Why are there still no notices of suspicion after 1.2 billion was stolen from Kyiv's budget?
On 16 February 2026, documents were seized at the Department of Economy and Investment of the Kyiv City State Administration (DEI KMDA).
The KMDA officially confirmed that the actions were carried out as part of a pre-trial investigation based on the findings of an audit by the State Audit Service.
More than a month and a half has passed. There are no public results, no notices of suspicion, no arrests, not even interim conclusions of the investigation. Meanwhile, funds that are critically lacking for repairing bridges, roads and social infrastructure in the capital remain "hanging" in the air.
What did the State Audit Service find?
At the end of 2025, the Central Office of the State Audit Service audited the financial and economic activities of the DEI KMDA. The results were published on 26 December 2025.
Shared participation contributions are earmarked funds of the local budget. They are strictly tied to the development of the city's civilian infrastructure. The law clearly limits how they can be used. Money from shared participation contributions cannot be transferred to the army, drones, volunteer funds or any military needs.
Main findings:
• For 87 construction projects put into operation, developers did not pay more than 1.2 billion hryvnias in shared participation contributions to Kyiv's budget.
• In addition, the budget lost almost 52 million hryvnias because the terms of investment agreements were not met (in particular, contributions were not adjusted when the floor area of projects increased).
• The department knew about most of the problem projects but limited itself to sending demands to developers. It did not always go to law enforcement or the courts, even though that was exactly what a decision of the Kyiv City Council required.
The State Audit Service handed the audit materials to law enforcement. The pre-trial investigation, during which the seizure took place on 16 February, was opened on that basis.
Who was responsible for the investment agreements?
According to our subscribers who contacted the editorial team, gross financial violations in concluding investment agreements were committed by the heads of the DEI:
• department director Nataliia Melnyk;
• her first deputy Viacheslav Panchenko;
• deputy Oleh Svitlychnyi.
These officials effectively "gifted" developers 1.39 billion hryvnias (the amount cited by subscribers differs slightly from the official audit figure of 1.2 billion, probably due to different calculations or additional episodes). According to subscribers, the developers involved in the case include the residential complexes "Faina Town", "Varshavskyi", "GREAT" and "Liko Grad".
Official documents of the KMDA and the State Audit Service do not name any officials as suspects. However, it was the DEI, headed by Nataliia Melnyk (she has led the department since 2018), that was responsible for concluding the agreements and monitoring the receipt of funds. In December 2025 Melnyk herself commented on the audit, saying the department was actively filing lawsuits and informing the prosecutor's office and the police.
Where are the results of the searches?
In an official statement, the KMDA stressed that department staff "act within their competence and assist law enforcement agencies". The documents that were seized had already been provided to the auditors. In other words, the searches came as no surprise.
But since then - silence. Neither the Prosecutor General's Office, nor the National Police, nor the KMDA itself has reported any procedural actions against the DEI leadership. The officials continue to work. The money is not returning to the budget. And Kyiv, as before, suffers from a lack of funding for critical infrastructure.
Why does this matter?
1.2 billion hryvnias is not an abstract figure. It means dozens of schools and kindergartens that are lacking in new neighbourhoods. It means bridge repairs, for which the capital is catastrophically short of money. It is money that developers earned on Kyiv land but did not give back to the community.
While officials "assist the investigation" and the investigation stays silent, developers calmly use infrastructure they were supposed to fund. And Kyiv residents pay out of their own pockets because someone once "overlooked" or "did not want" to demand what the law requires.
The editorial team calls on law enforcement: are there any results at all from the pre-trial investigation opened on the basis of the State Audit Service's findings? Are notices of suspicion planned for the DEI KMDA leadership? And why has the public still not been informed about the progress of a case involving more than a billion hryvnias in budget losses?
RESISTANCE MEDIA continues to follow the situation.
We are ready to publish any new facts or comments from the KMDA, the prosecutor's office or the officials themselves. Kyiv has the right to know where its money went. It seems everyone at the KMDA has already come to an arrangement.
Sources:
Kyiv City State Administration
State Audit Service of Ukraine