Mayor Andriy Sadovyi brought to Lviv an “investor” who sponsors the murder of Ukrainians

The mayor of Lviv prepared and sold a land plot in Lviv for Philip Morris International, a company that finances the Russian budget. For Lviv, this story began in 2016 with a corruption scandal: officials of the executive committee of the Lviv City Council, headed by Mayor Andriy Sadovyi, sold a 23-hectare plot of land for a future industrial park to investors that belonged to the Ryasne-Rus village council. This plot was sold for UAH 52 million to a Dutch investor CTP, although its normative monetary value was UAH 140 million. The agreement between the Lviv City Council and City Park Lviv LLC was personally signed by Andriy Sadovyi. The Antikor portal writes.

The case of Mayor Sadovyi was “leaked” at the very beginning

The investigation into this scandalous case took a long time, and only in November 2019, after the change of government and the renaming of the Presidential Administration into the Office, prosecutors of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office charged Sadovyi and his accomplices with causing damage to citizens and the state in excess of UAH 93.5 million. At first, his removal from office was discussed, but as time went on, the case began to fade.

During the investigation of this case, the leadership of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office was criticized, especially Nazar Kholodnytskyi, who headed this institution. His actions were criticized both by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and by public anti-corruption organizations. After Kholodnytskyi’s resignation, he joined the Football Federation of Ukraine as the third deputy chairman, which sparked new discussions.

In parallel with the investigation of the criminal case against Sadovyi, a court case was underway to return the land plot sold by the mayor to legal ownership. The trial began in the Economic Court of Lviv Oblast in the fall of 2019, immediately after Sadovyi was served with a notice of suspicion. The text of the statement of claim made it obvious that the prosecutor’s office intended to “leak” the case. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office outlined all the violations that occurred during this agreement:

• CitiPark Lviv LLC was established with the participation of a foreign legal entity, which required obtaining the consent of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine before selling the land plots to the company.
• The land plot did not belong to the city limits of Lviv, so the Lviv City Council had no right to dispose of it.
• The procedure for drafting and approving the land management project did not comply with the legislation on land allocation for the creation of an industrial park.
• The land plot was sold without a competitive procedure.
• The management company of the industrial park did not have the right to own the land.
• The expert monetary valuation was carried out in violation of the law, and the value of the land plot was understated.

However, all the evidence collected was eliminated at the beginning because prosecutors filed a lawsuit in the interests of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine instead of the Ryasno-Ruska village council, which actually owned Sadovyi’s land.

The judges of the Commercial Court of Lviv Region, in their reasoning for dismissing the claim in March 2021, drew attention to this. The decision to dismiss the claim was confirmed by the Western Commercial Court of Appeal in September 2021. However, the cassation instance found that the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office had missed the deadline for appeal, so the Supreme Court refused to consider the appeal in December 2021. Such “unfortunate coincidences” indicate a deliberately drawn-out case or, as lawyers and law enforcement officials say, when a “case is sold.”

As for the criminal case against Sadovyi, the loss in the commercial court due to a mistake does not exempt him from criminal liability. Sadovyi actively used this case during the 2020 election campaign, presenting himself as a sufferer and defender of the rights of foreign investors. Nevertheless, the election campaign was successful for the mayor, but the criminal process continued to maintain difficulties in cooperation with investors.

Sadovyi solved this “problem” in a very trivial way. On the tenth day of the Russian army’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when shelling reached all corners of the country, lawyer Oleksiy Shevchuk said that the National Anti-Corruption Bureau’s case against Sadovyi was closed. The war gave Sadovyi the opportunity to close the criminal proceedings, relying on Ukrainians who were preoccupied with other issues.

Thus, the Russian army “saved” Sadovyi from criminal liability, and now he has decided to repay it. In June 2023, tobacco company Philip Morris International announced the purchase of a land plot for the construction of a new plant near Lviv and investments in the project worth $30 million. Preparatory work was to begin in July 2023 and production was to start in the first quarter of 2024. The company relocated its factory to Lviv region because of the shelling by Russian troops in Kharkiv region, which led to the closure of its plant there. Philip Morris Ukraine CEO Maksym Barabash claimed that the site for the new plant was offered by the state office UkraineInvest.

This is important to note because the plot that Mayor Sadovyi sold on the cheap to City Park Lviv LLC was the very one that Philip Morris International decided to buy for its plant. The UkraineInvest website lists this site as “Ryasne-2-STR”, but does not state that the entire infrastructure for it was built at the expense of budget funds, or, in other words, at the expense of citizens. Preliminary estimates suggest that about UAH 400 million was spent for this purpose.

The main question is who exactly is attracted to Lviv by Sadovyi?

International investor Philip Morris International! Many journalistic investigations have shown that this wording is inappropriate. It would be more accurate to call Philip Morris International an international war sponsor and an accomplice of Russian terrorism, as the company continues to operate in the Russian Federation, paying huge taxes to the budget of the aggressor country, which funds the Russian army, which has been killing Ukrainians on a massive scale since 2014 and especially since 2022.

In 2021, Philip Morris International was ranked fourth in the Forbes “Largest Foreign Companies in Russia-2022” ranking in terms of revenue. Its revenue amounted to RUB 392.9 billion. Tobacco products under the Philip Morris brands (Parliament, Bond Street, Marlboro, L&M, Chesterfield, IQOS) continue to be sold in Russia, bringing profits to the owners and huge taxes to the Russian budget. Earlier, Philip Morris International’s management talked about leaving the Russian market by the end of 2022, but in February 2023, the company’s CEO Jacek Olczak told the Financial Times that they were staying.

The expected value of Philip Morris International’s assets in Russia is at least $2.5 billion. Given that Volkswagen and Renault have stopped operations in Russia and are exiting the market, Philip Morris is already ranked first or third in terms of profits in the aggressor country in 2022 and continues to pay taxes to the Russian budget.

Thus, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi decided to bring to Lviv exactly the kind of “investor” who sponsors the murder of Ukrainians.