In mid-August, Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration (Lviv RMA), announced the launch of a chatbot to anonymously report any corruption. “I am aware that there may be dishonest people in the Lviv RMA or other government agencies. But their number will decrease only if the honest ones speak openly about the actions of the offenders,” Kozytskyi wrote. “If you witness corruption, report it via a chatbot in Telegram messenger, attaching relevant evidence. If the case involves employees or structures subordinate to the RMA, we will start the investigation immediately.”
According to the Lviv RMA office, only four people used this chatbot in three weeks.
The story that NGL.media has been following for several months should be all the more interesting to officials and law enforcement. This story, no matter how you slice it, is about corruption – or rather, about how private interests are mistaken for public interests. And this mistake cost taxpayers – you and me – UAH 25,000,000.
***
For a long time, the resort village of Skhidnytsia in Lviv Oblast was in the shadow of the well-promoted and well-known Truskavets. It was Truskavets where vacationers went to, investing money in new hotels and holding party conventions. Looks like this has come to an end. It’s Skhidnytsia where new roads and hotels are being built now. Truth be told, tourists have to go through Truskavets and Boryslav with bumpy roads to get there. Also, for several years now there has been no luck finishing construction of the Truskavets ring road, which was started because of the threat that the main entrance to the city might collapse.
Lviv businessman Zynoviy Kozytskyi (left) and his son Maksym Kozytskyi, who heads the Lviv Regional Military Administration (photo by Maksym Kozytskyi)
It is difficult to explain this change in priorities, except for the fact that the father of Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration, a well-known and influential businessman Zynoviy Kozytskyi, became interested in Skhidnytsia. He has already built a large hotel and recreation complex there, and seems to be planning to build another one, and the rumour has it that a ski slope too. All this happened over the past two years.
Of course, one can only admire a Ukrainian businessman who, during a full-scale war, invests in the development of the tourism business, creates new jobs, improves the investment climate by his own example, and so on. If it weren’t for the fact that this is being done using budget funds and his son’s official position.
Private road at the taxpayers’ expense
The reconstruction of Hirska Street in Skhidnytsia at a total cost of UAH 12,760,000 began in the fall of 2021, but by the end of the year the contractor, the Turkish company Onur, managed to repair only a small section of the road at the expense of the state budget, worth UAH 1,900,000. For the next year and a half, there was no mention of completing the project, as the full-scale war started.
In early June 2023, Ivan Piliak, the head of Skhidnytsia village, sent an official letter to the head of the Lviv RMA Maksym Kozytskyi, asking him to continue the repairs at the expense of the regional budget.
“In this difficult time of military aggression by the Russian Federation against Ukraine, it is important to create new jobs, develop the tourism sector and increase the flow of visitors, which has a positive impact on the local economy. Continuing the repair of this road will improve the road transport infrastructure and living conditions of the population of Skhidnytsia, as well as increase investment attractiveness,” Piliak said in his letter to the head of the Lviv RMA.
Soon after, Maksym Kozytskyi approved the continuation of the reconstruction, the cost of which almost doubled to UAH 25,000,000 during the year and a half of downtime. Previously, a decision of the regional council was required to allocate money, but over the past two years, deputies have completely lost their influence on the distribution of the regional budget, which is now managed exclusively by the Lviv RMA.
The reconstruction of Hirska Street in Skhidnytsia turned out to be the most expensive item in the list of roads funded by the Lviv RMA in 2023, and probably the most questionable one in terms of priority.
This is a steep side street on the outskirts of Skhidnytsia, with less than a dozen houses, including abandoned ones, and a small hotel scattered along its side. However, even after the reconstruction, the driveways to the houses remained in their original dirt form. The improvement is obvious, but it is unlikely to have a significant impact on the lives of the residents.
The hotel and recreation complex of the Normaz Plaza company controlled by Zinoviy Kozytskyi (photo by NGL.media)
In fact, the renovated almost two-kilometer-long street with smooth asphalt and roadway lighting will have impact on one facility only, the one formally located outside Skhidnytsia, on top of a beautiful hill. It is here that a luxurious recreation complex owned by Zinoviy Kozytskyi, Maksym Kozytskyi’s father, is ready to open. In addition to the 60-room hotel, the cheapest of which starts at 9,900 UAH/night, 11 separate cottages are being finished. All of this is being promoted as the “Panorama Skhidnytsia Wellness Resort”.
Kozytsky’s hotel
Lviv civic activist Sviatoslav Litynskyi was the first to notice the renovated street in Skhidnytsia back in May. The street was also blocked in several places with signs reading “private territory”. He also found out that the new hotel was being built by the Normaz Plaza company, co-owned by Zinoviy Kozytskyi. Since this story did not arouse any significant interest in law enforcement agencies, at the end of June, the activist succeeded in getting the NABU to launch a pre-trial investigation through the court, but there has been no progress in this case so far.
NGL.media has been studying this situation for several months, and in general, we can confirm Litynskyi’s conclusion. The head of the Lviv RMA Maksym Kozytskyi spent UAH 25,000,000 from the budget to build the road to his father’s private resort. However, during our investigation, we found several other telling facts.
The land plot of almost 9 hectares hosting the new hotel and recreation complex is located, is legally owned by Normaz Plaza, the company that commissioned the construction. Half (50%) of this company is owned by Zinoviy Kozytskyi through West Energy LLC, while the other half until recently belonged to a well-known Lviv businessman, Vitaliy Lomakovych. However, he seems to have withdrawn from the business. The 30% of Normaz Plaza that Lomakovych used to own, now belongs to Karina Tertychna, 23, who claims to be an art manager and has been living in London for at least a year. She is the daughter of Eleonora Tertychna, a Lviv notary whose office address coincides with the Lviv address of ZakhidNadraService, Zynoviy Kozytskyi’s main company, and Karina Tertychna herself used to work for Kozytskyi’s charity foundation.
In August this year, Vitaliy Lomakovych officially withdrew from his asset management company Optima Capital, which still owns 20% of Normaz Plaza.
Interestingly, Normaz Plaza is not the only company in which Lomakovych’s share has been transferred to Karina Tertychna. In June 2024, she acquired his shares in four more companies: “Lviv International School”, “Atria-B”, “Orpey”, and “Vikarta”.
It can be assumed that this is Zinoviy Kozytskyi’s way to gain full control over Normaz Plaza, or that the young art manager became a kind of cover for Vitaliy Lomakovych, who recently had problems with law enforcement and the seizure of property. In any case, he continues to hold out as a co-investor in the Panorama Skhidnytsia Spa Resort. That’s how he was introduced in a story by Lviv Media і online media owned by Zinoviy Kozytskyi in July this year.
Vitaliy Lomakovych did not respond to NGL.media’s request to comment for this article.
Stage 2
About two kilometers away from Panorama Skhidnytsia, further into the mountains, lies the Huta homestead. When social media started discussing the feasibility of spending UAH 25,000,000 on a new road to the private recreation complex, Petro Kost, the deputy head of Skhidnytsia village council, assured, that it was needed because emergency services, including ambulances, could not reach Huta, and in winter, residents could only get to Skhidnytsia by sledge.
The problem is that no one lives there permanently, let alone in winter. NGL.media journalists made sure of this by talking to the locals. There are indeed a few old houses on the homestead, but they are mostly abandoned, and some are used only as a summer cottages with a vegetable garden.
However, Huta will soon change, because the land here has new owners. In August this year, at least four hectares in Huta became the property of Zynoviy Kozytskyi and the aforementioned Eleonora Tertychna і this is evidenced by the land cadastre data . Locals are convinced that a new large recreation center will be built there.
The state of the road leading to the homestead suggests such plans exist. Back in July, the road built with budget funds ended with a large ring near the Skhidnytsia Panorama, further stretching as a broken forest road overgrown with grass. Now it looks like this.
The state of the former forest road to Huta homestead in August 2024 (photo by NGL.media)
The road to Huta has been significantly widened and protected from washouts by several hydraulic engineering structures. There is currently no asphalt, which makes sense, as the area is in for big construction. The expanded and fortified section of about 1.7 km is being completed right near the Kozytskyi and Tertychna’s plots.
Unauthorized construction for UAH 24,500,000
The road to Huta homestead is filled with construction equipment by the Turkish company Onur, which also built the first almost two-kilometer section to the Skhidnytsia Panorama. However, as it turned out, the commissioner for the construction has changed.
While the first part of the road was ordered by the Skhidnytsia village council and paid for from the regional budget, the second part was ordered and paid for by a private investor. Onur refused to disclose his name to NGL.media, admitting only that the construction of a road for a private order is a rare case in the company’s history.
For several weeks, NGL.media tried to find this out from the Skhidnytsia village council, but the chairman Ivan Piliak, his deputy Petro Kost, and the council secretary Yuriy Zhuravchak avoided answering in every possible way.
In the end, the village council had to respond to NGL.media’s official request, which showed that Normaz Plaza LLC is the customer for the reconstruction of the road to Huta, and the project costs UAH 24,450,000.
The cost of reconstructing approximately 1,700 meters of the forest road is comparable to the cost of repairing and lighting the 1.9 km of Hirska Street, which cost UAH 25,000,000. Thus, the total cost will reach almost UAH 50 million, half of which was covered by taxpayers.
The decision to use budget money in this way was made by Maksym Kozytskyi, the head of the Lviv Regional Military Administration, which is an obvious conflict of interest, as his father’s company was the only real beneficiary of the largest expenditure by the Lviv RMA on roads in 2023.
Maksym Kozytskyi refused to comment for this article, referring NGL.media’s questions to his deputy Yurii Buchko, who claims that Lviv RMA knows nothing about this road in Skhidnytsia.
The legality of the expansion and reconstruction of the private part of the road remains unclear. The Skhidnytsia village council distanced itself from any involvement in this project. The Lviv RMA Road Department, which is in charge of local roads, is also unaware of the large-scale construction between Skhidnytsia and Huta. NGL.media received the same response from the main department of the State Geocadastre in Lviv region. In fact, it looks like unauthorized construction without any permits.
Maksym Mokhnach, director of Normaz Plaza, the company that ordered and is paying for the extension of the road to Huta, also refused to comment. NGL.media was unable to contact Zinoviy Kozytskyi the owner of Normaz Plaza, as not a single contact number at the businessman’s numerous companies would pick up the phone.
Lviv activist Sviatoslav Litynskyi, who made the story public, believes that the continuation of the road construction with private money was only possible because of the publicity.
“Perhaps they realized that it was dishonest and immoral, and now they have used the same amount of money for a public road. I like this dynamic. Sure enough, they should have done it from the beginning. I think if this issue hadn’t been raised publicly, the second section of road would have been paved with budget money too,” says Litynskyi.
This material was prepared with the financial support from National Endowment for Democracy. The publication contents is a sole responsibility of the editorial team and does not reflect the views of National Endowment for Democracy