Investigation Info: Secretary of Dnipro City Council flies on business trips by private jet

The 2002 Piper 28-161 Warrior aircraft, which appears in the declaration of Oleksandr Sanzhara, secretary of the Dnipro City Council, regularly flies around Europe. This is stated in investigation Slidstvo.Info.

According to investigators, in recent years, these flights have coincided with foreign business trips sent by Sanzhara's boss, the mayor of Dnipro Borys Filatov .

In total, over the past year and a half, journalists have identified four such business trips abroad, which together lasted 61 days.

For example, according to journalists, on May 7, a Piper 28-161 aircraft with tail number T7-TAS, declared by the secretary of the Dnipro City Council, took off from the airport in Lesce, a half-hour drive from the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, and landed in one of Warsaw's airports a few hours later. The man probably stayed there for two days. It is not known whether the official was solving any personal issues in Slovenia. But his daughter Anastasia was studying in Ljubljana at the time .

As the journalists found out, last year the secretary of the Dnipro City Council had another business trip to Austria and the Czech Republic to sign a partnership between Dnipro and Ostrava, as well as to deliver a welcoming speech at a performance of the Dnipro Youth Drama Theater's "We Believe!" in Vienna. The only problem was that the road to Ostrava, judging by the flight information, went through Croatia.

"In fact, you need to understand that we are working, practicing some meetings and everything else. If I have free time, I can fly. Of course, I will fly. In fact, I had a business trip to Poland. I was flying a plane from the Czech Republic to Poland," Oleksandr Sanzhara commented to Slidstvo.info on flying a private jet during business trips.

The plane, which the secretary of the Dnipro City Council took out of Ukraine during the full-scale invasion and which has been flying around Europe during his official business trips, has been on the official's declaration since March 2020. At first, Sanzhara rented it, and since 2021, Tetiana Sanzhara, the official's wife, has owned 30% of this plane.

The remaining 70% is still owned by ATN Enterprises from the US state of Delaware. Since 2018, the director of this company is Iryna Sanzhara, the sister of the Dnipro official.

The Sanjars' versions of the cost of the plane differ.

The secretary of the city council and his wife give different accounts of the amount and circumstances of the purchase. His wife, Tetiana, says that the plane was bought in a very bad condition and then repaired. Mr. Sanzhara claims that they simply paid 30% of the total cost of the plane. According to his wife, they invested about $100,000, according to Sanzhara – only $30,000.

According to journalists' estimates, over the past year and a half, Filatov has been traveling abroad for a total of 61 days. And these are only those business trips during which journalists were able to establish the fact of using the plane from the official's declaration.

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