end of the road for all such thieves is prison. You know what Kolomoisky used to say: “You can take whatever you want in life, but don’t forget that the cash register is at the exit.”

And another scandal of Andriy Sadovyi

You’ve almost all heard of the !FEST restaurant chain, the Emotions Holding. And it turned out that Sadovyi is directly related to it.

One of the co-owners, Yurko Nazaruk, wrote a big post saying that they are crushing the business, they are working according to the law, but they need to be taxed. Because they are very successful, you can see the classic masks of the show in helmets, with machine guns, armor, everything is like sending to the front. But something went wrong in the comments: Alcapone was caught not paying taxes. Without any sentiments for the BES and other law enforcement agencies, because I know how they work, I would nevertheless like to hear whether the employees were really paid by self-pay. All the rest is blah, blah, blah, no response from the co-owner of the !FEST network.

Of course, the arrival of armed men in the establishments stresses the staff and visitors, including many foreign guests, but the violations are still there:

• non-use of cash registers
• unaccounted for cash
• payment of tax-free salaries to more than 2,000 employees

And when !FEST thundered throughout Lviv, recently, even with the windows closed at home, the walls shook, it’s normal! When a few hours ago the soldiers were buried patriotically and burped all over the city – well, yes, they are friends, and finally, in the news, in Lviv, during searches of the management of the famous restaurant chain !FEST, they also found drugs!

And in general, I would like to ask what kind of restaurant chain Emotions of Laughter and Happiness is, which is crammed with armed guards, and what are you afraid of there?

The official website of the Bureau of Economic Security of Ukraine describes in detail what the Sadovyi padelniks were doing in 60 restaurants and retail outlets: the employees of the establishment received their salaries in envelopes, made duplicate cards and simply replenished their accounts.

And the worst part is that the co-owner talks about patriotism and other things, but they ended up evading the military fee and the unified social tax that goes to Ukrainians’ pensions, and the restaurant chain itself is huge. Those who have been to Lviv know what it is like.

Lviv is the central part of Rynok Square: Pravda, Ribeye, Drunken Cherry, Meat and Justice, Dzyga are all on Rynok Square and the surrounding streets – Halytska, Alkhimiya, Kerosene Lamp, Dakh, Kryivka, Lviv Coffee Mine, Lviv Chocolate Workshop, Lviv Plyachky, The Most Expensive Restaurant in Galicia. This is not a complete list of that network, but the main profit points are

Back in the day, our Lviv journalists told me about this strange !FEST network, which is expanding at a very fast pace, and wondered where the money came from because it was the city center that had the most expensive objects, the most expensive real estate, especially commercial real estate.

And it turned out to be very simple: they expanded only with the assistance of Mayor Sadovyi and, together with Mayor Sadovyi, built that criminal network, which only recently evaded taxes by UAH 50 million! This money from the military fee was supposed to go to pensions, which cannot be stolen because it goes to the pension fund. The only damage was done by what they found. And they write about some kind of patriotism, about the glory of Ukraine, about mask shows. But in such a difficult time, you robbed the budget of 50 million. Where are those 50 million? They put it in their pockets! They evaded taxes, stole the 50 million they found, donated a million to the army, and sent them to the front, you know, to cover up their theft.

It will not work, let the law enforcement agencies work here, this is a huge network, a mafia network with armed guards and criminal authorities involved in it. If journalists, together with the authorities, spin this case, it will be a huge scandal. We will see such a corrupt octopus buying up all the real estate in the city center that the hair will stand on end!

More questions about Andriy Sadovyi’s wife

Well, how can she have so many properties registered in her name, only in her name, and no income? It’s magic, isn’t it?

The President’s Office and the Prosecutor General’s Office have asked the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption to check the property status of Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi. This became known from the official response of the Infrastructure Monitoring Institute. The civil society organization appealed to law enforcement agencies and the President’s Office with the facts of illegal enrichment of the Lviv mayor’s family. The reason for this was public information that stated that the wife of the mayor of Sadove, Kateryna Kit-Sadova, has a fortune higher than her income, in particular, Sadove’s wife owns 12 land plots, a house in Lviv, apartments in Kyiv and Lviv, and expensive cars.

According to the declaration, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi lives on one salary, declaring UAH 691,479 in salary at the Lviv City Council. However, his 45-year-old wife is the richest woman in western Ukraine. Her net worth is estimated at $25 million. Also, according to media reports, in the near future, the mayor’s wife may become the owner of another 4-hectare plot on Kulparkivska Street.

According to the plan, first the Lviv City Hall is to demolish the educational institution located on the territory, and then transfer the land to the private ownership of his wife Kateryna. In the future, the land plot is to be transferred to the pocket developer RIEL.

According to real estate market experts, Andriy Sadovyi receives 20% of each sale of RIEL’s square meters, and then, with the help of converters and Polish friends, the funds are transferred to offshore companies. Experts estimate that Andriy Sadovyi received $1 billion from the sale of real estate. That’s why law enforcement and anti-corruption agencies have a lot of questions for the Sadovykh couple.

I haven’t told you about Sadovyi’s adult children, whom the patriotic mayor sent abroad to get away from the war. He did not tell you much else, for example, about Sadovyi’s connections with Friedman, how Russian business entered Lviv and the Lviv region, did not tell you that before the war all these houses on Rynok Square were bought by Russians through Sadovyi’s mediation.

There is so much information there that you can’t imagine it, but law enforcement agencies already have this information, and Lviv investigative journalists have been passing it on throughout Sadovyi’s term as mayor. And if today law enforcement officers really work hard, really shake down even more of that corruption resistance in the city council, I think it will be a high-profile case.

I don’t want to believe that Sadovyi will come to an agreement with the authorities and everything will go quiet, that people’s work may disappear. But I think we will not let this happen today. The government is in place, and tomorrow another government will come in and we will demand it, because such corruption has no statute of limitations. It’s just a disgrace for the city, the authorities have disgraced the whole city of people, which great patriots have turned into a bureaucratic fortress of Lviv, where you can throw weddings for 10 million hryvnias for the entire Lviv beau monde.

By the way, after that wedding, journalists continue to work there, not just 300 people were there, and there is a part of those names that are walking around the Internet, there were 800 people in total, all the elite, and they are shaking now. God forbid their names get into the press and there is a scandal and they are fired, if there is something and journalists find out, I will definitely show it!

And this corrupt octopus in Lviv should be put in jail. Do not forget that our future is in our hands!

Maxim Kazarov is a media expert, economist, and political analyst.