In August, Valeriia Hutorka, a young resident of Bila Tserkva, crossed the Ukrainian-Polish border by a regular bus and never returned home. A month and a half later, one of the institutions of the Ministry of Sport paid her UAH 6.6 million for services in organizing the Ukrainian championship in competitive gymnastics.
Officially, 23-year-old Valeriia Hutorka is the owner of a previously utterly unknown company called “Kyiv Media Production” which became a key supplier of services for the most expensive state-financed sporting competition in Ukraine since the beginning of the war. However, the organizer of this year’s championship – Stella Zakharova, an Olympic champion – is indeed known throughout the country without exaggeration.
NGL.media, in collaboration with the leading sports news portal Tribuna, decided to look into this dubious story.
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The championship of Ukraine in competitive gymnastics took place on September 28–29 in the Kyiv Palace of Sports for the first time in 45 years Previously, the Ukrainian championships of competitive gymnastics were very modest – for instance, the 2023 championship was held in the gymnasium of the local sports school in Kropyvnytskyi, the same place had hosted previous championships . The Ministry of Youth and Sport announced this championship as “one of the most splendid sports competitions in Ukraine”. The event turned out to be really grand – with a two-day online broadcast, a concert with a military orchestra, and circus acrobats.
The organization of sports events at the national level is entrusted to the state institution, subordinate to the Ministry of Sport, called “The Administration of Selected Teams and Support of Sporting Events “Ukrsportzabezpechennia”. This is the very establishment that organizes training camps and competitions for national teams, pays remuneration and scholarships to sportsmen, and ensures their training.
According to the data of the electronic system of public procurements, Prozorro, this year’s championship of Ukraine in competitive gymnastics has become the most expensive event in the country, held by “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. The total estimate for the two-day championship was over UAH 8.5 million.
The 2024 Ukrainian Gymnastics Championship was held on September 28-29 in the Kyiv Palace of Sports (photo by Tribuna)
However, the best Ukrainian gymnasts missed this championship, which downgraded the sporting status of the event considerably. To begin with, it happened due to the date of conducting the national championship, which was inconvenient for the national team leaders – it was held at the end of the competitive season and almost immediately after the Olympiad. All six gymnasts who had represented Ukraine in Paris Illia Kovtun, Nazar Chepurnyi, Oleh Verniaiev, Radomyr Stelmakh, Ihor Radivilov, and Anna Lashchevska , including the Olympic silver medalist, Illia Kovtun, were either recovering from their traumas or went to Europe for some competitions.
The immediate organizer of the championship was the vice-president of the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation, 61-year-old Stella Zakharova, former Olympic and world champion. Her surname is indicated in all the advertisements, and the accreditation of sportspeople and journalists was done via her personal website. The Ministry of Sport even called the official broadcast on YouTube not “Ukraine’s Championship in Competitive Gymnastics 2024” but “Ukraine International Cup 2024” which was the name of the annual international tournament Zakharova used to organize before the war The annual tournament “Ukraine International Cup” (previously “Stella Zakharova Cup” was held in Kyiv since 2001. The tournament was financed by private sponsors and state or municipal institutions, including the Ministry’s budget. In 2015, the then Minister of Sport, Ihor Zhdanov, had to find excuses for overvaluing the tournament held by Zakharova. Since 2022, the Ukraine International Cup has not been held due to the absence of foreign sportspeople and safety reasons. .
A ghost company
The total cost of Ukraine’s championship in competitive gymnastics The official prerequisites for holding the championship were the Order of the Ministry of Youth and Sport “On holding Ukraine’s championship in competitive gymnastics” No. 4799 dated August 01, 2024, signed by the deputy minister, Vitalii Lavrov, and the order of “Ukrsportzabezpechenennia” No. 2970/1.019/5 dated September 19, 2024 “On financial and technical provision for Ukraine’s championship in competitive gymnastics”, signed by Oleksii Shubynskyi, the director of “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” , paid by the state finances, was UAH 8.5 million, UAH 6.6 million of which were received by a previously unknown company, “Kyiv Media Production”.
“Ukrsportzabezpechennia” signed a total of eight agreements with this company Only five agreements were published in Prozorro, three more agreements for the amount of under UAH 50 thousand each were provided by “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” in response to the journalists’ inquiry . All these agreements were signed without any tender since it is allowed to hold events, included in the unified calendar plan of sporting competitions, via direct agreements.
The certificates of acceptance of rendered services demonstrate that “Kyiv Media Production” leased equipment for judges, video- and audioequipment, transported and installed gymnastics equipment, etc. On the first day of the championship, there was a concert immediately after the competition, so the list of equipment was rather long, including the mist generators and four sets of drums. The company also provided office equipment, medals, cups, and printed materials. “Kyiv Media Production” received a total of about UAH 6.65 million.
The official owner and director of “Kyiv Media Production” is 23-year-old Valeriia Hutorka from Bila Tserkva – her signatures are on all the documents. The company was registered in late 2021, but only in autumn 2024 received its first orders from the state. At the same time, there are no financial reports, no corporate website or social network pages of the company for free access. Even the state register contains no contact phone number, just an email address.
At the legal address of the company 3A, Levandovska Str., Kyiv , dozens of different companies are located, but we failed to find the office of “Kyiv Media Production” there. The employees of local companies have never heard this name; there are no corporate plates or signs at all. The manager of the offices in this building confirmed that there are no lessees with this name here, “I have never even heard about them.”
A call to the only contact phone number specified in the agreements of “Kyiv Media Production” has come to nought. A man, who responded to it, just confirmed that he had provided a consultation to the company regarding the execution of documents and promised to tell more in two hours. However, then this phone was just switched off.
So, it is pretty not easy to find this company, but somehow “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” managed to do it. Yet the state institution has categorically refused to tell us how they did it.
A former shop assistant from “Sea of Beer”
We were lucky to find more information about 23-year-old Valeriia Hutorka from Bila Tserkva. Even a year ago, she was looking for a position as a shop administrator with a salary of UAH 14 thousand. In her CV, she states that previously she has worked as a consultant in the optics shop, a shop assistant in the “Sea of Beer” network of shops, and an administrator in the online souvenir shop. Valeriia also tried to sell sweets and jewellery via Instagram, but it must have been relatively unprofitable — since January 2024, “Lerkin shop” has not been updated.
Judging by official registers, in addition to “Kyiv Media Production”, Valeriia Hutorka owns four more companies – “TD Fomalgaut-Polimin”, “Art-Connection”, “Goodprom”, and “Green Energy Solar” (75%). We didn’t manage to find the traces of any of these companies in the network, and the contact phone numbers, indicated in the registers, are either not valid or not serviced.
Valeriia does not look like a businesswoman either – she may shoot a 30-second-long Tik-Tok “review” of the collaboration between Coca-Cola and Oreo or sing about her former boyfriend, careless about choosing words.
Valeria Gutorka, the official owner of the “Kyiv Media Production” company (Instagram photo)
The only evident fact is that Valeriia does not live in Ukraine now. On Instagram and TikTok she regularly notes Belgium and the Netherlands. According to the source of NGL.media in the border control, Hutorka left Ukraine in August and has never come back since. And on September 25, on the day of signing agreements with “Ukrsportzabezpechennia”, she wrote that “she had a walk in the rain without an umbrella” in Belgium.
We were lucky to get in touch with Valeriia Hutorka using her personal phone number. She confirmed that she is not in Ukraine but refused to discuss the agreements with “Ukrsportzabezpechennia”. “I have passed the information on already; one person will soon call you on my behalf,” Valeriia assured us.
Yet, when asked how she had managed to sign the agreements with the state institution while abroad, Valeriia did give an indirect answer. As she explained, though her surname is stated in the documents, in fact, they were signed by another person, “using a power of attorney”. And, as she “had very many powers of attorney”, she could not name the actual signatory.
After several more questions, Hutorka cut our conversation short, and nobody has phoned us yet. Instead, we have received a letter requesting that all the questions be sent to the email address. There has been no answer for ten days yet.
A trick with tablets
It was a real challenge to check the cost of the services of “Kyiv Media Production”. The problem lay in the fact that “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” did not make the prices per each unit public, stating only the total amounts for “packages”, which included, for instance, the rent of various equipment, installation, maintenance, and dismantlement. It is noteworthy that in other agreements of “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” for holding this championship – for instance, the ones for videobroadcast or renting the Palace of Sports with additional services of installation – the prices per unit are specified, and they can be easily compared to the ones in the market. But it is not possible in case of “Kyiv Media Production”.
“Kyiv Media Production” organized the championship practically one day after signing the agreement. It is worth reminding that the two-day championship started on September 28, and it was preceded by two more days of preparations and equipment testing. A previously unknown company managed to do it all – from installing very specific gymnastics inventory to professional illumination, concert-level sound, and equipment for judges.
However, while analyzing the video from the competitions, we found out that some equipment, as envisaged in the contract, was missing. It was the equipment for judges, the exploitation and support of which cost over UAH 440 thousand. The list contained notebooks The agreement states the rent of 10 Toshiba Satellite A200 notebooks; this model was taken off sales as far back as in the 2010s. In the competitions, the judges used DELL notebooks , tablets, video projectors with screens, and a server.
Nine championship judges we have spoken to said that they only remember notebooks and had not been given 30 tablets, as envisaged in the agreement. Some judges could not confirm whether they saw the projectors, and some mistook them for the TV sets in the gymnasium. The video broadcast from the championship does not show four projectors with screens either.
“The financially and materially responsible person who checks and confirms the completeness and quality of rendered services” in the agreements with “Kyiv Media Production” is Oksana Sliusarchuk, a prominent coach of the full-time team within the national collective team in competitive gymnastics. Also, according to the order of “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” on financing the competitions, she had to provide a financial report on expenses.
In the conversation with journalists, Oksana Sliusarchuk tried to convince them that the tablets and projectors were available. “They [tablets] were given for exploitation when there were pieces of training. Not the competitions proper, but pieces of training on how to input what. It was on the day of moving in. All the projectors were in the gymnasium, near each device,” she said. However, the broadcast demonstrates that TV sets, not projectors, were standing near the gymnastics equipment.
After this conversation, we phoned several judges who had been present in the training before the championship. They confirmed again that there had been no tablets. So, we asked Sliusarchuk to send us a photo that would confirm the judges’ use of tablets and projectors. We have not received such a photo.
Stella does not want any provocative acts
Oksana Sliusarchuk states that she personally did not have any negotiations with “Kyiv Media Production”; it was all Stella Zakharova’s job to do. “I contacted only via Stella Georgiivna Zakharova,” Sliusarchuk says. In her words, Zakharova looked for a contractor and had the equipment list.
Oksana Sliusarchuk signed the certificates for acceptance of rendered services without the presence of the company’s representative. “The contract department contacts them via email, then they send the documents via “Nova Poshta” because when I was signing the documents, it was the original,” she said.
Stella Zakharova, vice-president of the Ukrainian Gymnastics Federation (photo from Zakharova’s official website)
When the Tribuna journalist asked Stella Zakharova about the relations with “Kyiv Media Production”, she reacted very emotionally and started accusing him of provocative acts. “I am not going to answer these questions. You can ask me about Ukraine’s championship, in which I took part as an organizer. As for these matters, [about the contractor] I know nothing, so excuse me,” Zakharova said. At the same time, on her personal Instagram page, there is a video in which she personally controls the equipment installation process in the Palace of Sports.
Zakharova was also the main judge of the championship, but she refused to talk clearly about that either. “As a judge, I can organize [a championship]; it is a practice here. We have some people responsible for the judging team. And if you want some provocation… I don’t want to talk about provocative issues. I will repeat once again, if you want me as a sportswoman to answer for this wonderful event which has not been held for 45 years, all right, I will answer all the questions,” Zakharova said. She has not responded to the inquiry of NGL.media in writing either.
“We don’t select contractors on our own”
In response to the official inquiry, “Ukrsportzabezpechennia” has sent a reply with 66 pages of agreements and certificates. At the same time, the state institution couldn’t answer any relevant questions – how they had found “Kyiv Media Production”, whether they had contacted other companies, how they had determined the cost, and who had been a contact person while rendering services.
There was no answer to the main question either – Who actually had signed the agreements for over UAH 6.6 million on behalf of “Kyiv Media Production”? It is evident that Valeriia Hutorka, the official owner of the company, was not that person. However, if there was an authorized person, he or she should have been mentioned in the agreement, as Yevhen Vorobiov, the lawyer of the “Human Rights Platform” NGO, explains. “The requirements in Art. 207 of the Civil Code state clearly that all the agreement participants should be indicated in the agreement, which should contain their personal signatures. It means that the authorized person should be specified in the agreement, and there should be a note explaining his/her right to sign the agreement, put his/her signature, and indicate his/her name and surname.”
When this material was ready for publication, the NGL.media journalist called Denys Holikov, the deputy head in the organization of sporting events of “Ukrsportzabezpechennia”. However, he refused to comment on the absence of some equipment envisaged in the contract during the championship and redirected this question to Oksana Sliusarchuk. “Don’t you want to look into how it could have happened?” we asked. “We will surely look into it if there is such information,” he answered.
As for the selection of the supplier of services, Holikov says that it is not “his competence scope”, and they work with the documents provided by the leading coach, “We don’t select contractors on our own”.
Цей матеріал підготовлено за фінансової підтримки National Endowment for Democracy. Зміст публікації є винятковою відповідальністю редакції i не відображає погляди National Endowment for Democracy