Case description
On April 6, 2023, the HACC acquitted Roman Mahuta, former head of the Accounting Chamber, Mariia Shulezhko, the former chief controller of the agency, and Maksym Shulezhko, her nephew. They were accused of seizing official housing.
Roman Mahuta headed the Accounting Chamber from 2012to 2018. Mariia Shulezhko is a former MP and started working at the Accounting Chamber in 1998. In 2004, she was appointed Chief Controller of the Department of Agricultural Affairs and worked there until 2018. Maksym Shulezhko, the third defendant in the case, is her nephew.
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In March 2014, having already had a privatized office apartment as a former MP, Shulezhko applied for another apartment. She claimed that she lived with her husband, two daughters, and son-in-law in a two-room apartment (which had already been transferred to her daughter).
Mahuta, the head of the Council of Ministers, issued an order and granted her request due to the need to live near her workplace, as Shulezhko “performed extremely important state tasks and had irregular working hours.” Shortly before that, the Accounting Chamber had purchased this apartment for UAH 1.39 million.
According to the Law on Privatization of the State Housing Fund, apartments that were classified as service apartments were not subject to privatization, but in October 2014, upon Mahuta's initiative, this apartment was excluded from the service category. After that, it became an ordinary state-owned apartment, which theoretically every Ukrainian citizen who lived there permanently had the right to privatize free of charge.
However, this rule did not apply to Mariia Shulezhko and her family members, as they had already used this right once, when Shulezhko privatized an official apartment. To circumvent the restrictions, Shulezhko registered her nephew Maksym Shulezhko from the Cherkasy region in the newly acquired apartment. Mahuta gave him permission to privatize state-owned housing, and in January 2015, the property was transferred out of state ownership free of charge. Then his nephew gave the apartment to Shulezhko.
The actions of Mahuta, Shulezhko, and her nephew were classified under Article 191, part 5 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, but the HACC found no crime in their actions. So everyone was acquitted.
