So, the criminal case against the long-time head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, has reached the court. According to NABU’s report, he, along with several accomplices, is accused of embezzling almost 400 million hryvnias during road repairs under the presidential program “Great Construction”.

This is, of course, good, although the court’s outcome is met with some skepticism. But there are more interesting questions – why didn’t his long-time closest aide Yuriy Holyk sit on the defendant’s bench along with Valentyn Reznichenko, who moved from Reznichenko’s advisor’s chair to the advisor’s chair of Prime Minister Honcharuk, from where he quickly catapulted to the curators of the “Great Construction”?

Such a career lift did not break the old ties between long-time associates Valentyn Reznichenko and Yuriy Holyk. On the contrary, the unofficial position of “overseer” of the “Great Construction” allowed directing significant funds to the Dnipropetrovsk region, for the embezzlement of which Reznichenko is now being tried. But Holyk somehow remains on the sidelines.

A check in the court registers shows that the last time Yuriy Holyk’s name appeared in a criminal context was back in September 2024 – when the former curator of the “Great Construction” tried to appeal the seizure of property, imposed within the framework of criminal case No. 52024000000000227.

Indeed, at that time, the appeal to lift the property seizure was unsuccessful – the court denied the request of Yuriy Holyk’s lawyer. However, it is not a fact that the property is still seized – court registers are filled very inaccurately, so it cannot be asserted that there were no new complaints from Holyk and they were not satisfied. But the more interesting status of Yuriy Holyk is not accused or even suspected. He is a “third party”. That is, a completely random person who somehow ended up among the figures in the criminal case.

Be that as it may – with or without the property seizure, Yuriy Holyk is now outside Ukraine and does not appear in the criminal case regarding his former boss Valentyn Reznichenko at all. Reznichenko is being tried for embezzling one and a half billion hryvnias allocated for road repairs in 2022.

Why Holyk is not in the case is a mystery. Although it is worth recalling that the disgraced “servant of the people” Geo Leros back in 2023, when NABU uncovered the Holyk-Reznichenko scheme, stated literally the following:  “Despite the publicity about the scandalous corruption asphalt contract for 1.5 billion hryvnias with Reznichenko’s fitness trainer and Holyk, which became known in November 2022, Zelenskyy’s government continued to generously pay budget funds to the company “Budinvest Engineering”, which she owns. Tens of millions of hryvnias were withdrawn from the budget, even more, new contracts were concluded!”

The case’s plot was that LLC “Budinvest Engineering”, which mastered road billions, was registered to Valentyn Reznichenko’s cohabitant Yana Khlanta, who was actually a fitness trainer.

Although at first glance it seems that Yuriy Holyk is in no way involved with Yana Khlanta or LLC “Budinvest Engineering”, two things should not be forgotten. First – in 2022, when “Budinvest Engineering” broke into the leaders in mastering budget funds for road repairs, Yuriy Holyk was a key figure in the presidential program “Great Construction”. Although he did not hold official positions, it was no secret to everyone that Holyk was curating the program and that budget flows depended on him.

Second – Yuriy Holyk and Valentyn Reznichenko are connected by a long joint career, they are also connected by joint business. Although not directly, the connection is obvious. According to an investigation by “Schemes”, “in addition to a long joint career path, some formal connections between Reznichenko and Holyk are also traced at the moment. For example, Reznichenko’s company “Seventh Consulting Group” rents an office in the business center “Creative Headquarters Dnipro”, which Holyk co-owns. Or another interesting detail: both Holyk’s mother and Reznichenko’s mother are registered as individual entrepreneurs, indicating in the state register… the same mobile phone number.”

But, nevertheless, Yuriy Holyk did not end up on the defendant’s bench along with Valentyn Reznichenko. Although there were clearly prerequisites for this. And, perhaps, very serious ones. Because after NABU became interested in the activities of LLC “Budinvest Engineering”, Yuriy Holyk urgently requalified as a driver and fled Ukraine.

This is no joke – on April 20, 2023, the head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration, Volodymyr Orlov, issued order No. 139/0/527-23 “On the departure of drivers from Ukraine”. Among them was the driver of the Charitable Organization “Songs Born in ATO” Yuriy Holyk.

Holyk did not hesitate to take advantage of the opportunity and successfully left Ukraine, where he got lost. He had more than serious reasons: in addition to the criminal case in which Valentyn Reznichenko surfaced and questions began to arise – for what such beautiful eyes did Yana Khlanta’s company start receiving billions, there was also a no less scandalous statement by the former head of the Ministry of Finance Ihor Umansky about a cartel that monopolized road construction.

At that time, Umansky claimed that this cartel monopolized road construction, and the tender proposals were rewritten so that other willing parties simply could not win the tender.

Umansky’s words caused a scandal, the press began to study the issue, and among the curators of the embezzlement schemes, the name of Yuriy Holyk also surfaced. And not in the last place. Indeed, the scandal was then extinguished because a great war began, but when it became clear that the Russian blitzkrieg had failed, unpleasant questions began to arise about the redirection of defence funds to road construction.

And here it turned out that the scale of embezzlement of these funds reached 30-40%. And a total of 230 to 250 billion hryvnias were directed to the “Great Construction” program. Which in those funds amounted to exactly 10 billion dollars.

And the distribution of funds was curated by none other than Yuriy Holyk. Therefore, he had serious reasons to urgently requalify as a driver-bayanist.

Almost three years have passed since the disappearance of the “Great Construction” curator Yuriy Holyk in an unknown direction. No efforts have been made to search for him and extradite him to Ukraine. The criminal proceedings in which his property was seized have hung in the depths of the HACC. But it is not being considered on the merits – the court is considering various motions by the lawyers of the case’s figures, who are clearly making every effort to collapse it. Judging by the development of events, these efforts have every chance of being successful. However, all this is of little interest to Holyk himself – he, we remind you, appears in the case as a “third party”.

In this context, Valentyn Reznichenko’s position is interesting, whose case has reached the court. For some reason, he withdrew his long-time associate Yuriy Holyk from under the blow. Although it is quite obvious that without Yuriy Holyk’s influence, the companies controlled by Valentyn Reznichenko could not have received not only one and a half billion budget hryvnias, they would not have received a single penny.

But Valentyn Reznichenko decided not to surrender Holyk. The question is – why? Is it not because Yuriy Holyk retained his influence and Valentyn Reznichenko hopes for his help in obtaining a lenient sentence or has he been promised an acquittal?

Well, we have a chance to see this in the near future. If the court, of course, is not dragged out for many years. At the same time, it will become clear whether Yuriy Holyk has lost his influence in Ukraine or not.