Case description
On March 2, 2023, the HACC found Serhii Samiliak, the head of the Social Democratic Congress of Christians of Ukraine, guilty of giving an illicit benefit to Semen Kryvonos, then head of the SACI. Samiliak got a 5-year suspended sentence.
In December 2021, Serhii Samiliak, as an alleged representative of the Perfect Group development company, met with the acting director of the Department of Architectural and Construction Control (DACC) of the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate (SACI) and told him that he wanted to bribe his “boss,” SACI head Semen Kryvonos, for issuing a certificate of commissioning of the Terracotta residential complex. The Terracotta residential complex is a project of Perfect Group, a company linked to MP Dmytro Isaienko, and Altis, controlled by Oleksandr Hlimbovskyi, the father-in-law of former SFS head Roman Nasirov. At the same time, the amount of the bribe was announced: Samiliak offered to give Kryvonos USD 120,000 at the rate of “USD 2 per 1 square meter of the complex” (the total area of the residential complex is 60,000 square meters).
Kryvonos, the head of the SACI, was a corruption whistleblower in this case, and now he is the Director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. The investigation began in December 2021.
During January 2022, at least two meetings were held with Samiliak, Kryvonos, and the acting director of the DACC of the SACI, during which the details of the bribe transfer process were discussed. In particular, it became known that the Terracotta residential complex could not actually be put into operation because there were no electricity meters and no transformer substation. Therefore, Samiliak offered a bribe and promised that, after receiving the document, the developer would fix the problems.
The money transfer took place in early February 2022 in the parking lot of a Kyiv supermarket. Immediately afterwards, at the same place, NABU detectives detained Serhii Samiliak and later served him with a suspicion notice.
Samiliak entered into a plea agreement with a SAPO prosecutor. The court approved the agreement and found Samiliak guilty under Article 369(4) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, sentencing him to 5 years in prison without confiscation of property. The court released Smiliak from serving his sentence, setting him a probationary period of 3 years.
In addition, Samiliak undertook to contribute USD 100,000 to the “Army of Drones” project for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as to transfer his bail in the amount of UAH 2,232,900 to the NBU account for the needs of the Ukrainian army.
