The HACC found Mykhailo Holovko, head of the Ternopil Regional Council, guilty of failing to declare real estate in his asset declarations for 2022–2023. The court found that he did not report a 201.9 sq. m apartment owned by his mother but actually used by his family. However, the HACC Appeals Chamber overturned the conviction and closed the proceedings against Mykhailo Holovko.

The head of the Ternopil Regional Council, was charged with failure to declare assets in 2022 and 2023. According to the investigation, he did not include in his declaration a 201.9 sq. m apartment owned by his mother but actually used by him and his family. The value of the undeclared asset was UAH 1.96 million.

Holovko explained that the apartment was purchased by his mother in 2008. According to him, his parents planned to return to Ukraine after finishing work abroad, and at his parents’ request he paid utility bills for the apartment and monitored its condition, including turning on the individual heating system in winter.

Another apartment in the same building, owned by Holovko’s wife, required renovation in 2020–2021.  During that period, the defendant and his family lived in a different apartment.

In 2022, due to the start of the war, Holovko and his wife allegedly used the primary apartment, while they were in his mother’s apartment only for repairs or during family celebrations.

Holovko stated that he personally filed his 2022 declaration from his computer while in a poor emotional state due to an interim measure of house arrest imposed on him in another criminal case. For that reason, Holovko asserted, he unintentionally failed to include information about his mother’s apartment.

The HACC concluded that the Holovko family’s actual use of his mother’s apartment reached a level that required declaration. The court also noted that the apartment is located in the same building where Holovko lives with his family, and that he could not have been unaware of its use. The defendant’s version that his family members did not use the apartment for more than six months did not appear persuasive to the court.

The HACC found that Holovko deliberately omitted information about the real estate from his declaration because he believed it was not mandatory to declare an apartment owned by his mother that the Holovko family could use together with his wife’s apartment. In addition, a passageway had been arranged between the apartments, enabling them to be used in practice as a single living space. Moreover, from Holovko’s phone seized during a search, detectives found photographs taken in the official’s mother’s apartment.

Holovko’s actions were classified under Article 366-2(1) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

For failure to declare assets, the HACC imposed a UAH 68,000 fine and barred Holovko from holding positions in state authorities and local self-government bodies for one year.

Holovko was previously convicted in a bribery case, in which the investigation alleged that he, together with two former deputy heads of the Ternopil Regional Military Administration, extorted UAH 1.8 million from the owner of a private enterprise. In that case, he was sentenced to 9 years’ imprisonment with confiscation of property; the appeal is currently pending. It was during house arrest in that case that Holovko submitted the declaration while in a poor emotional state.