During 2024, Irpinsky Mayor Oleksandr Markushyn became involved in more than 10 criminal proceedings, including salary schemes, kidnapping, environmental crimes, forgery of documents, kidnapping and forgery of documents. This led to the fact that his team formed over the years is falling apart, and the specialists are being replaced by incomprehensible cadres who drown the mayor even deeper – My Kyiv region.
On April 1, 2024, all the deputies of the Irpen city mayor (Andrii Kravchuk, Yuliya Ustych, Lidia Mykhalchenko, Dmytro Negresha) and deputies from the “New Faces” faction declared their lack of confidence in the mayor of Irpen, Oleksandr Markushin, due to the embezzlement of the local budget through the registration of “dead souls” and levies and kickbacks from the wages of employees of the Irpin City Council and employees of the Executive Committee. During the preliminary audit, it was found that the salary of Tamara Halaim, head of the personnel department of the Irpin City Council, in 2023 was UAH 5,000 per day. About 40 employees of the city council were involved in the organization of the “salary scheme”. In general, 17 million hryvnias were stolen from the city due to salary manipulation for 2023.
Immediately after that, Andriy Litvinov, the adviser to the Irpinsky mayor (previously he was the acting mayor of Irpinsky, and Oleksandr Markushyn was his deputy), wrote a statement with a request to dismiss him from the position of adviser. The reason was called the salary scandal — a series of publications about inflated salaries of a number of employees of the executive committee of the IMR.
“In April 2024, when the declarations of the employees of the executive committee of the Irpin City Council were opened, all of Ukraine was shaken by the information about the unreasonably inflated salaries of the employees of the executive committee of the Irpin City Council. “Irpin salary gate” became the biggest salary scandal in the entire history of Ukraine, because these salaries of officials of the city executive committee turned out to be higher than those of the President of Ukraine and the Prime Minister of Ukraine. I believe that there are signs of corruption and fraud in the actions to calculate such wages. This is not permissible during the war and reconstruction of the affected Irpin community,” Litvinov said
Earlier, Dmytro Negresha, the manager of affairs of the executive committee of the Irpin city council, who held this position until December 2023, left the mayor’s team. After the start of the “Irpa Salary Gate”, Negresha announced the forgery of the decision of the Irpa City Council regarding changes to the structure of the executive committee.
“I, Negresha Dmytro Mykhailovych, until December 2023 held the position of managing affairs of the executive committee of the Irpin City Council. Among my official duties were issues of organizing the work of the structure of the executive committee of the IMR. I clearly state and assert that the decision of the Irpin City Council dated November 23, 2023 “On introducing and approving changes in the structure of the executive bodies of the council, the apparatus of the council and its executive committee” was falsified. Such a decision was not worked out and was not submitted by me. In the decision, I am designated as responsible for its implementation. At the same time, no one has ever introduced me to him. I worked in the position until December 21, 2023. The staff list remained preliminary and had nothing to do with the one determined in this decision,” Negresha said.
The falsification of this decision could allow the mayor of Irpen, Oleksandr Markushyn, to charge unreasonably inflated salaries to close employees.
“The regulations on departments, which are approved by this decision, were not developed by me and were not submitted for approval by the deputies’ corps. I support the position of my colleague Andrii Litvynov about the impossibility of such actions during the war — this is looting. Salary frauds, which most likely took place during 2023 in the Irpin City Council, must be stopped. The falsification of this decision is a glaring fact and those responsible must be held accountable. All employees of the executive committee deserve a fair approach when calculating salaries,” Dmytro Negresha added.
Then Daryna Katkalo left the mayor’s team, who from the first days of de-occupation was the communicator of the Irpin Reconstruction Summit, which raised 500,000 euros for the restoration of the “Vesnyanka” kindergarten in Irpin from the city of Cascais (Portugal). Since 2023, Katkalo has been the operations director of the Irpenia Restoration Fund, founded by Volodymyr Karplyuk and Oleksandr Markushyn.
Oksana Zaluzhnyak, the long-term head of the legal department of the IMR executive committee, and Svitlana Mikesh, a lawyer in the department, resigned from their positions.
People’s layoffs also began at the “City Improvement Administration” KP – Kateryna Pasyuk left the position of director, and Viktoriya Kovtun left the position of deputy director. In particular, Kateryna Pasyuk has repeatedly accused the mayor of double standards and unfair calculation of unjustified salaries.
One of the key witnesses in Markushin’s criminal proceedings is the first deputy mayor Andriy Kravchuk and the deputy Lydia Mikhalchenko. Having failed to agree with them so that they would not testify about his crimes, Markushyn suspended Andriy Kravchuk from his post for the period from May to September 2024, and