Ukrainian deputy police chief's wife is holding on to her Russian passport

Bihus.Info, a Ukrainian investigative reporting outlet, has discovered that as of this summer, the wife of Dmytro Tyshlek, Deputy Chief of Ukraine’s National Police, had still not got rid of her Russian passport, and Tyshlek himself has been spotted driving cars and staying in properties owned by a Russian criminal gang leader.

Source: Bihus.Info

Details: Bihus.Info reported that the family of Tyshlek’s wife, Oleksandra Balakai, moved to Russia’s Rostov Oblast some time in the 2000s and obtained Russian citizenship. As of this summer, Oleksandra Balakai’s passport was still valid.

Prior to Russia’s full-scale invasion, Oleksandra’s mother, Mariia Balakai, would often visit her and Tyshlek in Ukraine. A two-bedroom apartment in Novopecherski Lypky, a residential development in Kyiv, was registered under her name in the summer of 2018.

Soon afterwards, Mariia Balakai issued a power of attorney to her daughter, thereby transferring control over the property to her, and returned to Russia.

Meanwhile, when Tyshlek moved to Kyiv in 2019, he lived rent-free in a 140-sq-m apartment in the elite French Quarter development in the city centre. The apartment belonged to Yurii Holyk, better known as the architect of the Big Construction project. [Big Construction, or Velyke Budivnytstvo, is an infrastructure project that was launched in 2020 and overseen by President Zelenskyy with the objective of rebuilding schools, kindergartens, hospitals, roads, airports and other civilian infrastructure facilities all across Ukraine - ed.]

According to Bihus.Info, Tyshlek no longer lives in Holyk’s apartment. In September and October of this year he was spotted on a number of occasions in an elite residential neighbourhood on the outskirts of Kyiv, in a 300-sq-m house registered in the name of one Natalya Necheporenko [the journalists stressed the Russian spelling of the name Natalya in the documents, since in Ukrainian it would spelled Nataliia - ed.].

Sources also told the journalists that in spring 2022, Tyshlek drove out of Ukraine in a car belonging to Necheporenko’s husband Vitalii. This spring, the couple issued powers of attorney to Tyshlek. Six months later, the house was registered in Natalya’s name.

Bihus.Info reported that Vitalii Necheporenko owns a 25% stake in Elite Loto LLC. Andrian Rodin (also known as Andrei "Half-animal" Imanali), a criminal gang leader from Rostov, Russia, also owns a 25% stake in the business. Imanali’s "complicated" relationship with the police dates back a number of years, Bihus.Info said.

"Imanali rose to fame in the early 2000s as a leader of Selmash, a Rostov-based organised crime group. He was put on the wanted list, first federally and then internationally, on suspicion of kidnapping. Imanali was found in Kyiv and deported back to Russia, where he was eventually sentenced to seven years in prison," the investigation says.

In a written statement for Bihus.Info, Tyshlek denied the reports, claiming that he is currently renting an apartment and only lived in [Necheporenko’s] house temporarily; the Necheporenkos are close friends of his; his wife holds a Ukrainian passport; and he "doesn’t get involved in his mother-in-law’s business".

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