After the beginning of the full-scale war, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) started hiding some property declarations. In particular, it is due to safety issues, especially if it concerns servicemen and their family members. However, the list of reasons to make declarations secret is actually much longer and doesn’t always seem to be justified.
Thus, all the information about the income and property of state officials remains hidden from the public at least till the war ends. Only then, the NACP promises to bring all the declarations back to public access, or when there is no longer a need for the privacy of a particular person, for instance, due to their dismissal.
NGL.media found thousands of removed income declarations, submitted in 2025. This list includes deputies of village councils, some service employees, customs specialists, law enforcement officers, former officials, and even candidates for some positions.
These investigations are possible thanks to the financial support of the participants of the NGL.media community too, who have access to special content and possibilities.
Some of these officials really attracted our attention, so we decided to provide more details about their property. We are not disclosing unnecessary details, yet we are convinced that this information is of relevant public interest, given considerable property and expenses, not confirmed with official income, so it can and should be published.
“Matters of safety, life, and death”
On February 24, 2022, when Russia openly attacked Ukraine, the NACP immediately closed public access to its registers, including the Register of Declarations. A few days later, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law, which allowed everyone not to submit declarations till the end of martial law. That’s when the NACP stopped checking the submitted declarations.
“In these hard times, the authorized specialists of the National Agency defend the borders of our Motherland together with the declarants, so at first – victory, and then – declarations and inspections,” explained Oleksandr Novikov, the then head of the NACP.
At first, everyone hoped the war would end soon, so the issue of closing the registers and officials’ reports seemed temporary. The first attempt to bring declarations back to public access was made in September 2022. The renewal of electronic declarations was also a demand from the European partners. But at that time, the NACP argued that declarations should still be closed since it is “a matter of physical safety, life, and death of Ukrainian citizens”.
Finally, the declarations were renewed a year later, on October 12, 2023, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the relevant law. All officials were given four months to submit all the outstanding declarations. And yet, the law envisaged the possibility for some categories to hide their declarations.
It is noteworthy that the law covers the declarant’s relatives as well. So, for instance, if your husband, brother, son, or daughter serves in the military, and you work as a judge in a peaceful city, your declaration can be made secret, too.
More importantly, the NACP does not automatically close access to such declarations, but only upon request. For this purpose, the head of the authority where an official works must address the NACP with a special request. The NACP will consider it and remove the declarations of a specific official from the public part of the Register of Declarations within 10 days. Not only are the declarations, submitted starting with 2022, removed, but all the previous ones are made secret too.
The declarations of candidates for some positions can be hidden as well. Or, say, a former state official joined the army after being dismissed from the position. For instance, we paid attention to the hidden declaration of Artem Lysohor, the former head of the Luhansk region – after the dismissal, he joined “Liut” Brigade, an assault brigade of the National Police of Ukraine.
However, if the grounds for making declarations secret are no longer valid and there are no more safety risks for instance, the declarants are not in the combat zone anymore, or left their job – the NACP is to bring these declarations back to public access. Again, it requires a specific request because the NACP doesn’t trace these changes on its own.
But are the decisions on making declarations secret always based on sufficient grounds? In response to NGL.media’s inquiry, the NACP said that they don’t verify the justification of these grounds: “The verification of the justification of the grounds for removal of declarants’ declarations from the open access of the Register is not conducted. The National Agency checks only adherence to formal requirements.”
Thousands of hidden declarations
How many declarations are made secret in total? The NACP claims not be keeping these statistics. However, NGL.media managed to find out that in 2025 alone, the declarations of 5,352 people were removed from public access, who submitted a total of 6,836 declarations the difference is conditioned by the fact that one person could submit several declarations.
It turned out that the possibility of hiding declarations is used by the people whose job hardly envisages considerable risks, like the employees of the National Bank and tax service, or specialists of the treasury service, or employees of the archive, Kyiv’s Zoo, or the president’s orchestra.
It is also remarkable that people in similar positions, doing approximately the same job, evaluate the risks of publicizing their declarations differently. For instance, due to unclear reasons, the declarations of Oleh Syniehubov, the head of the Kharkiv RMA, who has been in this position since December 2021 and has not been in the army before, are made secret – at least, we haven’t found this information in open sources. On the contrary, his colleague, Ivan Fedorov, the head of the near-frontline Zaporizhzhia region, Ivan Fedorov has been heading the Zaporizhzhia RMA since February 2024. At the beginning of the full-scale war, he was the mayor of Melitopol city and was taken prisoner by the Russians. He was returned from captivity, doesn’t hide his declaration.
NGL.media has only one report of significant changes in Syniehubov’s property status in March 2025, when he declared UAH 155 thousand of his salary. We made an inquiry to the Kharkiv RMA to find out the grounds for making Syniehubov’s declarations secret, but we didn’t get a clear answer.
A new head of the Odessa CMA
However, the review of some hidden declarations allows for grounded assumptions about signs of illegal enrichment, including discrepancies between expenses, declared property, and official income. The NACP is actually the one to detect such signs.
For instance, it turned out that the declarations of Serhii Lysak, the former head of the Dnipropetrovsk RMA, appointed by the president to govern the newly created Odesa city military administration, are hidden.
Serhii Lysak is a former serviceman and a high-ranking official of the SSU. According to the declaration, he and his wife don’t own any real estate. While working in Dnipro, he rented a house in the cottage settlement “Zoloti kliuchi”, located in the suburbs. The monthly rent for such houses is within the range of UAH 60 to 110 thousand, that is about one million a year.
Officially, the couple doesn’t own any vehicles, but they rent a total of four cars – Mercedes-Benz S 500, Toyota Land Cruiser, Volkswagen Touareg, and Volkswagen Passat. The cost of the rent is not specified.
And yet, practically the only income of the couple in 2024 was received in the form of payments from the Dnipropetrovsk RMA – about UAH 1.1 mln. Another UAH 32 thousand were received by Serhii Lysak as a teacher last year, and his wife received UAH 58 thousand as a PhD student of Zhytomyr Polytechnic University. They also declared USD 10 thousand and UAH 15 thousand in savings.
Serhii Lysak refused to talk to NGL.media about the gap between income and expenses and didn’t answer the questions, sent to him via messengers.
Hidden declarations of law enforcement officers
The list of declarations, hidden by the NACP, includes many law enforcement officers – about three times as many as AFU servicemen. And these are not just special operations forces who are also involved in active combat. In this list, we found the SBI, the ESB, the Department for Strategic Investigations of the National Police in Kyiv, and even a security inspector at the detention centre.
For instance, the declaration of the subject of investigation by Ukrainska Pravda, the former head of the operations department of the Economic Security Bureau (ESB) in the Lviv region, Roman Mud, was also hidden, although he has already been fired. After NGL.media addressed the NACP, his declarations were opened. The NACP claims that even Roman Mud himself asked for it.
It is not possible to find the open declaration of Ivan Salenkov, the deputy director of the territorial department of the SBI in Poltava either. At the same time, the director of this department, Denys Mankovskyi, and the other deputy director, Oleh Sorskyi, didn’t hide their declarations.
The analysis of Ivan Salenkov’s declaration only confirms that he has something to hide from the public. He lives in a rented apartment in Poltava, but a lot of real estate is registered in the name of his wife, Natalia Buhaets, in Kharkiv – four apartments and three garages, and a large house in Kharkiv’s suburbs. The total area of real estate, owned by Salenkov’s wife, exceeds 1,000 sq.m. without the consideration of land plots.
The couple also owns four cars – Lexus RX-200T, driven by Salenkov, and Mercedes-Benz GLC, Toyota RAV4, and Nissan Cefiro, registered in his wife’s name.
Last year, Ivan Salenkov earned almost UAH 2.5 mln and received UAH 131 thousand and over UAH 30 thousand interest from Oshchadbank and Privatbank. His wife received UAH 77 thousand salary from the Kharkiv pedagogical university Natalia Buhaets is Professor at the choreography chair of the Hryhorii Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University and over UAH 2 mln more as interest, dividends, and income from disposition of securities.
The couple declared a total of over UAH 12 mln, USD 300 thousand, and EUR 242 thousand in savings. Savenkov’s wife lent EUR 300 thousand to his father, Volodymyr Salenkov, or rather to his Bulgarian company, “DV BILD” Sp. Ltd., which, according to the Bulgarian Register, is involved in construction in Sofia.
Ivan Salenkov refused to explain to NGL.media on which grounds his declaration was made secret. Another refusal was received from the SBI.
Previously, the NACP found out that Ivan Salenkov stated inaccurate data in his declaration for 2023, for the amount of over UAH 2.1 mln, which constitutes a wrongdoing pursuant to part 1 of Art. 366-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Yet NGL.media didn’t find any confirmation of the fact that he was punished for it in any way.
Gifts in a hidden declaration
The declaration of Ruslan Maliuha, the head of the Kyiv customs checkpoint, is made secret as well. In 2024, he declared a land plot and a house in Brovary with an area of 228 sq.m. Also, his wife Lesia owns an apartment in Brovary with an area of 59 sq.m. And his son, Ivan, owns an apartment in Kyiv of 54 sq.m. Last year, Ruslan Maliuha was presented with another apartment in Kyiv with an area of about 70 sq.m. which cost UAH 1.7 mln.
Also, last year, his wife, Lesia Maliuha, bought Volkswagen Tiguan 2022 for UAH 1.1 mln. At the same time, last year, the cumulative income of this couple hardly amounted to the same UAH 1.1 mln The salary of Ruslan Maliuha for previous year was UAH 701 thousand, another UAH 398 thousand was earned by his wife as a teacher of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.
NGL.media has several reports about changes in the property status of Ruslan Maliuha in 2025. At the end of February, he sold the apartment that had been presented to him, but he sold it for UAH 4.2 mln. In April, he sold his 15-year-old Lexus RX350 for UAH 830 thousand, and in May, he bought a Volkswagen Touareg 2020 for UAH 1.6 mln.
Ruslan Maliuha told NGL.media that “he is always open to communication”, but asked us to send the questions to his employer. Lesia Maliuha refused to give any comments.
At the same time, the Kyiv customs states that Ruslan Maliuha’s declaration is hidden, because his wife joined the AFU, and the removal of his declaration from the register “is not aimed at concealing income or avoiding financial transparency in any way”. However, they refused to answer the question about the source of the funds to purchase the property.
Author Maria Horban, collection and analysis of the data Maksym Piho, editor Oleh Onysko, translation Nelya Plakhota, cover Viktoria Demchuk
