The State Biotechnological University, one of Ukraine's key agricultural universities, has been in a state of deep financial crisis for a long time. Its most painful manifestation is shocking wage arrears, UNN reports.
The total wage debt to the SBUT staff in September 2024 was about UAH 30 million, according to documents obtained by UNN from verified sources. However, information about wage debts is absent in open sources and university reports, which may indicate attempts by the State Biotechnological University's management to conceal the real financial situation.
Moreover, the current acting rector of SBUT, Andriy Kudryashov, avoids journalists, promising to answer all questions later. However, "later" never comes, as Kudryashov stopped answering calls from the UNN editorial office. Therefore, we sent an official request to the university regarding wage arrears to the staff. According to the law on access to public information, SBUT is obliged to respond to the request within 5 working days.
However, the reaction of the acting rector of SBUT, Andriy Kudryashov, to journalists' questions can only indicate that the critical situation regarding debts has not changed significantly, and the highly qualified staff of the university - professors and lecturers - during the war, were left without decent living conditions.
How "Kudryashov-Odarchenko" schemes created multi-million dollar wage debt
In particular, wage arrears to the SBUT staff arose due to the fact that the university is, de facto, still managed by the fugitive bribe-taker, People's Deputy of Ukraine Andriy Odarchenko. Who was sentenced by the HACC to 8 years in prison with confiscation of property. For offering a bribe of $50,000 to the then head of the State Agency for Restoration and Development of Infrastructure, Mustafa Nayyem. Odarchenko offered the bribe in exchange for assistance in allocating funds from the Fund for the Elimination of the Consequences of Russian Aggression, allegedly for the repair of the State Biotechnological University he headed.
The management of SBUT, which may be controlled by Andriy Odarchenko, apparently directed its activities towards personal enrichment by violating current legislation and misusing budget funds.
After all, the main mechanism that led to the formation of the 30-million debt was the systematic embezzlement of funds from the university's special fund, from which a significant part of the salaries of teachers and staff is financed. These funds were supposed to come from the university's economic activities, which owns colossal assets - over 4200 hectares of agricultural land.
Anatomy of fund withdrawal from SBUT
Instead of using these lands for the needs of educational farms, the university's management, we can assume, illegally transferred them to private structures under the guise of dubious processing agreements. This could well have been a form of "hidden lease." The SBUT management, controlled by the fugitive bribe-taker Odarchenko, could have used data falsification about the harvest to conceal real incomes. As stated in the documents available to UNN, due to this, only in 2022-2023, already under the leadership of acting Kudryashov, the university's special fund was short of about 80 million hryvnias. It was the withdrawal of tens of millions of hryvnias through opaque economic activity that caused the financial "hole" and the emergence of debt to the staff, which, as of September 2024, amounted to 30 million UAH.
Why SBUT's debt doesn't disappear
And although now, the bribe-taker sentenced to 8 years, People's Deputy of Ukraine Andriy Odarchenko, has fled abroad, it seems that his influence on the university has been preserved and even strengthened. After all, real facts suggest that the current acting rector of SBUT, Andriy Kudryashov, is Odarchenko's man.
Analyze for yourself: Kudryashov was one of those people who "chipped in" to pay Odarchenko's bail.
Kudryashov's declaration for 2023 shows that he contributed UAH 399,000 of Odarchenko's bail, out of the assigned UAH 15 million. And it was this bail that allowed the bribe-taking MP to flee the country and hide from Ukrainian justice.
The situation requires immediate and decisive intervention from the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine to prevent the final destruction of the financial stability and reputation of the State Biotechnological University - one of Ukraine's key agricultural universities - due to corrupt "schemes" and the possible dependence of the current acting rector on the toxic figure of Andriy Odarchenko. Because as long as this influence persists, the SBUT staff is doomed to be hostages of bribe-takers and their executors. And to remain without honestly earned wages.
So, until the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine, Oksen Lisovyi, breaks this cycle of dependence, the professors and lecturers of SBUT will remain trapped in a corrupt legacy, and their dignified existence in wartime will be ignored for the enrichment of bribe-takers.