How a member of the CEC living in the USA manages to receive a salary from the state budget of Ukraine: media investigation

After a high-profile scandal with the holiday in the Maldives of the People’s Deputy Yuri Aristov, member of the Central Election Commission Yuri Buglak was at the center of the scandal. He left Ukraine 12 days before the full-scale invasion and has not returned since, he retains his post. This follows from the investigation of the Radio Liberty project “Schemes”.

So, Buglak lives with his family in the US state of Florida near Miami. Throughout 2022, Buglak received a salary and other payments — in total, he was counted one and a half million hryvnias, including material assistance from the state budget “to solve social and domestic issues.” Since the spring of 2023, a member of the CEC has taken maternity leave while maintaining his position.

Buglak himself, in a commentary to journalists, stated that he had “personal circumstances”, and in his opinion, he did not violate Ukrainian laws, because he left for the invasion, and with its onset, the CEC switched to remote work.

Buglak took off from Boryspil Airport on February 12, 2022 on a flight to Istanbul. From the next day until March 9, he had a vacation planned.

It ended, but the public servant never returned to Ukraine. The decision to stay abroad was not influenced by the appeal of President Volodymyr Zelensky. On February 14, 2022, the head of state addressed “all representatives of the state”, urging them to return to Ukraine within 24 hours.

It should be noted that Yuriy Buglak has been a member of the Central Election Commission (CEC) since 2019, a former chief legal adviser to the Roshen confectionery corporation, an ex-deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc party.

Living abroad, CEC member Yuriy Buglak in the fall of 2022 twice asked for material assistance from the budget of Ukraine - “for recovery” and “for resolving social and domestic issues in connection with the birth of a child.” And he received this assistance - in the amount of 230 thousand hryvnias.

As a member of the CEC, Buglak was supposed to “conduct a personal reception of citizens.” In response to an information request, the CEC was informed that according to the register in 2021-2023, he did not do this.

While outside of Ukraine, Buglak joined the online meetings of the Central Election Commission during 2022 and until March 2023. They were produced on average several times a month. For example, in March 2022, the CEC met once for 19 minutes, and twice in April - 23 and 7 minutes.

As journalists found out, the official’s family lives in a suburb of Miami, Florida (USA). The journalists established the specific place of residence from the social networks of Yury Buglak’s wife and the mother of his child, Tatyana Rtishcheva. In her LinkedIn profile, she indicates that she has been living in Hollywood, Florida since January 2022, a town near Miami on the Atlantic coast.

Tatyana is a member of the “We live in Miami, we speak Russian” group on Facebook. There she published a photograph, thanks to which the journalists managed to figure out the location where she was taken. This is The Wave residential complex, located in the city of Hollywood, Florida. The complex is located right on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. It has pools, a spa, a fitness center and access to the beach.

As FACTS wrote, Andrei Kholodov, a people’s deputy from the Servant of the People party, who has recently been abroad, has submitted an application to the Rada for the drafting of a mandate. This happened against the backdrop of rumors about his vacation in Cyprus. And people’s deputy Oleksandr Dubinsky was informed of suspicion of official forgery of documents for traveling abroad (part 1 of article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine).