Due to corrupt schemes involving city land, the budget is losing funds that should be directed to support vulnerable populations, modernize hospitals, schools, and kindergartens, repair roads, and create modern infrastructure. As a result, the city community is not receiving what directly affects the quality of life of its people. Read about how a possible corruption scheme involving the land under the main building of the private clinic Odrex could worsen the quality of life for Odesa residents in the UNN material.
The use of urban land and its impact on community development has long been a focus of experts. Political scientist and director of the Center for Civil Society Problems Research, Vitaliy Kulyk, notes that any non-transparent decisions regarding land transfer inevitably harm the city's budget and the quality of life of its people.
Every illegally transferred hectare of land is a direct blow to the community's budget, and therefore to the quality of life of each of us. The logic is simple: urban land is a key economic asset of the community. It should work for the city: be leased through transparent auctions, attract investments, and fill the budget. But when land is given to "insiders" at understated prices (and sometimes even for free), the city loses huge amounts of money. And it is precisely this money that is then lacking for the real needs of the people. In fact, land corruption turns into a hidden tax for the entire community. Because every illegal scheme is a minus in the budget, which then has to be compensated either by cutting expenses or by delayed development.
As UNN previously reported, a similar story became the subject of a criminal investigation in Odesa. This concerns a land plot of almost one and a half hectares on Rozkydaylivska Street, 69/71, where the main building of the private clinic Odrex is located.
According to open registries, the land plot of 1.4931 hectares belongs to LLC "Fabryka "Akatsiya" and, according to documents, has an industrial purpose for the placement of production buildings. At the same time, since 2012, the Odrex medical facility has been operating on this territory, leasing the premises located on this land.
Law enforcement officers are checking whether there was an unauthorized expansion of the plot boundaries and changes to state registries without proper legal grounds. In particular, the investigation is determining whether the type of object was legally changed from industrial buildings to healthcare facility buildings.
At the same time, the ownership structure of the companies associated with the disputed plot and the activities of the Odrex clinic also attracts attention. Thus, the co-owners of LLC "Fabryka "Akatsiya", which owns the land, are: Iryna Zaykova, Larysa Mysotska, and Yevhen Savytskyi. The same surnames also appear among the founders of LLC "Medical House Odrex" - the legal entity under whose license the clinic operates. The controlling stake in this company belongs to Iryna Zaykova, with significant shares also held by Larysa Mysotska and Tigran Arutyunyan.
Thus, although formally we are talking about different legal entities for the landowner and the medical company-tenant. At the same time, in fact, both the land, the buildings, and the medical business operating on this territory are controlled by related people.
The history of obtaining this land plot also attracts special attention. According to open sources, LLC "Fabryka "Akatsiya" became its owner in 2007 - during a period of active redistribution of land resources in Odesa. At that time, Eduard Hurvits was in charge of the city, and the land decisions of the city authorities repeatedly became the subject of journalistic investigations.
The media also drew attention to the connections of Odrex brand founder Leonid Kuchuk with the political environment of that time. In the media, he was called a sponsor of Hurvits' team and a person who could have influenced the formation of the city council in 2006. Against this background, the question arises under what conditions a private company acquired ownership of almost one and a half hectares of urban land for industrial purposes and whether this happened on a competitive basis? Such stories, as experts note, are not unique to Odesa and rather indicate a systemic problem of urban land management.
Odesa, for example, has for years been mentioned among cities where land issues regularly become the subject of criminal proceedings, journalistic investigations, and public scandals. And we are not talking about individual plots, but about entire systems of schemes - with dummy companies, manipulations with cadastral data, and tangled chains of resales. For Odesa business and officials - these are superprofits, and for Odesa residents - broken sidewalks, emergency buildings, and a city that is losing its former beauty.
According to Vitaliy Kulyk, the problem of land schemes is not limited to individual scandals or criminal cases. Every non-transparent decision regarding urban land means losses for the community budget, and therefore - fewer resources for schools, hospitals, social programs, and infrastructure development. That is why stories similar to the situation with the land under the Odrex clinic are important not only for law enforcement but also for city residents, because the activities of large business structures and their beneficiaries in the field of urban land ultimately affect the quality of their lives.
Corruption at the local level becomes a direct brake on development. Instead of new parks, interchanges, modern hospitals, and comfortable public spaces, the community gets chaotic development, overloaded networks, and constant excuses from officials about why there is again "no money" in the budget.
Recall
After the investigation into the land plot on Rozkydaylivska became known, the Odrex clinic tried to distance itself from this story. In a comment to UNN, the administration of the medical facility emphasized that the clinic is only a tenant of the premises and has no relation to issues related to land or real estate.
At the same time, Odrex ignored questions regarding the connection of the owners of the structures through which Odrex operates with the company LLC "Fabryka "Akatsiya", which owns the land under the main building of the medical facility.