Businessman and parliament deputy Yury Kononenko died on Jan. 22 in Kharkiv from what local officials say looks like a self-inflicted rifle wound.
The 45-year-old chauffeur-turned-entrepreneur was the founder of Losk, an enterprise specializing in the production of car windshields and auto-repair equipment. Losk was a small business success story, according to the U.S. Commercial Service in Kyiv.
“This is a unique enterprise of the sort in the NIS,” concludes the Commercial Service brief, which last year was included in the Kharkiv Regional Report commissioned by the U.S. State Department.
Not mentioned in the report was that Kononenko was also held in high regard by local motorists, who credited him for organizing one of the largest trading markets for used cars in Eastern Ukraine.
One of his latest projects included the construction of a multi-million dollar state-of-the-art windshield factory, a metro station and a hotel resort complex along the banks of the Uda River.
After losing to deputy Viktor Suslov in parliamentary elections in 1994, Kononenko joined the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), on whose ticket he successfully campaigned for a parliamentary seat in 1998. Since February last year, Kononenko had served on parliament’s committee on press and information freedom.
The pro-presidential PDP, often called “the party of power,” is led by former Prime Minister Valery Pustovoitenko and includes some of Kuchma’s closest associates.
Political and business problems piled up on Kononenko last fall after he abandoned the PDP to join the Yabloko faction headed by deputy Mykhailo Brodsky, who questions the explanation that his colleague shot himself.
“Kononenko left the PDP faction of his own free will last Oct. 19, but switched back a week later,” Brodsky said on Jan. 22, adding that his colleague had complained of threats by PDP party bosses as a result of his switch.
“In light of this circumstance, I have serious grounds to doubt he committed suicide,” he added.
In an interview published in the pro-presidential newspaper 2000 last October, PDP and parliamentary majority leader Oleksandr Karpov spoke of Kononenko’s split with the party at the time.
“It is simple. [Kononenko] today is a member of the PDP, but that’s not enough for him. He told me ‘Help me organize a political party, and later we’ll unite.’ I replied: ‘That’s a scoundrel’s way of doing things, but go ahead, see where it gets you.’ And that’s what the scoundrel did,” Karpov said.
The political infighting got nastier after President Kuchma tagged one of his close associates, former presidential administration head Yevhen Kushnarev, as Kharkiv oblast governor last fall.
Soon after the appointment, tax police began poring over Losk’s books, leading Kononenko to contemplate begging for forgiveness, Kononenko said in a Jan. 9 interview with news Web site expert.org.ua.
After Kononenko’s death was announced on Jan. 22, the Web site published a draft of a letter Kononenko allegedly had written to Pustovoitenko days before he died. In that letter, Kononenko acknowledged that his “impulsive, poorly thought-out actions” may have caused the flap, but reminded the PDP boss that he had paid to equip a pro-Kuchma campaign vehicle and had garnered a minimum of 10,000 votes in Kuchma’s support last 1999.
“…I faithfully performed all tasks that were assigned to me by party leaders and supported Leonid Kuchma’s re-election bid last fall,” Kononenko said.
It was unclear whether Kononenko actually sent the letter, which was released by colleagues of Kononenko at Losk.
According to expert.org.ua, those colleagues discovered the letter along with Kononenko’s Dictophone after he died. Analyzing both, they concluded that the deputy was depressed and frustrated at not being able to solve his political and business problems, they said.
