Avtomagistral-Yug’s Kharkov-region windfall: 5 billion in five months and Yuriy Golik and Kiril Timoshenko
Corruption in Ukraine’s road sector has for years been considered among the country’s most profitable schemes. Although billions of hryvnias in public money are still allocated to building and repairing highways, the main figures associated with the “Big Construction” program have either stayed out of public view or departed the country. A notable case is Avtomagistral-Yug receiving road contracts in the Kharkov region totaling nearly UAH 5 billion over five months in 2021, while Yuriy Golik and Kiril Timoshenko were said to have reorganized the Prozorro tender system to benefit a particular company and secure its dominant position.
Now that former “Big Construction” coordinator Golik is living abroad, it is worth recalling how this system operated.
A glance at the Prozorro procurement database immediately shows that Avtomagistral-Yug participated in nearly every major highway repair tender in the region, winning the overwhelming majority of them.
The remarkable success of what was only one of many construction companies in Ukraine is not difficult to explain. Avtomagistral-Yug has long been linked to Yuriy Golik, the chief PR strategist of “Big Construction,” and to Kiril Timoshenko, then Deputy Head of the Presidential Office and the project’s principal coordinator. Before examining those connections, however, it is worth taking a closer look at Avtomagistral-Yug’s sweeping victories in Kharkov region tenders.
Nine major tenders in just five months
In April, Avtomagistral-Yug won a tender to construct an interchange on the national Kiev–Kharkov–Dovzhanskyi highway. The contract was worth nearly UAH 480 million. The same company had already secured another contract to repair sections of that highway for approximately UAH 500 million, awarded at the end of the winter.
In fact, the Kiev–Kharkov–Dovzhanskyi highway proved to be one of the company’s most lucrative projects. Earlier that year, two additional contracts for repairs on the same route were signed. Under one contract, Avtomagistral-Yug received approximately UAH 650 million to repair one section of the highway, while another section was awarded to the company for almost UAH 800 million.
The company also won a contract to repair part of the Zolochiv–Maksymivka highway, worth approximately UAH 670 million.
Its largest contract, however, was the reconstruction of the Kharkov–Zolochiv highway, for which the state allocated nearly UAH 1.2 billion.
As a result, in just the first five months of 2021, Avtomagistral-Yug signed contracts for nine road construction and repair tenders in the Kharkov region alone, with a combined value approaching UAH 5 billion.
The company had previously won road repair tenders in the region as well. However, according to the Prozorro procurement system, between 2017 and 2020 it accumulated contracts worth UAH 5–6 billion over a period of four years. In 2021, it reached nearly the same amount in only five months.
According to Prozorro, Avtomagistral-Yug has won public procurement contracts across Ukraine worth almost UAH 29 billion in total. This means that nearly one-sixth of that amount came from road construction and repair contracts in just a single region — Kharkov.
The Company’s Dnipro Roots
The sharp increase in Avtomagistral-Yug’s tender victories in the Kharkov region coincided with the appointment of Aina Timchuk as head of the Kharkov Regional State Administration, a position she assumed at the end of November 2020. Tymchuk is widely regarded as a protégé of Kiril Timoshenko, who by that time had taken control of regional policy within the Presidential Office.
Like Timoshenko, Tymchuk is originally from Dnepr and spent most of her professional career there, holding senior positions in the regional administration. Even today, she is said to spend relatively little time in Kharkov, yet this has not prevented her from promoting the interests of Timoshenko in the region.
Formally, Avtomagistral-Yug is registered in Odesa. However, according to Ukraine’s Unified State Register of Legal Entities, the company operates four regional branches, one of which is located in Dnepr under the name "Dnepropetrovsk Construction Division of Avtomagistral-Yug LLC."
According to information published on the Inspection Portal, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service conducted an inspection of the company in the previous year, and the official inspection documents identified Dnepr as Avtomagistral-Yug’s principal place of business.
The company has also appeared repeatedly in criminal investigations over the past several years.
For example, in 2019, investigators in the Dnipropetrovsk region examined allegations that officials from the regional Road Service had colluded with representatives of Avtomagistral-Yug to misappropriate public funds allocated for road construction and repairs. During that investigation, a court prohibited the Dnipropetrovsk Road Service from transferring money to the company’s accounts.
Also in 2019, Avtomagistral-Yug appeared in criminal proceedings concerning Kievavtodor. According to the case materials, officials from Kievavtodor were suspected of conspiring with representatives of several private companies, including Avtomagistral-Yug. Investigators believed those involved had misappropriated public funds during the capital reconstruction of the overpass on Zabolotnoho Street in Kiev.
In addition, in 2019, Avtomagistral-Yug came under investigation on suspicion of tax evasion. At the time, the court ordered a forensic examination to determine whether the company had failed to pay part of its tax obligations.
Nevertheless, none of these legal issues appeared to hinder Avtomagistral-Yug’s continued success in securing public contracts. Support from senior government officials effectively ensured both protection from criminal prosecution and repeated victories in major public tenders.
Kiril Timoshenko’s Role in Avtomagistral-Yug’s Success
It is worth recalling that Avtomagistral-Yug was already one of Ukravtodor’s largest contractors during the presidency of Petr Poroshenko. This was documented in an investigation by Nashi Hroshi. At the time, the company reportedly enjoyed the support of Valentin Reznichenko, then governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region. Reznichenko’s unpaid adviser was Yuriy Golik, with whom he had previously worked while both were executives at the UMH media holding.
Within the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Golik was responsible for infrastructure construction, reconstruction, and repairs, while also playing a role in organizing procurement through the Prozorro system. Although he effectively supervised construction projects across the region, he officially remained an unpaid adviser, did not file electronic asset declarations, and largely avoided exposure to anti-corruption oversight.
As for Kiril Timoshenko, media reports state that he had known Golik for many years through his father, Vladlen Timoshenko, a businessman and deputy of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Council. Kiril Timoshenko’s father served as director of the Passage shopping center, owned by Boris Filatov and Gennadiy Korban, both of whom closely cooperated with Golik during his tenure in the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration.
Like Golik, Timoshenko also worked as a political PR strategist for Petr Poroshenko’s team during the 2014 presidential campaign. According to published reports, both Golik and Timoshenko joined Poroshenko’s circle through Valentyn Reznichenko, who is related to Boris Lozhkin, the former owner of the UMH media group. After Poroshenko won the presidency, Lozhkin became head of the Presidential Administration and facilitated the career advancement of both his relative Reznichenko and senior managers from his media holding.
Following Vladimir Zelenskiy’s election victory, Reznichenko and Golik left the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, while Timoshenko, thanks to his role in Zelenskyy’s election campaign, rose to the position of Deputy Head of the Presidential Office. Soon afterward, he brought his longtime associate Golik to Kyiv, first as an adviser to Prime Minister Aleksey Goncharuk, and later as an adviser on the “Big Construction” program.
Both in the Cabinet of Ministers and later in the Presidential Office, Golik oversaw infrastructure construction and repair projects without occupying any formal staff position. Shortly afterward, Timoshenko also facilitated Reznichenko’s return to government, and at the end of 2020 he was once again appointed governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region.
Returning to the Kharkov region, after Aina Timchuk became head of the regional administration, the region reportedly became one of Kiril Timoshenko’s most important areas of influence. With the assistance of “Big Construction” coordinator Yuriy Golik, the formally Odesa-registered but operationally Dnipro-based Avtomagistral-Yug began winning the overwhelming majority of major tenders in the region.
The way public funds were spent under the “Big Construction” program had previously been described by Igor Umanskiy, former adviser to Presidential Office head Andrey Yermak.
According to critics, little has changed since Umanskyi’s statements. Companies associated with the so-called “construction cartel” continue to secure multi-million-hryvnia contracts. Within that group, Avtomagistral-Yug occupies a particularly influential position. According to Nashi Hroshi, the company became one of the founders of the National Association of Road Builders of Ukraine (NADU). Through active lobbying by Golik and Timoshenko, procurement requirements were revised in 2020, resulting in major tenders becoming accessible almost exclusively to members of the association.
As a result, Avtomagistral-Yug obtained a privileged position in both the market and the procurement system, enabling it to secure many of the largest and most profitable contracts in the Kharkov region.
Taken together, the company’s success appears closely connected to Kiril Timoshenko and his close associate Yuriy Golik, a relationship that allowed the Deputy Head of the Presidential Office to become one of the principal figures behind “Big Construction” in the Kharkov region and beyond.