The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office has filed a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court seeking to recognize as unjustified and recover to the state treasury the assets of Cherkasy City Council Secretary Yuri Trenkin totaling 7.4 million hryvnias. The claim concerns two premium vehicles — a BMW X7 from 2019 and a Mercedes-Benz S 400 from 2021, which were registered in the name of Trenkin's driver, Vasily Monastyretskyy.
Scheme: Nominal owner with 800 hryvnias monthly salary
Analysis by the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) revealed a key detail: from 1998 to 2020, Monastyretskyy officially earned only 257 thousand hryvnias — an average of about 800 hryvnias per month. According to the publication "18000," precisely after Trenkin took the position of council secretary in 2020, the driver suddenly became the owner of expensive vehicles, land plots located near his employer, and a co-owner of several companies affiliated with the Trenkin family.
According to "18000" investigation data, one of the vehicles came to Monastyretskyy suspiciously cheaply: the Mercedes S 400 was initially purchased at market price, and a few months later was sold to the driver for 500 thousand hryvnias — six times less than the original purchase price.
BMW was sold, Mercedes remains in the family
As the NACP investigation continued, the scheme began to change. According to the SAP press office, the BMW X7 — the same vehicle formally belonging to the driver — was sold for over 60 thousand dollars in October 2024 and gifted to Trenkin's wife, and subsequently resold. Despite this, prosecutors insist on recovering the car's value: civil forfeiture under Ukrainian law does not require proof of guilt — only proof of the absence of legal sources for acquiring the property.
The Mercedes-Benz S 400, purchased in 2022, is, according to SAP, still being used by Trenkin and members of his family.
"Monastyretskyy officially earned only 257 thousand hryvnias from 1998 to 2020, that is, an average of 800 hryvnias per month"
NACP, according to "18000" investigation materials
NACP investigated — and found no violations
A revealing episode: the NACP, following the "18000" investigation, did conduct a check of Trenkin's declaration but found neither signs of criminal offense nor grounds for administrative proceedings. At the same time, Trenkin himself, at the February council session, publicly told deputies that he personally contacted the NACP and National Police requesting to be investigated — and promised to make the records public. Materials from the National Bureau of Investigation (NABU), based on which the SAP ultimately filed the lawsuit, became a separate track of the investigation.
- BMW X7 (2019) — registered to the driver, gifted to Trenkin's wife, sold for $60,000+; value for recovery included in the lawsuit
- Mercedes-Benz S 400 (2021) — registered to the driver, still in use by the Trenkin family
- Total lawsuit amount — 7.4 million hryvnias
- Official income of the nominal driver over 22 years — 257 thousand hryvnias
Civil forfeiture as a tool appeared in Ukraine in 2019 and does not require a conviction: the prosecutor needs only to prove the mismatch between declared income and asset values. According to NACP data, in just 8 months of 2025, the HACC issued civil forfeiture rulings totaling over 43 million hryvnias in various cases.
If the HACC satisfies the lawsuit — this will be the first case when the "vehicle in driver's name" scheme in Cherkasy receives judicial confirmation. The question is different: will this stop the practice if NACP itself, after checking declarations, found no grounds even for administrative proceedings?
