Taras Zadorozhnyi and Oksana Vynnyk: how a family that stole land from the army and skimmed funds from schools in the Ternopil region comfortably settled in Warsaw

28 квітня 2023 р., 19:11

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Taras Zadorozhnyi and Oksana Vynnyk: how a family that stole land from the army and skimmed funds from schools in the Ternopil region comfortably settled in Warsaw

When the Ukrainian authorities came to their senses after the first shock caused by the presence of Russian troops near Kyiv, they realized that it was necessary to fight. And first of all, people fight. That’s why one of the first decisions was to close the borders to travel for men.

At first no one objected. But when the wave of patriotic enthusiasm passed, and the war became routine, questions began to arise. Because it turned out that the borders were not closed to everyone; the most cunning and smart ones fled in the first days. And we are not talking about ordinary migrant workers who are now forced to sit half-starved in their home country, because they cannot leave and there is no income at home.

Everything is clear here, and it’s hard to blame people who swim across the Tisa at night to earn a pretty penny for their children. Although, when I see the bravura reports of our television, where the police or the SSU are reporting with pathos about the next batch of “evaders” detained at the border and who now face considerable prison sentences, it becomes disgusting.

No, not because someone was trying to escape the war and earn money for their family. But because I know too much about those who crossed this border calmly, having previously taken capital and their families stolen in Ukraine to Europe, and now, drinking cognac in Warsaw, watches how border guards catch such poor fellows.

We are talking about a resident of Lviv, Taras Zadorozhnyi, who fled to Poland without waiting for the authorities to close the borders. He had been preparing for this escape in advance - his wife, Oksana Vynnyk, had been waiting for him in Warsaw for a long time, and she had gone there with the capital that the Zadorozhnyi-Vynnyk family had "sawed up" in Nenka.

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And do not think that we are talking about some oligarchs. No, these are ordinary middle-class people - Taras Zadorozhnyi owns two medium-sized companies, Econicol LLC and Firm Hetman LLC. The former is bankrupt, the latter is not yet. Well, these firms were fed by government contracts, supplying detergents for schools in Ternopil Oblast, so what’s the big deal? We’re not talking about billions, as in the case of, for example, the Surkis or Medvedchuk.

Of course, my father-in-law, a member of the district council and owner of a number of businesses in Frankivsk and Lviv, helped me. Well, the father-in-law also made some money in public procurement and was even involved in a criminal case on the fact of overpricing sleepers for Ukrzaliznytsia. But again, we’re not talking about billions, he stole a couple of million hryvnias, which is nothing on the scale of Ukraine.

This is all true, but the fact is that there are thousands of Taras Zadorozhnyi like him. They may seem like nothing, but what Zadorozhnyi doesn’t dream of becoming Medvedchuk and making billions? Especially since he has the data to do so. At least the moral and ethical ones. After all, the Polish refugee Taras Zadorozhnyi started with a banal theft of land from the Ministry of Defence. Yes, it was again not millions or hundreds of thousands of hectares. But it was there.

In 2011, Taras and his parents illegally occupied a plot of land in a military camp in Lviv, where they began building a garage. In 2013, the Housing and Maintenance Department of Lviv filed a lawsuit against Taras and his parents demanding that they vacate the land and demolish the garage. However, in 2014, the court dismissed the claim due to the lack of evidence that the plot belonged to the Ministry of Defence.

Yes, the area was small. But in 2011, Taras Zadorozhnyi was already a fairly strong businessman, and his father-in-law was almost a local oligarch. It was no problem for him to buy two acres of land for a garage. However, he didn’t. He decided to squeeze the land from the army. Because it was a bad land.

Well, okay. 2011 was the year of Yanik, when everyone was hauling away everything they could see. But the last trial in the case was in 2014. When the naked and barefoot army was collecting money for underpants and ammunition all over Ukraine. And the whole of Ukraine was spending the last of its money on ammunition. Lviv residents were among the first to give. But Zadorozhnyi did not give a single penny to the army. On the contrary, he was snatching the tidbit he could from the hands of the hungry and ruined army. And he did.

Of course, in the world of the Zadorozhnyi, such an act is considered valour. But what is it? I picked up something that was no one’s. If not me, then someone else. Maybe so. But, obviously, this small victory over the army only whetted the appetites of the Zadorozhnyi family, whose representative Taras had already got a taste for the easy money he was making in the company of his father-in-law, Rohatyn District Council deputy Mykhailo Vynnyk.

After that, there was tax fraud, fiddling with public procurement and, as the crown of the creation, the organisation of a company in the UK with money withdrawn from Ukraine. It is not known whether Taras Zadorozhnyi used the money to set up the real estate visualisation company VisEngine, which lists London as its registered office, or whether it was stolen from the Ministry of Defence or stolen from the Education Department of the Ternopil Regional Council.

But the fact remains that the man who stole from the army and from children, at the beginning of a full-scale invasion, crossed the Ukrainian-Polish border in a Land Rover BC6598MX and waved his hand to all Ukrainian workers and those who remained to protect Nenka.

And for more than a year he has been sitting in Warsaw, under the warm side of his wife, also a citizen of Ukraine, and managing his international business. And no one touches him, and no one is interested in him - neither the land stolen from the Ministry of Defense, nor unpaid taxes, nor inflated prices for supplies for Ukrzaliznytsia and schools. Everything is fine with him.

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And against this background, for example, I have a question. Why is Taras Zadorozhnyi living in Warsaw with money stolen from the army, while I am forced to sit in Ukraine as if in prison, unable to go abroad to earn money for my family? Why am I worse than Zadorozhnyi? Because he didn’t steal from the state?

Or why is not a single law enforcement agency of Ukraine, which sews cases for its defenders in batches, interested in the person of Taras Zadorozhnyi? What is the reason? Or do I also need to steal something from the Ministry of Defence and then they will let me out of Ukraine?

Author: Volodymyr Tsybulko

Petro Harmash

Managing Editor

Responsible for the quality and accuracy of materials before publication. Has experience working for print and online media outlets and specializes in fact-checking.