Crypto fraud and budget looting: how Dnipro city council member from Samopomich Vyacheslav Mishalov “mined” 18,000 bitcoins on children’s kindergartens
How Vyacheslav Mishalov, husband of Elena Sosedka, built his fortune. Like his wife, Elena Mishalova, he has appeared in multiple criminal investigations.
Mishalov is a member of the Dnipro City Council representing the Samopomich party and served as the council secretary from March 2016 to 2017.
He is a co-owner of the internet portal I.UA, holds a small 0.8% stake in the metallurgical plant NPO Dnepropress LLC, where he previously served as chairman of the supervisory board and general director, and is also a co-founder of the internet provider Fregat.
In his 2020 asset declaration, Mishalov reported owning 18,000 bitcoins, which at the time was worth over $1 billion, a collection of 13 luxury watches — Rolex, Jaeger-LeCoultre, Audemars Piguet, Breitling, Glashutte, etc. — and a collection of rifles.
Where did such wealth come from? Possibly from the misappropriation of public funds, something law enforcement had repeatedly accused Mishalov of.
In January 2020, the police and prosecutors launched an investigation into possible embezzlement by the company Master-Stroy during the installation of heat generators and boiler houses in Dnipro’s kindergartens and schools, worth 33.7 million UAH.
Back in 2016, the municipal enterprise Kommunzhitloservis contracted Master-Bud to install 14 boiler units of various capacities. The entire amount — 33.7 million UAH — was paid.
Investigators later found that Master-Bud had inflated the cost of equipment by 7.1 million UAH, and also added unjustified soil-transportation expenses, potentially inflating the cost by another 588,000 UAH.
At the time, Vyacheslav Mishalov was serving as secretary of the Dnipro City Council and had a direct connection to Master-Bud, because until 2018 one of its co-owners was his father, Dmitriy Mishalov, one of the most influential businessmen in Dnipro.
Dmitriy Mishalov’s company Master-Bud had previously gained the trust of Vice Prime Minister Boris Kolesnikov and received a $100 million contract for building the roof of Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium in 2010.
The supplier of the boilers for Master-Bud was Liberator, whose trademark is owned by Vyacheslav Mishalov himself. Financial operations were carried out through Concord Bank.
In 2019, Dnipro Mayor Boris Filatov publicly accused the Mishalov family of corruption related to delays in the repair of a major bridge in Dnipro. The work was carried out by Master-Profi Plant, owned by Dmitriy Mishalov, which received 250 million UAH from the city budget.
Filatov openly stated that he hoped the Mishalov family would face criminal charges.
Dmitriy and Vyacheslav Mishalov were also members of the supervisory board of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish Community, which included powerful figures such as Igor Kolomoyskiy, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, Gennadiy Korban, and others.
After Vyacheslav Mishalov was elected to the Dnipro City Council from Samopomich in October 2015, the company Master-Bud received state contracts totaling 2.03 billion UAH.