"Like Prozorro". After the scandal, Kyiv City Council decides to create a register of land cases

At its plenary session on October 9, the Kyiv City Council approved new rules for preparing and adopting decisions on the acquisition and termination of rights to municipal land. This was supported by 61 deputies, the minimum number required for decision-making in the Kyiv City Council.

"The procedure is aimed at ensuring that citizens transparently see what is being considered and how, so that MPs make conscious decisions," said MP Viktoria Ptashnyk (European Solidarity), who presented the draft decision.

The main idea is to create an open and transparent land registry.

"Just imagine: like in the Prozorro system, everyone will see what land case comes to the Kyiv City Council, what it concerns, who is considering it," she said.

The order of consideration of cases by the land commission will be determined by the date of entry of applications into this register.

It is envisaged that public comments and suggestions will be made public at the plenary session and that the institution of a dissenting opinion of a deputy will be introduced.

The rules require that the value of land be taken into account when approving transactions with municipal real estate. "Sometimes municipal property is sold in poor condition, but the land on which these objects stand is the most valuable – say, somewhere in Pechersk. The value of these plots should be taken into account when determining the value of property transactions," explained Ptashnyk.

The new procedure is also intended to put an end to the so-called "toilet schemes", when large plots of land are allocated for a small and often illegal real estate object.

The document provides for the obligation of officials to apply to the court and law enforcement agencies in case of unauthorized occupation of land plots, as well as to conduct inspections of the proper fulfillment of obligations by the land lessee.

• In early 2025, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau, together with the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, reported exposing alleged corruption schemes in the land sector in Kyiv in 2023-2024.
• The investigation believes that one of the former deputies, with the help of the deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration and the head of the Kyiv City Council's land commission, organized a scheme for illegal land acquisition in Kyiv, which consisted of registering fictitious buildings ("ghost houses") on promising land plots to bypass the bidding procedure. The NABU claimed that through this scheme, the group illegally seized land plots worth more than UAH 11 million and tried to appropriate six more plots worth more than UAH 83 million.
• Later, Bihus.Info released an investigation citing tapes from the office of Denys Komarnytskyi recorded by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. The tapes implicated more people than were suspected, including Volodymyr Bondarenko, then secretary of the Kyiv City Council, and Vitali Klitschko's kum (a traditional Ukrainian godparent and often close family associate), former MP Artur Palatnyi.