Lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko alleges Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin has since July failed to send a case to parliament to have lawmaker Yuriy Boyko, a former deputy prime minister under disgraced ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, stripped of prosecutorial immunity. Leshchenko said there is evidence to justify the arrest of Boyko on suspicion of organized crime, including illegal acquisition of property.
Boyko, 57, who heads the Opposition Bloc parliamentary faction, called the accusations “a regular attack on the opposition,” adding they are “baseless…and just words and political pressure,” according to a written response to the Kyiv Post.
The prosecutor’s office didn’t respond to a Kyiv Post request for comment, and spokesman Andriy Demartyno wouldn’t answer his phone or respond to a text message.
Leshchenko said that while Boyko served under Yanukovych, he allegedly joined an “organized crime group” that was involved in selling liquefied natural gas intended for households to industrial consumers. The scheme, suspected of being headed by Yanukovych front man Serhiy Kurchenko, earned the group more than $700 million on the price difference, Leshchenko said, citing the case in a blog published on Ukrainska Pravda on Nov. 12 and in messages sent to the Kyiv Post.
The group set up shell companies affiliated with Kurchenko to buy liquefied natural gas intended for household consumers from state-run companies at auction prices that were 20 percent of market value, according to Leshchenko.
Instead of selling the LNG to households at strictly regulated prices, the companies would sell it to industrial buyers at market rates.
Boyko allegedly looked the other way when household demand for LNG was artificially inflated at times by 25-30 times to justify the auctions taking place.
Kurchenko, who fled Ukraine after the EuroMaidan Revolution in February 2014, is wanted by the Ukrainian authorities for large-scale tax evasion.
He is suspected of systemically colluding with Yanukovych’s administration and failing to pay the state $130 million in tax, and for allegedly stealing $180 million from bank investors, according to claims by former General Prosecutor Vitaly Yarema cited by Reuters.
Boyko, in turn, described the accusations as a political witch hunt against him and Opposition Bloc, an offspring of the former ruling Party of Regions.
“I consider the accusations against me and the Opposition Bloc as an attempt to tarnish the image of our political power…and discredit the real opposition in the country,” he said, adding that the purpose of the alleged attacks have a “contrived pretext.”
Speaking in parliament, Lyovochkin described the allegations as an “attack on a real opposition force,” Interfax Ukraine reported.
If the case goes ahead, Boyko would be the highest former Yanukovych official to be prosecuted in Ukraine to date. Ukrainian officials, including Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, have said Yanukovych and his former entourage stole $30-$100 billion from the Ukrainian people during their four years in power, which ended on Feb. 22, 2014.
Boyko’s former subordinate at the energy ministry, Vasyl Drahan, helped stall the case against the former deputy prime minister for four months, according to Leshchenko. Currently Shokin’s senior assistant at large, Drahan headed the internal corruption prevention department of the energy ministry from Aug. 18, 2010 to April 22, 2013. Boyko served as energy minister until December 2012.
Drahan has an employment history with Shokin that precedes and follows his tenure at the Energy Ministry. In 2005, he worked in the central investigation department of the prosecutor’s office under Shokin. He was also the senior assistant to Shokin when he was deputy prosecutor general under Vitaliy Yarema.
The charges against Boyko, a native of Horlivka in Donetsk Oblast, carry a prison sentence of up to 12 years and the confiscation of property. The alleged case file also states that Boyko has failed to appear for questioning at the prosecutor’s office, which is the reason why the authorities are seeking his arrest.
Boyko and Drahan were also at the Energy Ministry when Chornomornaftogaz, a state-owned subsidiary of oil and gas monopoly Naftogaz, purchased two state-of-the art oil rigs at inflated prices from Singapore in 2011. One rig, according to investigative reports by TVi television channel and Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper, cost some $150 million more than the original price tag.
Boyko in the past attributed the price discrepancy to additional equipment being bought and services being rendered during the sale. TVi journalists, however, subsequently found that these additional services were added on as part of a cover-up that included forgery via back-dated contracts.
Boyko, a third-term lawmaker, also is a close associate of Dmytro Firtash, who has ties with the Kremlin and once controlled the non-transparent yet lucrative gas trade between Russia and Ukraine. Firtash has been indicted in the United States for racketeering and bribery attempts, charges that the Ukrainian tycoon denies.
According to U.S. diplomatic cables, Boyko helped set up the Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo – the former monopoly gas supplier to Ukraine – and sat on one of its boards. He has also wielded power-of-attorney control over Firtash’s assets in the past.
Two other Yanukovych allies that are currently facing trial are ex-Justice Minister Olena Lukash and Oleksandr Yefremov, who led the former ruling Party of Regions.
Lukash is suspected of embezzling Hr 2.5 million in public funds and forgery while serving as justice minister in 2013-2014. She has denied all of the accusations and called the case against her “fabricated.” She has been released on bail.
Lukash also was sanctioned by the European Union following the EuroMaidan Revolution, which imposed a travel ban and asset freeze, measures that are still in force.
On Jan. 15, 2014, a day before parliament voted for a series of draconian laws that severely curbed civil liberties at the height of the EuroMaidan protests, Lukash said that Ukrainian police had every right to use force to stop the “illegal” actions of the protesters.
Luhansk native Yefremov, who headed the Party of Regions, is facing charges of abuse of power and forgery of documents related to the illegal approval of the draconian “dictatorship” laws of Jan. 16 that would have severely curtailed civil liberties in Ukraine. He has been released on bail. He made a not guilty plea in a Kyiv court on Nov. 13.
Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
