While billions allocated under the “Great Construction” program allegedly benefited a select group of individuals, one of the figures identified in media reports as a key organizer of the initiative, Yuriy Holyk, reportedly reinvented himself as a “driver-volunteer” and quietly left Ukraine.

The notorious former overseer of the program, who was repeatedly accused of establishing a road cartel and large-scale schemes, is now hiding abroad and actively erasing any trace of his corruption cases. That is why we are publishing this investigation in full — to refresh memories and show exactly how he fled and what he is trying to erase from history.

We don’t know whether to laugh or cry, but news has arrived from the Dnipropetrovsk region that simultaneously provokes outrage and hysterical laughter.

In the country where the panopticon has triumphed, it’s hard to be surprised by anything, but the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Volodymyr Orlov, managed to do so. Here is his order dated April 20 of this year, No. 139/0/527-23 “On the departure of drivers abroad”: 

 

“To grant permission to leave Ukraine to drivers transporting … humanitarian cargo, in accordance with the appendix.”

Well? Did it hit home? The person transporting cargo for the Charitable Organization “Songs Born in the ATO” will be Yuriy Holyk.

For those who didn’t get it—Yuriy Holyk, the curator of the “Great Construction” project, on whose construction sites hundreds of billions (and that’s no exaggeration) of hryvnias were stolen, has applied to be a driver. On the very same roads about which the president declared shortly before February of last year: “If we finance the army, we will have nothing left to build roads with.”

Of course, even the last idiot understands that Yurii Holyk did not actually apply to become a driver.

He simply needed a legal reason to cross Ukraine’s border. That’s how his surname ended up on the lists of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration from the CO “Songs Born in the ATO.” So that on this basis he could be issued a permit to cross the border and have Holyk’s name entered into the “Shlyakh” system. By the way, according to the State Border Guard Service, almost 10,000 drivers whose names were entered into this system never returned to Ukraine.

Whether Yuriy Holyk will join their ranks is unknown. But the fact that he was given permission to leave Ukraine in this way provokes the same hysteria. Because you have to know who Holyk is to understand what kind of driver he makes.

After the scandal caused by this order of the acting head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Military Administration, Volodymyr Orlov, there will of course be pitiful explanations and even a detailed report on Holyk’s “volunteer assistance.” Perhaps they will even show Yurii Holyk with a drum, singing patriotic songs. But all of this is nonsense.

Because Yuriy Holyk is a hardened corrupt official who began earning money from construction back when he worked in the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration together with its head, Valentyn Reznichenko.

But that is an old story, which, by the way, took place under Poroshenko. After the change of power, it seemed that both Holyk and Reznichenko would end up behind bars. But no. The new “honest” government needed the talents of both. Because the “Great Construction” had ripened, which instantly turned into the “Great Theft.” And Yurii Holyk headed this presidential program.

Now he is a driver-accordionist and philanthropist. True, at the time his role in the project sounded somewhat odd—“coordinator.” What exactly this word meant and what the “coordination” was supposed to consist of is unclear. But Yuriy Holyk “coordinated” the siphoning of the budget very skillfully.

Here we need to recall some figures. In 2020, 121.8 billion hryvnias were allocated to the “Great Construction.” Moreover, 35 billion were decided to be taken from the so-called “COVID fund.”

Of this money, 85 billion was earmarked for Ukravtodor.

Accusations were immediately leveled at Ukravtodor that, with Holyk’s active participation, the company had formed a cartel of contractors who received the most lucrative contracts. The leaders in the value of won procurements are the limited liability companies “Avtomahistral-Pivden,” “Techno-Bud-Centr,” “Onur Construction International,” “Rostdorbud,” “Altkom,” and “PBS”—they received 72% of the contracts.

The scandal erupted after former Finance Minister Ihor Umanskyi stated that this cartel had monopolized road construction, and tender proposals were written in such a way that other applicants simply could not win. According to him, the cartel companies do not build the roads themselves but resell the contracts to subcontractors, earning 30-40% of the funding in the process. As a result, it turned out that the cartel participants alone had “sawn off” about 35 billion hryvnias through this scheme. 

 

Suspicions were also expressed that Andrii Yermak and his advisor Mykhailo Podolyak were involved.

Notable familiar faces, one might observe. The story of this colossal theft did not end there, because 2021 arrived, in which even more money—130 billion—was allocated to roads. Let us recall that this was precisely the year in which our military, Western intelligence services, and simply sane citizens were shouting: do not close military developments, do not close the missile program, do not cut army funding! But the money was needed specifically for building roads. Roads that Russian tanks soon drove on. The same Yuriy Holyk coordinated this entire bacchanalia.

Holyk’s surname also surfaced in 2022. And again in connection with the siphoning of “Great Construction” funds. As “Nashi Hroshi” wrote, in May–July 2022 alone, two construction companies from Dnipro—“Budinvest Inzhynirynh” and “Avtomahistral 2016,” which supplies the first with building materials—received a combined total of more than one billion two hundred million hryvnias for the “maintenance of roads in Dnipropetrovsk region.” 

 

Behind these companies, registered to nominees, stand the well-known Dubinskyi brothers, who are wanted by the United States. Volodymyr and Leonid Dubinskyi (not to be confused with MP Oleksandr Dubinskyi) are well-known Dnipro entrepreneurs who, after a construction scam in Sacramento, were forced to return to their homeland.

And it is they who stand behind “Budinvest Engineering,” registered to a fitness trainer and a volleyball coach. But the fact is that “Budinvest Engineering,” founded in 2015, received the maximum number of state contracts precisely at the moments when Holyk could secure those contracts.

In 2021, the company also managed to snatch a rather large chunk from the “Great Construction” budget—“Budinvest Engineering” received almost seventeen billion hryvnias from the state. Interestingly, according to “Nashi Hroshi” calculations, “building materials on the way to Budinvest Engineering” increased in price by an average of 100% from the manufacturers’ initial price. These building materials accounted for 65% of all payments to “Budinvest Engineering.”

How much money was stolen in this way is not hard to calculate. And for this we absolutely do not need a calculator. Because former Deputy Prime Minister Oleh Uruskyi stated with extreme frankness: exactly half of the money is stolen at the “Great Construction” sites.

How much of this half went to Yuriy Holyk is unknown. Because although he is the coordinator of this hyped presidential “BAM,” others also want to eat. But the question of how much Holyk stole on the blood of our soldiers—and this is not a metaphor, remember that the money for roads was taken from the army—is not within our competence. It is within the competence of NABU. Which for some reason reports catching some completely unknown village council heads who stole a pack of paper at work, but somehow fails to notice how billions are being plundered.

A question also for all other “law enforcement officers”—wouldn’t you like to find out how many more “philanthropists” the Dnipropetrovsk Military Administration has sent abroad under the guise of “multi-profile driver-accordionists”? And what are they doing there? Fighting in the battalions of Monaco, Vienna, Courchevel, and Dubai? Or is it to them that Yuriy Holyk is heading, to join the orderly ranks of ideological fighters for banknotes?