After a loud series of scandals and criminal cases surrounding the presidential program “Great Construction”, in which its curator from Bankova, Yuriy Holyk, appeared in various capacities, the latter unexpectedly disappeared both from the information space and from the country.

The most interesting thing in this story is not how much Yuriy Holyk stole and with whom he shared, but where and how he disappeared. Although the criminal cases involving Holyk have not been closed, his whereabouts are reliably unknown to anyone — neither to investigative bodies nor to investigative journalists. This leads to various speculations — from the idea that Yuriy Holyk was hidden from NABU so that detectives would not reach key figures of the OPU, to the notion that Holyk is no longer physically in this world and will not be able to tell anyone about the theft schemes for obvious reasons.

However, the latter version seems somewhat hasty, since traces of Yuriy Holyk were found in several countries — Poland, Israel, Austria — but in any case, his specific location could not be reliably verified. After Yuriy Holyk left Ukraine through the “Shlyakh” system as a volunteer, he disappeared.

Chronicle of scandals

To understand why Yuriy Holyk faced considerable danger, it is worth briefly recalling who he is and at least schematically going through the scandals that accompanied his name since the current country’s leaders took power on Bankova.

Yuriy Holyk emerged in the public space in 2019 as one of the close associates of the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko. From there, he quickly moved on and joined the inner circle of President Zelenskyy, first as an advisor to Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk (the latter is remembered only for his scooter and the demolished walls in the Cabinet building), but very quickly rebranded himself as the public face of the advertised presidential program “Great Construction”, which the people aptly renamed the “Great Theft” program.

Although Yuriy Holyk held no official position in this program, his place in it was quickly defined as that of a “gray cardinal”. Indeed — no tender was won without Holyk’s approval, and we are talking about hundreds of billions of hryvnias. At the same time, Holyk managed to position himself as one of Zelenskyy’s closest advisors on infrastructure projects.

Yuriy Holyk owed this position to Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the already forgotten deputy head of the Office of the President of Ukraine in 2019–2023. He was considered one of Zelenskyy’s closest associates and oversaw information policy, the regional agenda, and the presidential program “Great Construction”.

It was thanks to Kyrylo Tymoshenko that Yuriy Holyk was able to become the “gray cardinal” who sat on the distribution and subsequent “siphoning” of state funds allocated from the budget for the “Great Construction” — according to various data, “kickbacks” reached a fantastic 40%. How they were distributed and in whose pockets they ended up remains an open question, but Yuriy Holyk was precisely at the point where all these colossal sums converged.

To understand the scale — in 2021 alone, about 106 billion hryvnias were invested in road construction, and the state’s total road expenditures reached 132 billion hryvnias, and including local budgets — about 178 billion. There is no need to recall the Russian tanks that rolled over these roads the following year — those images are still fresh in the memory of surviving Ukrainians. Even more was planned for 2022, but for obvious reasons, road repairs had to be urgently scaled back. In total, the state allocated at least 240–250 billion hryvnias for the program’s implementation, the majority of which went to road construction.

After Kyrylo Tymoshenko was scandalously dismissed in January 2023 from the position of deputy head of the OPU, the star of the “gray cardinal” Yuriy Holyk also faded. Although for some time he was still unofficially considered one of the ideologists of infrastructure policy during Zelenskyy’s time. Despite the lack of an official position, journalists recorded his visits to the Office of the President and assumed he retained influence over infrastructure processes.

But it was during this period that numerous press publications about Holyk’s role in embezzlement on the “Great Construction” began to turn into full-fledged investigations by NABU. The loudest episode was the investigation by “Schemes”, which established that billions of hryvnias in contracts went to the company “Budinvest Engineering”, which was linked to Yana Khlanta — a close companion of the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko. And Yuriy Holyk maintained close contacts with the participants in the scheme — journalists described him as one of the coordinators of processes around road contracts.

After this publication, NABU was forced to conduct searches at Reznichenko’s, and searches were also carried out at Yuriy Holyk’s. This was the first case when Holyk became a direct subject of investigative actions. Soon, Bihus.Info journalists reported that Holyk’s correspondence with representatives of the contracting company, which received state contracts worth billions of hryvnias, was found in the investigation materials. According to the investigation, issues related to the implementation of road projects and the distribution of money were discussed.

It was during this period that Yuriy Holyk crossed the Ukrainian border as a volunteer. The scandal caused by this fact also ended in nothing. As for Yuriy Holyk himself, despite numerous episodes of criminal cases in which he appears, in addition to regular visits to the Office of the President in 2023, in 2025 his name unexpectedly surfaced as the coordinator of the development of Ukrainian STING UAVs. This despite the fact that for several years now no one has been able to find Yuriy Holyk himself.

Where is Yuriy Holyk after all?

There is no answer to this question. What is strange, given that Holyk continues — at least as evidenced by publications in some media — to participate in the development of defence funds. It is difficult to judge how true this is. But, let us recall, in the development of funds for the “Great Construction”, Holyk participated without any official status. Which did not hinder him in the slightest.

So, it cannot be completely denied that Yuriy Holyk has lost influence over Ukraine’s budget funds and their redistribution. Although it is clear that he is no longer at the center of the “siphoning” of defence funds, but on the periphery, it still involves at least hundreds of millions of hryvnias.

As for the version that Holyk has physically disappeared, it is indirectly refuted by the fact that several months ago there was a large-scale cleanup of the internet from compromising materials related to Yuriy Holyk. It is doubtful that anyone else would have done this if the key figure had died.

And Yuriy Holyk himself, as recently as July 3, 2026, published a photo of a diploma issued in his name by the National University “Ostroh Academy”. In connection with this, there is an assumption that all searches for Yuriy Holyk are an open farce, and he himself did not flee anywhere.

Therefore, the attractive but clearly conspiratorial version of Yuriy Holyk’s elimination should still be considered unlikely. Although there are grounds for such — many at the very top of the power vertical are very interested in shutting him up forever. Precedents of such “solutions to the issue” have already existed, everyone understands this. Including Yuriy Holyk. That is why, most likely, he is trying not to “show up”.