Hrynkevychs’ hidden empire worth $1.6 million. hromadske investigation into top Defense Ministry contractor

Svitlana Hrynkevych and her mother, Iryna Fedak, purchased five apartments in Kyiv and Lviv, three plots of land, and a luxurious mansion after the full-scale invasion. That is, at a time when Ihor Hrynkevych's companies were receiving multimillion-dollar contracts from the Defense Ministry. Only one land plot was purchased before the all-out war.

On December 29, the State Bureau of Investigation arrested Lviv businessman Ihor Hrynkevych. He brought investigators half a million dollars in bribes to lift the seizure of clothing that his company was supposed to supply to the Ministry of Defense. Investigators found that Hrynkevych's companies had won 23 tenders to supply the Defense Ministry with clothing worth more than 1.5 billion hryvnias ($39.9 million). A number of contracts were not fulfilled, some were partially implemented with delays, and in total, the state suffered damage worth almost 1 billion hryvnias ($26.6 million).

On January 11, the SBI announced the seizure of the Hrynkevych family's property: real estate, luxury cars, property, and accounts of companies they control. However, almost two weeks passed between December 29, when Ihor Hrynkevych was arrested, and January 11, when the SBI finally reported securing the confiscated assets. It was during this intervening period that many of the most noteworthy developments unfolded.

Suspicious "mortgages"

On January 25, we checked the property of Roman and Ihor Hrynkevych in the registers and were quite surprised: the father and son had exactly one plot of land for farming in Kyiv Oblast, and no other assets. So we started checking the property of the Hrynkevych family members.

Most of the property turned out to be registered in the name of the businessman's wife, Svitlana. We focused on the property they had acquired during the full-scale invasion.

These are two elite apartments in Novopecherski Lypky in the capital: 50 and 123 m² next door, which were bought on May 17, 2023. Right in the midst of fraudulent deals by Ihor Hrynkevych's companies on Defense Ministry contracts. Apartments of similar size in these new buildings would cost at least 20 million hryvnias ($532,458).

A day after her husband's arrest, right before the New Year, on December 31, Svitlana Hrynkevych took out a 5 million hryvnia ($133,114) loan from a certain Oleksandr Lapshyn. And on January 2, she went to a notary and put a so-called encumbrance on both apartments because of this loan. This is now listed in the register as a mortgage agreement.

Lawyer Yaroslav Butyrin explained to us why this was done:

"This is a standard scheme to 'hold on' to property. If people are afraid that something might be taken away from them, they go to a notary and say: ‘Here's a note of hand for one million, we want to sign a mortgage agreement against this note’. There is a Law of Ukraine on Mortgages, and it states that the mortgagee is a priority claimant. That is, the property secured by the mortgage cannot be seized."

In other words, the borrower is the priority owner of the property, and the property itself becomes inaccessible to arrest and confiscation. The scheme was repeated at another property owned by Svitlana Hrynkevych, a Kyiv apartment in a low-rise block in Nyvky. The size of the apartment is modest - only 30 square meters - but the cheapest and smallest one was recently sold for 1.5 million ($39,934). This means that Svitlana's apartment can be valued at about 2 million ($53,246).

The situation with the mortgage is more complicated. The apartment was purchased on December 8, 2023, three weeks before Ihor Hrynkevych's arrest. It was bought formally by the businessman's mother-in-law and Svitlana's mother, Iryna Fedak. On December 15, the women signed a mortgage agreement with a notary: allegedly, back in November, the daughter lent her mother $135,000, or almost 5 million hryvnias. But the people who were not strangers to each other "remembered" about the debt more than a month later and only after they bought another apartment. What could explain this?

"Loan and mortgage agreements are concluded on the same day under normal conditions. This is done in one place and at one time, because signing a debt obligation is a person's good will. When a note of hand or loan is signed today, and a mortgage is signed in three days or a month, it looks stupid, but it is perfectly legal. In this case, it is impossible to find out when the note of hand was actually written," says lawyer Yaroslav Butyrin.

Whether or not the debt existed, no one will ever know. As if to confirm our hypothesis, on the same day, December 15, 2023, the mother and daughter signed another mortgage agreement – this time for an apartment in Lviv. This luxurious 130 m² apartment in a trendy residential complex cost the family at least 7 million ($186,360). Svitlana's mother bought the apartment in November 2023. And in December, she also gave it to her daughter as a mortgage.

Why do these mortgage transactions between Svitlana Hrynkevych and her mother look questionable?

First, Iryna Fedak owns shares or entire companies in the Hrynkevych family group. According to the YouControl service, this group includes 25 companies that are engaged in many businesses: from quarrying and construction to advertising and trade in textile goods, which were just supplied to the Ukrainian army. There are no superfluous people among the owners of the numerous companies: everything is registered exclusively to family members: son, daughter, wife, and mother-in-law. In other words, Mr. Hrynkevych registered business assets in the name of his mother-in-law a long time ago, and she is an important part of their empire.

Secondly, Svitlana Hrynkevych and her mother conducted all these mortgage and loan transactions in November-December 2023, when the clothing of Ihor Hrynkevych's companies for the Ministry of Defense had already been seized. Now it is up to the investigation to prove the fictitiousness of these transactions and the origin of the money in court.

"If the investigator deems it necessary and has grounds, the court will seize the property again. And even if the mortgage is canceled, the court's seizure will not go away," Butyrin assures.

Third, remember the two luxury apartments in Novopecherski Lypky that Svitlana bought in May 2023. In the summer of 2022, her mother, Iryna Fedak, also bought an apartment in the neighboring building. Her 85 m² apartment cost at least 6 million hryvnias ($159,737). July 2022 was exactly the time when her son-in-law's companies started receiving their first substantial money from the Defense Ministry.

As a final argument, we have our main find and the jewel of the Hrynkevych family's real estate collection, which does not exist in the registers.

Schrödinger’s palace

Svitlana Hrynkevych owns a modest plot of land in the Prolisok garden community on the outskirts of Lviv. This is a cozy corner of the city right on the border with Vynnyky Forest Park.

The modest plot with the house was registered in Svitlana's name on August 1, 2022. But it is not six acres, but much more. This "more" – three plots with a total area of 20 acres – was registered in the name of her mother, Iryna Fedak. Two of the plots were registered in March 2022, and Fedak bought the main plot of 10 acres in April 2019. At the same time, she declared a 300 m² house on this plot.

In the 2018 advertisement for the sale of the same plot, we see a similar gray fence and recognize the neighboring houses. The price of the plot was $110,000, and it is worth reading the text: "According to the documents, 20 ares, 25 in reality. There is an unfinished house on the plot."

We assume that Iryna Fedak de facto acquired all 25 acres at once, and their de jure registration was delayed for four years.

On January 31, 2024, hromadske received the Act on the survey of the territory from the commission of the Lviv City Council. It was conducted at the request of our editorial board. It turned out that, in addition to the 25-are plots, the Hrynkevych family had simply seized another 26 ares of forest.

"Approximately 21 ares are all the seized state lands of the Lviv Forestry State Enterprise. That is, it's a forest and the lands of the nature reserve fund, where you can't do anything except pick mushrooms. But definitely not to cut down trees to build a fence or pave a road. And yet, that's exactly what the Hrynkevych family did," said Lubomyr Zubach, Deputy Mayor of Lviv for Urban Development.

Officials also noted that the pool was built on a plot of land intended for gardening, and that a road illegally laid in the forest leads to the house.

The main confusion is with the houses. In 2019, the mother's 300-square-meter house appeared in the register, and the daughter's 60-square-meter hut in 2022. Despite the different postal addresses, the cadastral numbers of all four plots are next to each other and are now surrounded by a single fence. The estate on the site is much larger than 300 or even 60 m². We have reviewed the technical documents for the house and assert that its area is 600 m².

Given that neither Ihor Hrynkevych's mother-in-law's house nor his wife's house exists today, we conclude that they dismantled both houses and built a luxurious mansion from scratch with a sauna, cinema, gym, spa area, reading room, three bedrooms, five bathrooms, and other facilities.

Neighbors claim that active construction continued until the New Year, before Ihor Hrynkevych's arrest. Currently, there are no guards or other traces of life on the property.

It is very difficult to evaluate such an asset. The land plot cost $110,000 or 5 million hryvnias. Buildings of similar size in neighboring districts of Lviv cost 25-28 million hryvnias ($665,572-745,441). Even with a discount for unfinished construction and landscaping, the estate can be safely valued at no less than 20 million ($532,458).

Thus the value of the property of only two members of the Hrynkevych family reached 60 million hryvnias ($1.6 million). 55 million ($1.5 million) of them were bought in the two years since the beginning of the full-scale invasion.

What has the SBI arrested?

On January 11, the Asset Recovery and Management Agency announced that, at the request of the SBI, it had found the property of the Hrynkevych family. The agency mentioned Svitlana's Kyiv and Lviv apartments, companies, cars, but... not a word about Ihor Hrynkevych's mother-in-law, Iryna Fedak, and the 600-square-meter estate. Despite the fact that it does not exist in the registers, SBI investigators did not think to inspect Svitlana Hrynkevych's land plot.

Moreover, on January 11, the SBI announced that all the property found had been seized, and mentioned the wife's apartments, which we have already mentioned. But the investigator never visited the registrar within 20 days. Because it is one thing to announce the seizure of property in the press, and another to submit the relevant documents to the appropriate authorities.

We stress that as of January 29, 2024, there is no information in the registers about the seizure of all of the above property of Svitlana Hrynkevych and her mother, Iryna Fedak.

If the SBI proves that the Hrynkevychs' companies "swindled" the Defense Ministry out of at least 1 billion hryvnias ($26.6 million), the state can compensate at least 60 million ($1.6 million) of this billion with the property we found alone. But first, the estate near Lviv, as well as Svitlana Hrynkevych's apartments, should be seized, not just reported in the media.