Nadiia Tomynets, 72, lives in the small mountain village of Borynia and still works as an infectious disease specialist at the local hospital. According to state registers, she is a very wealthy woman. In the past two years alone, the village doctor has become the owner of seven plots in the Carpathians totaling 8.3 hectares, including almost five hectares of land in the vicinity of the Tustan fortress, an ancient Rus monument around which the tourism business is actively developing.
Mrs. Tomynets did not become wealthy all of a sudden. She previously owned two apartments і with an area of 57.4 sq. m. and 40.4 sq.m. on Shevchenko Avenue in the center of Lviv. “Civic Position” party has been renting at least one of these apartments since 2016 і this is known from the party’s financial reports .
In May 2021, Nadiia Tomynets presented these apartments to her daughter Solomiia, the wife of Oleksandr Hanushchyn, the former head of the Lviv Regional Council. This wasn’t the first luxurious gift. Some time before, Solomiia’s mother gave her a house і with an area of 367.7 sq.m. with several plots in Briukhovychi, a prestigious suburb of Lviv.
Nestor Tomynets, 76, a former director of a music school in Boryn, is no less generous than his wife, and a few years ago he gave Solomiia three apartments і with an area of 48.7 sq.m., 43.2 sq.m. and 43.4 sq.m. in the Lviv residential complex “Great Britain” near the center of Lviv.
Nadiia Tomynets (photo 2014)
“I’ve been working all my life! I work as a doctor and I work the land! And my husband was working in Portugal for 17 years! Don’t I have the right to buy these plots? And if you are a journalist, then investigate [cases] where billions are getting stolen, where people have ten houses and ten cars, and where weapons are getting stolen! Nadiia Tomynets reacted emotionally to NGL.media’s request to explain the origin of this property. “Are you asking me, a rural doctor who has worked for 50 years and is still working? You have no conscience! I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”
Plots and schemes
Judging by the documents і NGL.media has the copies of the sale and purchase agreements in its disposal Nadiia Tomynets could really save enough money at least to buy the land plots in the Carpathians. She paid only UAH 227 thousand for five plots with a total area of 4.8 hectares in the vicinity of Tustan, a popular tourist destination.
The previous owners of at least two of these plots were anti-terrorist operation veterans. One of them і the previous owner of the other plot was a 28-year-old Lviv resident who was killed at the frontline in December 2023 a Lviv resident Serhii Ditkivsky, 43, frankly said that he had never seen a 1.2-hectare plot given to him by the Skole City Council і the village of Urych, where the Tustan Historical and Cultural Reserve is located, belongs to the Skole citFy community free of charge.
“There was a situation when I really needed money,” he told NGL.media, “I was offered three thousand dollars. I gave them my documents. I can’t remember the name of the person now, I’m not at home, I’ll have to look up the documents. But I have never seen the plot”.
Three more plots near the ancient Rus fortress of Tustan, which ended up being owned by Hanushchyn’s mother-in-law, were also given by the Skole City Council to non-locals free of charge. For example, Oleksandr Zhohalko from Chernihiv, 69, received two hectares in Urych and a year later officially resold it to Hanushchyn’s mother-in-law for 49,000 UAH. Two more plots were given to residents of the villages of Chapli and Rainova і a village in the Sambir district of Lviv region located 65 kilometers from Urych.
Good friends
Theoretically, any Ukrainian citizen can get up to two hectares of land for agriculture anywhere in the country for free. To do this, one only needs to apply to the local government that owns the land plot they like. In practice, no village or city council will give you the land for free. It’s different if you have good friends.
Oleksandr Hanushchyn and Mykola Romanyshyn (photo 2018)
Overall, in all the cases mentioned above, Skole City Council acted unusually quickly when approving land allocations.
As the head of the Lviv Regional Council in 2015-2020, Oleksandr Hanushchyn is obviously well acquainted with the heads of many communities. However, he has developed a particularly trusting relationship with Skole Mayor Mykola Romanyshyn, his former close employee told NGL.media. These words are corroborated not only by their common photos on social media. For example, in July 2019 Hanushchyn and his wife were guests of honor at the wedding of Romanyshyn’s daughter.
It was Romanyshyn who signed the Skole City Council’s decision і the village of Urych, where the Tustan Historical and Cultural Reserve is located, belongs to the Skole city community about free allocation of the land in Urychi which ended up to be in Hanushchyn’s mother-in-law’s possession.
It is interesting that the cost of all plots in the purchase and sale agreements is indicated in the range of 40-49 thousand UAH each, and it doesn’t correlate with the area of the plots і For example, the owner of a 0.44-hectare plot and the owner of a 2-hectare plot received UAH 49 thousand each . However, the same contracts state the estimated value of most plots as much higher. Some of them are valued at UAH 116 thousand, UAH 357 thousand, and UAH 405 thousand.
The real value of land in the area is much higher. The plots currently up for sale are estimated at $450-1000 per hundred square meters, depending on the area and location. According to the minimum estimate, the total value of these five plots in Urych is about UAH 8.5 million.
Oleksandr Hanushchyn and his wife Solomiia (née Tomynets), March 2023
One possible explanation for why none of the sellers noticed that they were selling the plots 5-10 times cheaper than even the estimated value could be the figure of Ivan Zahorodnyk, 48, who officially represented their interests.
We were not able to talk to all the sellers, but from the documents і NGL.media has the copies of the sale and purchase agreements in its disposal we know that all of them, similar to Serhii Ditkivsky, were not present when the land sale agreements were concluded. It was Ivan Zahorodnyk who represented their interests at the notary on the basis of a power of attorney. He is a deputy of Khyriv City Council, and his brother Andrii Zahorodnyk was once an assistant to Oleksandr Hanushchyn as a deputy of Lviv Regional Council in 2010-2015.
Ivan Zahorodnyk did not want to explain his role in buying up the plots for Hanushchyn’s mother-in-law, telling NGL.media that “you need to talk to the lawyer”.
Oleksandr Hanushchyn himself did not want to explain this either, although he confirmed that he knew Ivan Zahorodnyk. “Buying and selling land in a legally permitted manner is not punishable in Ukraine. If my mom і Oleksandr Hanushchyn refers to his mother-in-law as “mom”. did this, then big kudos to her for finding the strength to buy the land,” he said.
Marriage contract
Oleksandr Hanushchyn, 45, has spent almost all of his adult life in politics and public service. Starting out as an assistant to an MP at the age of 25, he was elected to the Lviv Regional Council for the first time three years later, and became its chairman at 37. He has never been involved in business and declared a modest lifestyle. However, as a politician he skilfully used all the opportunities for self-promotion.
According to the documents, the only real estate property Oleksandr Hanushchyn owns is his parents’ old house with a small plot of land in Rakhiv, Zakarpattia, which he inherited in March 2021.
Instead, his wife is the owner of numerous properties received as a gift from her parents. Speaking to NGL.media, Hanushchyn rejected the assumption that he was involved in the acquisition of this property. “I have a marriage contract with my wife. The number one clause of this contract is that my wife and her parents, whom I love very much, are absolutely financially independent people and do not need any help from me”.
Solomiia Hanushchyn on the cover of the Lviv glossy magazine Egoist, 2020
It is impossible to estimate the real financial income of the former head of the Lviv Regional Council using open sources today. His latest declarations are hidden due to his status as a military officer. The latest declaration the media covered was his declaration for 2020. According to it, four years ago, his annual income amounted to UAH 635.3 thousand, which was the salary of the head of Lviv Regional Council. In the same year, his wife Solomiia Hanushchyn declared only UAH 21.3 thousand of annual income.
For many years now, the Hanushchyn family has been living in a 367.7 sq.m. house in the village of Bryukhovychi near Lviv. This house and the land plot officially belong to Solomiia Hanushchyn and her children. When journalists once became interested in this house, Oleksandr Hanushchyn claimed it was “a gift from the parents”. However, he never specified whose parents they were or if they could afford such a gift. As of 2012, realtors interviewed by journalists estimated the house at UAH 2 million.
A gifted family
Gifts are the only explanation that Hanushchyn can give for her numerous properties. For example, in addition to the house in Briukhovychi, Solomiia Hanushchyn also owns three adjacent apartments in Lviv residential complex “Great Britain”. Officially, these apartments were given to her by her father, Nestor Tomynets. However, he did not even come to Lviv to formalize the gift with a notary. Oleksandr Hanushchyn himself signed the deeds on his behalf under a power of attorney і it is evidenced by copies of a deed of gift that NGL.media obtained .
Nestor Tomynets, 76, was once the director of a music school in the village of Borynia. Later, according to his wife, “he was working in Portugal for 17 years.” She refused to say what he was doing there and how much he earned. Oleksandr Hanushchyn couldn’t explain it either. He only told NGL.media that his father-in-law “was a good musician and was doing something else in Portugal”. These days Nestor Tomynets lives separately from his wife і it is evidenced by copies of a deed of gift that NGL.media obtained in the neighboring village of Zarichchia in a hut with a living area of 17.5 m2 і the total area of the building is 52 sq.m. .
Oleksandr Hanushchyn told NGL.media that his father-in-law bought the apartments in the residential complex “Great Britain” on his advice to invest his earnings in Portugal, back at the construction stage in 2012 і according to Hanushchyn himself . Despite the fact that this residential complex was commissioned only in 2019, one could only envy Hanushchyn’s foresight if his words did not turn out to be outright lies.
Owing to the detailed abstract from the real estate register, NGL.media found out that Nestor Tomynets did not invest his money in these apartments, but received them as a gift on December 31, 2020, from a Lviv resident Daria Tchaikovska, 67. Unfortunately, we were not able to talk to her; we only know that she worked at the Electron plant before retiring.
Today, the cost of apartments in the residential complex “Great Britain” starts at UAH 50,000/sq.m. However, Nestor Tomynets estimated the three apartments with a total area of 135 sq.m. he donated to his daughter і according to the deed of gift at UAH 552,000. One parking space in this building, which Solomiia Hanushchyn recently purchased on her own, cost her UAH 150,000.
Another much bigger apartment of 120 sq.m. in another Lviv residential complex “5th Avenue” belongs to her mother, Nadiia Tomynets. She inherited it quite recently, at the end of last year, after the death of her mother, Sofia Yartym, 90, who had spent her entire life living in the small village of Ropavske near Boryn. Two years before her death, she allegedly invested UAH 1,900,000 in this residential complex. Today, the market value of this apartment has increased to UAH 4,900,000 і this is the estimated value indicated in the inheritance agreement .
However, it is unlikely that the 72-year-old village doctor will be able to take full advantage of this inheritance, even though Oleksandr Hanushchyn calls her “mom”.
Author Nataliia Onysko, editor Oleh Onysko, infographics by Nazar Tuziak, cover by Rostyslav Abramets