A former MP is demanding nearly half a million dollars in debt from a farmer in Voznesensk: he claims he did not take the money and that his signature was forged
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- Alisa MelikadamianContributing Editor, Reporter
Voznesensk City and District Court. Photo: Judicial AuthorityKarine Mailunts, a former councillor of the South Ukrainian City Council, is seeking to recover over 481,000 dollars from local farmer Gnela Mkhitaryan through the courts. She claims to have lent him this money under a loan agreement, but the farmer denies having received the money and claims that the signature on the receipt is forged.
This is evidenced by documents published in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, according to ‘NikVesti’.
According to the claim, a loan agreement was allegedly concluded on 26 January 2026 between Karine Mailunts and Gnel Mkhitaryan. Under the terms of the agreement, the man borrowed 481,144 dollars and undertook to repay the funds on demand. To confirm the loan, the claimant alleges, he signed a private receipt.
However, Gnel Mkhitaryan denies this:
— I have never received any funds, let alone $481,000, from the woman in question. Furthermore, I do not know her at all and have never met her or had any contact with her, either directly or through third parties. The promissory note bears a handwritten signature, the text ‘Gnel Babkenovich Mkhitaryan’ and the date ‘26 January 2026’, and this is a forgery, as I did not sign anything in my own hand,’ stated the defendant.
Separately, the farmer pointed out that on the day the loan agreement was allegedly concluded, Mailunts was outside Ukraine.
— In July 2023, she left Ukraine and has been living abroad ever since. On the date she specified in her statement of claim as the date of this ‘conclusion of the loan agreement’, she was not in the country. Our face-to-face meeting simply could not have taken place physically,” said Gnell Mkhitaryan.
After the defence presented this information in court, the claimant’s side clarified the circumstances surrounding the transfer of funds. On 22 May, her lawyer, Oksana Vuyiv, informed the court that the funds were not handed over to Mailunts in person, but via a third party at one of the offices in Voznesensk.
During the hearing on 4 June, Mkhitaryan’s lawyer, Dmytro Holubenko, asked the court to send a request to the Main Centre for the Processing of Special Information of the State Border Guard Service, to obtain data on all of Mailunts’ crossings of the state border between July 2023 and February 2026. The claimant’s lawyer objected to this application; however, according to the case file, she did not dispute that her client was abroad at the time the receipt was drawn up.
Golubenko also requested that tax records be obtained regarding the income of the individuals from whom Mailunts allegedly borrowed funds prior to transferring them to the farmer. The court rejected this application.
“The amount of the so-called ‘debt’ exceeds all of the claimant’s official savings. She did not physically possess such funds on the date the contract was allegedly concluded and, therefore, could not have transferred them,” explained Mkhitaryan.
Oksana Vuiv, the claimant’s solicitor, in explaining the presence of such a sum in the absence of official income, submitted to the court four loan agreements concluded in early January 2026. According to these, Karine Mailunts borrowed the funds from her relatives:
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300,000 dollars from her father, the businessman and former member of the Mykolaiv Regional Council, Erik Grigoryan;
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€100,000 from her sisters, Bella Mailunts and Stella Ustyushenko.
It should be noted that since April 2026, all of the farmer’s assets have been subject to a seizure order up to the amount of the claim, which restricts his ability to dispose of his assets.
It should be recalled that Karine Mailunts served as a councillor on the South Ukrainian City Council from 2020 to 2024, representing the Mykolaiv regional branch of the All-Ukrainian Union ‘Batkivshchyna’ political party.
