SBI Director Sukhachov’s brother received 143 properties from developer later investigated by Bureau – media
Media outlets have published an investigation into property owned by the brother of State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) Director Oleksii Sukhachov, which the Pecherskyi District Court had previously barred from publication. The authors allege that Oleksandr Sukhachov acquired 143 properties at prices significantly below market value.
Censor.NET reports this.
Initiative 143
The media published the report as part of "Initiative 143", an act of solidarity among Ukrainian media professionals who decided to support their colleagues at Slidstvo.Info and the Anti-Corruption Action Center, which the Pecherskyi court had barred from publishing the investigation.
Ukrainska Pravda, Suspilne, Schemes (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty), hromadske, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia, NV, Bihus.Info and Toronto Television joined the initiative.
Details
A photograph was posted on the Russian social network Odnoklassniki. It shows five men standing in front of a green fence. The photograph was published in 2011 with the caption "my husband with his brothers".
The photograph shows current SBI Director Oleksii Sukhachov in the centre. The man on the far right is his brother, Oleksandr Sukhachov.
"Oleksandr is slightly more than six years older than Oleksii. Little information about him is publicly available. According to social media, he is originally from Kharkiv. From 2007 to 2015, he was registered as an individual entrepreneur whose business involved renting out real estate. Oleksandr Sukhachov also served as a company executive and occasionally held stakes in private companies. According to Nashi Hroshi, he worked for Ukrzaliznytsia’s security service in Kyiv in 2023. Oleksandr can also be seen in a photograph of state-owned Ukrgasbank employees from 2025. Phone directories listed his number as belonging to a representative of various banks," the report said.
The journalists examined a 155-page report listing property registered in the name of the SBI director’s brother.
An apartment for the price of a smartphone
According to registry data, Oleksii Sukhachov’s brother acquired ownership of 40% of the units in a residential apartment building at 13 Yuliia Chyhyryna Street in Kharkiv in 2018. The address is home to the IT Park Manufactura residential complex developed by Stroy City. Between 2018 and 2020, the SBI director’s brother amassed a collection of 143 properties in two Kharkiv residential complexes at addresses identified on property listing websites as Stroy City developments.
"A unique project for Kharkiv’s property market. It combines office premises and residential apartments within a single ecosystem. The project includes one hundred small one-room apartments, an apartment hotel and an open-plan space," one property sales website said in its description of IT Park Manufactura.
"In 2019, the developer’s average market price per square metre in this complex was listed at almost $800. It would therefore be logical to assume that Oleksandr Sukhachov spent millions of dollars to acquire this property. But that was not the case.
"According to documents obtained by the authors of the investigation, he purchased property in the IT Park Manufactura residential complex at book value, significantly below market prices. The prices were so low that they could be compared to the price of a smartphone," the investigation stated.
On 9 July 2018, Oleksandr Sukhachov acquired 30 apartments in the Kharkiv residential complex under two sale and purchase agreements. Each apartment cost between UAH 24,600 and UAH 48,900, meaning that, at the exchange rate at the time, each cost between $932 and $1,856.
Oleksandr Sukhachov, whose brother Oleksii was then deputy head of a department at the Prosecutor General’s Office, paid just over UAH 1 million for the 30 apartments (equivalent to $39,300 at the time). Two days later, Oleksandr Sukhachov repeated his success by purchasing another 28 apartments for less than $33,000. The cheapest cost UAH 26,500 and the most expensive UAH 38,700.
"The details of these transactions proved particularly sensitive for the seller, Parkovyi-2 LLC. After receiving an information request from journalist Alina Stryzhak, the company applied to Kyiv’s Pecherskyi District Court. Judge Serhii Vovk barred Stryzhak, Slidstvo.Info and the Anti-Corruption Action Center from disseminating information about Oleksandr Sukhachov’s property, transactions and investments. On 13 July, Parkovyi-2 filed a lawsuit insisting that ‘information about the real estate and concluded transactions is part of an individual’s private life and constitutes the developer’s trade secret’.
"But the story of the Kharkiv property owned by Oleksii Sukhachov’s brother is not only about ‘trade secrets’ and ‘an individual’s private life’. It is also a story about the intricate ties between the Kharkiv developer and the SBI, which investigated its activities," the authors noted.
Oleksandr Sukhachov’s links with the property developer
Parkovyi-2 LLC was owned by lawyer Ivan Kozikov in 2018 and is now linked to Stroy City, whose projects include the IT Park Manufactura residential complex and the complex on Heroiv Kharkova Avenue where Oleksandr Sukhachov owned property, the report stated.
"This connection can be traced through Liudmyla Riabykh, the sister of the wife of Stroy City’s former owner, businessman Yehor Maslennikov. You may have heard of him because of the expensive Rolls-Royce spotted by Ukrainska Pravda journalists in Monte Carlo in December 2024. Oleksandr Sukhachov purchased another 11 apartments directly from Maslennikov, also for nominal sums," the authors added.
Data from the register of court decisions show that in 2021, while investigating the suspected illegal construction projects following a report from the Security Service of Ukraine, National Police officers searched Stroy City’s offices. They found seals belonging, or formerly belonging, to companies directly owned by Oleksandr Sukhachov, as well as financial records from a company he had owned.
"It can therefore be assumed that Oleksandr Sukhachov may have been involved in the developer’s activities not only as a buyer but also as an investor. But did he have the funds to do so? The journalists were unable to speak directly with Oleksandr Sukhachov, as he did not respond to calls or requests for comment.
"That same year, police and prosecutors opened criminal proceedings over Stroy City’s unauthorised developments. Put briefly and simply, the developer erected fences in the middle of Kharkiv, brought in excavators and began constructing residential complexes. These included buildings at addresses where Oleksandr Sukhachov had acquired property. This became the subject of the law enforcement investigation.
"The police did not investigate the case for long. In December 2022, a deputy prosecutor general assigned the investigation to the SBI’s Main Investigation Department. For some time, the Bureau investigated a case involving a company allegedly linked to the brother of its director, but ultimately no one was served with a notice of suspicion," the investigative journalists said.
Bihus.Info reported that Stroy City owner Yehor Maslennikov transferred his former construction business to his wife’s sister and launched a new business in Dubai. The proceedings concerning the unauthorised developments, which had been investigated by the SBI, were subsequently returned to the police in August last year (this time in the Chernihiv region), where the case was eventually closed.
"This would most likely have marked the end of the unauthorised development story. However, by a strange, or perhaps entirely predictable, coincidence, the proceedings were reopened after the people mentioned in this investigation received information requests from journalists. Oleksandr Sukhachov has now ceased to own almost all of the 143 apartments and offices," the report said.
In response to journalists’ enquiries, the SBI said that neither the Bureau nor its director possessed "information regarding any facts of Oleksandr Oleksandrovych Sukhachov’s involvement in any business activity, including with the Stroy City developer, or his acquisition of any real estate".
When asked about the pre-trial investigation into the developer’s actions, the SBI said it had not made the decision to close the proceedings. It emphasised that assigning a pre-trial investigation to investigators from other agencies falls within the remit of the prosecutor’s office.
Background
- Earlier reports said that Slidstvo.Info and the Anti-Corruption Action Center were preparing to publish an investigation into 143 properties owned by businessman Oleksandr Sukhachov, the brother of the SBI director.
- Kyiv’s Pecherskyi District Court barred the dissemination of information about Sukhachov’s property, transactions and investments.
- The Anti-Corruption Action Center said the ruling was an interim measure to secure the claim and had been issued before the lawsuit itself was filed.
- The organisation described the ruling as "a serious attack on freedom of speech that contradicts Ukraine’s European integration commitments" and announced its intention to appeal it.
