The training to be resumed: sports complex territory rescued with the Council’s facilitation

Complainee: Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, State Property Fund of Ukraine
Complaint in brief: The children and youth sports school from Kyiv, as well as management of the sports complex appealed to the Council. It was a complaint in regard with possible illegal actions of the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports due to granting a lease of the sports complex to the other legal entity.
It turned out that a potential tenant planned to create a museum in one of the sports complex’s premises where sports equipment was stored. For that reason, further renovation and construction of sports arena for training of young athletes became impossible.
Despite the fact that the school administration was against granting a lease of the premises of the sports complex, the tenant started authorisation procedure with the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports and the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU). The sports complex administration did not have any information regarding conclusion of an agreement with the potential tenant.
Taking into account the risks of illegal seizure of the school territory, the administration forwarded the complaint to the Business Ombudsman Council.
Actions taken: Having examined the case file, the investigator supported the complainant’s position. The Council appealed to the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, the SPFU and the Regional Department of the SPFU in Kyiv and asked to pay attention to obvious violations in the leasing procedure of the sports complex.
The Council learned that the potential tenant was originally one, but the lease document concerned a completely different tenant. In particular, it turned out that this document had been issued on the grounds of an application dated only two days before its issuance. According to the law, it is in fact impossible to complete the lease procedure within two days.
The most interesting thing was that the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports took part in the process of approving the lease. It should be noted that after the reorganization of the Ministry of Youth and Sports and the Ministry of Culture into the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sports, a number of entities, including the sports complex of the complainant, came under control of the latter. However, the investigator ascertained that at that moment, the certificate of acceptance of such objects had not been signed yet. Therefore, the state body did not have the right to make any decisions regarding the sports complex.
The Council recommended to revoke the lease document and terminate the procedure for concluding an agreement with the potential tenant.
Results achieved: The State Property Fund upheld the arguments of the Council and terminated the procedure related to granting a lease of the building of the sports complex. The school parent committee thanked the Council for help: “We express our sincere gratitude to the Business Ombudsman Council for supporting our school in the fight against illegal actions of government agencies that tried to seize a part of the territory that is a facility of Olympic, Paralympic and Deaflympic training. Thanks to timely intervention of the Council, we managed to defend the territory of the sports complex and did not allow the authorities to commit illegal actions”. The case was successfully closed.