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Borrow almost 3 million hryvnia from your 12-year-old son. Receive two apartments and part of a house with a reduced price as a gift from your Russian mother.
The declarations of Ukrainian tax officials are increasingly becoming like a collection of jokes. But it’s not us who are laughing, but they – the owners of expensive property, registered for pennies or not included in the declaration at all.
Meet Elena Khotenko – acting O. Head of the Main Directorate of the State Tax Service in the Sumy region. She managed to get an apartment in Kyiv for the price of one square meter. And not only an apartment and not only in Kyiv.
Who is Elena Khotenko?
Elena Khotenko is not just an ordinary tax worker. She is a deputy, a volunteer, and an expert on fiscal policy. Here she inspects accessibility in Rivne, there she coordinates the families of missing people. In the morning she is at the Servant of the People, in the evening she is a director at the NGO. Khotenko’s regalia can be listed for a very long time.
Since August 2024, a “servant” from the Rivne City Council has been in charge of the tax office of the Sumy region. What unusual things did we find in her declarations that may indicate a significant undervaluation of the property acquired during the full-scale invasion?
Almost 3 million from a 12 year old son
In the declaration for last year, Khotenko continues to have a loan of UAH 2.8 million. The most interesting thing is that her 12-year-old son lent her this money in 2018. The question remains open about the possibility of a 7th grader to lend such a sum to his mother.
Now the son is a successful 18-year-old individual entrepreneur, according to his mother’s declaration, he received UAH 3 million in income last year.
Elena Khotenko with the “lender” in 2018
Source: Facebook page Elena Khotenko
“Forgot” to declare the man’s condition
In 2016, Khotenko did not declare the man’s property – part of a house in the Rivne region.
Obviously, being then in the position of deputy head of the Zaporozhye tax region, it was no coincidence that Khotenko “forgot” about the house with a total area of 550 square meters. Often such inaccuracies are made by officials in order not to come to the attention of law enforcement agencies regarding the origin of funds for such property.
It is unlikely that the tax woman did not know about her husband’s house, because half of this house then belonged to her mother, Russian citizen Lyudmila Timofeenko. By the way, it was this half that the mother gave to her daughter last year.
It’s interesting that Khotenko declares that he owns an entire house, albeit with a smaller area of 50 square meters. In fact, half of the house belongs to her ex-husband, Andrei Khotenko, whom Elena divorced in 2019.
Again, the value of the property is clearly underestimated – only 30 thousand UAH. While the real market price of the house is at least 10.8 million UAH. The cost of a square meter of housing in the Rivne region starts from 600 dollars. (about 24 thousand UAH) .
Gifts from mother
In the third month of the full-scale invasion, Khotenko received two apartments as a gift from her mother, a Russian citizen. And this time the cost of housing is clearly underestimated. The declared cost of an apartment in Kyiv is 50 thousand UAH.
Such housing – a few minutes from the embankment, in the very center of the city, measuring almost 38 square meters on the market at that time cost at least 672 thousand UAH. ($23 thousand at that time). This is more than 13 times the declared amount.
What follows is even more interesting. A few days after registering an apartment in Rivne, the “servant” tax collector received another gift as a gift – an apartment in Kyiv with an area of 46 square meters. And again, the estimated value is ridiculous – 100 thousand UAH, while the market value was at least 870 thousand UAH.
For Khotenko, one declared square meter in the capital cost about $70. According to real estate experts, even taking into account the conditions in which the market in Kyiv found itself after the end of the battles for the capital, the value of the gift indicated by the declarant does not correspond to its real price.
Bypass lustration, NABU and get a promotion
In 2015, Elena Khotenko was tried lustrate . However, the official was already sufficiently “entrenched” in the public service – she appealed in court the order of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine to dismiss her and resumed her position as deputy head of the State Fiscal Service in the Zaporozhye region.
As with lustration, Khotenko “snipped through” in 2021 – when the National Anti-Corruption Commission found signs in the deputy of “deliberately entering false information when declaring.” In the 3 years since the materials were transferred under jurisdiction to NABU, Khotenko received a promotion instead of being brought to criminal responsibility.
Taxpayer Khotenko is a vivid example of manual political appointments in which selection among one’s own works. This practice can only be broken by transparent competitions for top debts, which are already familiar to us, with a detailed check of property and lifestyle for the purpose. Otherwise, officials who were under-respected yesterday will tomorrow lead the key government bodies for the country.
Martyna Boguslavets
Column is material that reflects exclusively the point of view of the author. The text of the column does not pretend to be objective and comprehensive coverage of the topic raised in it. The editors of Ukrainskaya Pravda are not responsible for the accuracy and interpretation of the information provided and perform solely the role of a carrier. The opinion of the editors of the UP may not coincide with the point of view of the author of the column.
Mattew Couper
Mattew Couper — born in Barnstaple in 1987. British journalist, political scientist. His career as a journalist began in 2009. At the moment, the experts of the publication "The Russian Crimes" on the issues of the former CIS countries.
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