The family of the People’s Deputy from the “OPZZH” has a business in occupied Crimea — journalists’ investigation

Journalists found out that the family of the people’s deputy from the banned “OPZZH” Vitaliy Bort has a business in temporarily occupied Crimea, which has filled the Russian budget with millions of rubles in taxes and, at the request of the occupation authorities, built transport interchanges on the peninsula.

This is what the “Schemes” investigation says .

As journalists have established, in 2017, the “Road Service of the Republic of Crimea” signed a contract with the “Road and Transport Construction Company” to build a transport interchange to connect two large-scale infrastructure projects – the “Tavrida” highway and the new terminal of the Simferopol airport “Krymskaya Khvylya”.

The cost of the project at that time was estimated at almost 2 billion rubles — that’s about 900 million hryvnias.

That same year, DTSK signed another contract to create a project worth almost 1 billion rubles (about 500 million hryvnias). This involved the construction of an interchange nearby.

“Schemes” notes that both projects were implemented within the framework of the Russian Federation’s federal target program for the development of Crimea.

Russian media linked the “Road and Transport Construction Company” to Vitaly Nakhlupin, a Crimean official who defected to the enemy and later took the position of “Vice Prime Minister of Crimea.” At the same time, he was an assistant to MP Vitaly Bort during two convocations of parliament — from 2007 to 2014.

In addition, journalists learned that before the occupation of Crimea, the mother of the People’s Deputy worked for a company that built roads on the peninsula. And in 2015, she quit and got a job at DTSK, where she held the position of Deputy General Director for General Issues from 2019 to 2024. Valentina Bort supported the company’s activities during the construction of strategically important roads and interchanges in Crimea, the investigation says.

“Schemes” also established that less than a year before the full-scale Russian invasion, Bort’s acquaintance Oleg Sitko became the head of the firm. The latter was in the leadership of the Party of Regions branch in Makiivka, where he and Bort had registered at the same addresses.

Archival videos found by investigators confirm their connection. In one of them, Sitko was at Bort’s meeting with voters in Makiivka, and in another, they were together at a meeting of the Party of Regions before the parliamentary elections in 2012.

Among other things, Sitko was at a meeting of the Makiivka City Council in April 2014 with the participation of Bort, at which they voted for the so-called “referendum on the fate of Donbas.”

Separately, journalists found another confirmation of the company’s connection with Bort through CEO Sergey Poladyan, a Russian and, as the investigation claims, a close relative of the deputy.

“His (Poladyan – ed.) wife is Larisa Poladyan, nee Trandafilova. Olga Bort, Vitaliy Bort’s wife, also has the same maiden name. It turns out that these women are sisters. And the new director of the Crimean company is the husband of the sister of the wife of the People’s Deputy of Ukraine,” the material says.

“Schemes” reached out to Bort for comment, but he did not respond. Poladyan and Sitko both declined to answer questions about “DTSK” and hung up.

It was previously reported that Bort had been taking business trips abroad, but spent a significant portion of this time in the United States — with his family in Florida.

Also follow “Pryamim” on Facebook , X , Telegram , and Instagram.