Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Shurma has been involved in numerous schemes and abuses of budgetary funds in Zaporizhia – media says

The ongoing corruption scandal involving the brother of the Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Rostyslav Shurma, continues to unfold. He was receiving money for solar energy that he was not actually supplying to Ukraine.

This information reported by Zaporizhzhia Investigation Center.

Authors from the Zaporizhzhia Investigation Center have compiled a comprehensive set of facts that accurately describe who Rostyslav Shurma truly was and remains to be – a major marauder who doesn’t hesitate to engage in embezzlement of taxpayer funds, land schemes, and nepotistic connections.

Here are just a few such facts:

• In 2018-19, the city council allocated 240 hectares of land to companies linked to “under Shurma,” and as a result, his brother Oleh became their owner. The land allocation bypassed any competitive process, as the city council manipulated the legislation, categorizing them for lease as elements of energy infrastructure (power lines, substations), rather than for generation, which they actually were. Later on, a very low lease rate was set for solar power plants within the city.

• 900 million UAH from the city budget were directed towards contracts for Zaporizhstal and its associates;

• Shurma and his former subordinate and business partner Bozhko were also actively purchasing deteriorating real estate and plots of land underneath them (Voznesenivsky Market, an unfinished business center near the Four Points Hotel);

• Shurma is an informal “senior partner” to the Marchenko brothers, who worked closely with him during their time in “Self Reliance” (political party). The names of Mark and Vladyslav Marchenko have become closely associated with budgetary manipulations and theft, shielded by politics, in the public perception.