Head of State Environmental Inspection, Subbotenko, stated that he found $653,000 in cash in garage of his deceased grandmother
During the verification of his 2024 declaration, Oleksandr Subbotenko, acting head of the State Environmental Inspection of Ukraine, told representatives of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP) that he had found $653,000 in cash in his garage. He allegedly inherited the property from his grandmother, who died on 18 December 2020.
According to Censor.NET, this information was revealed in the full report on the verification of the official's declaration, which was reviewed by the editorial staff of 368.media.
It is known that at the time of the previous audit, Subbottenko was the head of the sector for coordination and control of territorial and interregional bodies of the State Environmental Inspection. The NACP was interested in the declared cash amount of $623,000 (this is the amount that appears in the declaration), while the official himself used the figure of $653,000 in his explanations — the difference between the two figures remains unexplained.
- He explained that he found the cash in the garage of the "Progres" cooperative in Kharkiv, which was inherited from his grandmother, Berberian O.M. A similar "grandmother's" version had already been heard during a special audit of the 2022 declaration. He stated that his grandmother had obtained the funds legally.
The legend of the grandmother and the inaccurate declaration
According to Subbotenko, his grandmother and grandfather (who died on 19 December 1989) had the financial means to earn this amount, in particular by travelling on business throughout the former USSR and having business relations abroad. In addition, the government official referred to a "family rule" of converting the hryvnia equivalent into dollars and keeping cash for living expenses.
However, the facts tell a different story. According to NACP documents, Subbotenko's grandmother was born on 25 January 1948 and worked exclusively in low-level government positions: technical secretary of the Kharkiv Regional Committee of the Leninist Communist Youth League, head of accounting at the V.I. Lenin Kharkiv Polytechnic Institute, head of accounting at the Kharkiv District Committee of the Komsomol, and instructor in the accounting sector. In 1984, she was dismissed, after which, according to her grandson, she "went about her own business" — although the woman did not officially engage in entrepreneurial activity, did not establish legal entities, and was not a beneficiary of any company.
Another argument put forward by the NACP official was that until 1991, the circulation of foreign currency among citizens was strictly prohibited in the USSR — Article 88 of the Criminal Code of the RSFSR provided for criminal liability for currency transactions. Therefore, the dollars that the grandmother allegedly saved during the Soviet era must have been obtained illegally or appeared later, after the grandfather's death.
He tried to legalise the will, but failed
As noted, Subbotenko tried to secure ownership of the funds "found" in his grandmother's garage through the courts. However, by a decision of the Kominternivskyi District Court of Kharkiv dated 11 February 2022 (case No. 641/8971/21), the claim for recognition of ownership of the funds by inheritance under the law was denied.
The court stated explicitly that "these funds may constitute treasure" and emphasised that the plaintiff had not provided any evidence of the existence of these funds or that they belonged to his grandmother.
Other inconsistencies in the declaration
The NACP's audit also revealed inconsistencies in Subbotenko's declaration regarding several real estate properties:
- an apartment in Kharkiv (65.2 square metres, joint partial ownership);
- an apartment in Kyiv;
- a garage in Kharkiv (32.1 sq. m, owned since 2021 — the same one where the funds were allegedly found);
- parking spaces in Kyiv.
Based on the results of the check, the NACP concluded that there were signs of a criminal offence under Part 2 of Article 366-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. The total amount of inaccurately declared information is 26.7 million hryvnias.
