An investigation by Bihus.Info journalists found that the deputy chief of the National Police of Ukraine, Dmytro Tyshlek, uses the real estate and cars of the family of a partner of the head of the Rostov criminal group, and his wife did not get rid of her Russian passport even after the Russian invasion.
The article notes that Tyshlek has been working in the Interior Ministry and the National Police his entire life. He was appointed deputy head of the National Police in the spring of 2023. Prior to that, he headed the Kyiv Department of Strategic Investigations of the National Police, headed the Department of Economic Protection in Dnipro and Zhytomyr, and before the Russian invasion of 2014, he had worked for about 10 years in his native Donetsk Region. Interestingly, the family of his wife, Oleksandra Balakay, moved to Rostov Region in the early 2000s and received Russian citizenship. Oleksandra Balakay's Russian passport remained valid as of this summer.
The journalists also managed to establish that Tyshlek's mother-in-law, Mariya Balakay, visited the Tyshleks in Ukraine before the full-scale Russian invasion. During one of these visits in the summer of 2018, she registered the title to a two-bedroom apartment in the Novopecherski Lypky residential complex in Kyiv. Immediately after this, the mother-in-law issued a power of attorney to her daughter, transferring the right to dispose of the property to her. And then she returned to Russia.
Having moved to the capital in 2019, Tyshlek used another property. For at least a year, he lived for free in a 140 sq m apartment in the elite French Quarter residential complex in the city centre. The apartment belonged to Yuriy Holyk, best known as the ideologist of the Big Construction project. However, according to the journalists, he opposed the description as soon as the project caused public scandals and criminal charges against were pressed against one of the major contractors. Namely, a company from Dnipro registered with a fitness trainer and part-time companion of the then head of the regional military administration, Valentyn Reznichenko, to whom Holyk was an adviser. In general, the company began to receive large budget contracts back in the years when Tyshlek headed the Department of Economic Protection in the region. According to Holyk, it was when they met. He now denies having a close relationship with Tyshlek: he says that they simply played football together in Dnipro, and he let Tyshlyk use his apartment in Kyiv because he allegedly did not need it.
Tyshlek has now moved out of Holyk's apartment. In September-October this year, he was repeatedly spotted in one of the elite cottage towns near Kyiv. In the mornings, he would leave a 300 sq m house registered to a woman named Natalya Necheporenko.
According to journalists' sources, last spring, Tyshlek travelled abroad in the car of Natalya Necheporenko's husband Vitaliy, and this spring, the Necheporenkos issued powers of attorney to Tyshlek. Six months later, the house was registered in Natalya's name.
The journalists note that Vitaliy Necheporenko owns two small construction firms, which, according to the financial statements available on YouControl, are not profitable and therefore do not bring him dividends. According to Bihus.info's sources in the tax office, he and his wife are paid salaries by these companies, but they are too small for them to rent such houses, let alone buy them. Vitaly Necheporenko has a stake in another business: he owns 25% of Elit Loto LLC, where Andrian Rodin, aka Andrei Imanali, aka Poluzver [Half-Beast], a Rostov criminal mastermind with a very long and very complicated relationship with the police, has the same share. Imanali became famous in the early 2000s as one of the leaders of the Rostov-based Selmash organised crime group. Then he was put on the wanted list, first federally and then internationally, on suspicion of kidnapping. He was found in Kyiv and deported back to Russia, where he was sentenced to seven years in prison.
In 2019, the head of the criminal police, Vyacheslav Abroskin, said that Poluzver was spotted in Kyiv again, attending a meeting in a local restaurant. At the time, Abroskin promised on Facebook to expel Imanali from the country, but later deleted his post. In 2021, before the National Security and Defence Council approved sanctions against more than 500 members of the underworld, the media published a preliminary list, which included Imanali's name among others. However, when the final version was published on the president's website, Imanali was not mentioned. It should be noted that this list was one of the few prepared by the Interior Ministry, where Tyshlek has worked all his life.
Bihus.info tried to get a comment from Dmytro Tyshlek. Initially, he agreed to the recording, set the day and time himself, but then cancelled the meeting and stopped answering the phone the night before the due date. Instead, he sent a text reply: he currently rents an apartment, he lived in the house temporarily, the Necheporenkos are his close friends, his wife has a Ukrainian passport, and he does not interfere in his mother-in-law's affairs.