Age: 29
Education: Odesa National Marine University, Odesa National University
Profession: Investigative journalist
Did you know? Valeriya Egoshyna once wanted to work at the State Security Service, but ended up reporting on its corruption.
Valeriya Egoshyna dreamed of becoming a spy.
Instead, she has become an investigative journalist who exposes spies.
“Since I didn’t manage to become a spy, I’m doing investigations of the Security Service of Ukraine,” she joked.
She grew up in Bulgaria and moved to Ukraine when she was a teenager.
Then, her parents persuaded her to study marine engineering at Odesa National Marine University. However, she didn’t like it and switched to sociology.
“When I realized I can’t become president, I decided to become a journalist,” Egoshyna quipped, referring to the law that forbids people who weren’t born on the Ukrainian soil from running for president.
She first worked at several publications in Odesa but has been working at Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe’s Schemes investigative show since 2016. “I came as an intern and remained there by accident,” she said.
One of Egoshyna’s investigations is about ex-President Petro Poroshenko’s alleged efforts to help Moldovan oligarch Vladimir Plahotniuc by removing sanctions from a steel mill in Moldova’s Russian-occupied Transnistria region.
Another investigation concerns alleged corruption schemes in the energy sector involving Poroshenko, his top ally Igor Kononenko, and brothers Grigory Surkis and Igor Surkis. They deny the accusations.
Dmytro Kryuchkov, the CEO of power company Energomerezha, testified in April that Poroshenko and Kononenko had received 50 to 70 percent of the income from energy corruption schemes.
Egoshyna has also investigated the luxury assets of Pavlo Demchyna, a former deputy chief of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and a top ally of Poroshenko, and other top SBU officials.
Yet another investigation concerns a highly dubious court ruling in the town of Baryshivka in Kyiv Oblast. In May, the court suspended SkyUp Airline’s license to operate passenger flights. The decision sparked outrage. Some alleged that the company’s competitors were behind the ruling.
In the Baryshivka case, a woman named Oksana Pasenko filed a lawsuit, claiming she was a dissatisfied SkyUp customer. However, it later turned out that she had never even been on a plane before.
In an investigation published in 2018, Egoshyna exposed Interior Minister Arsen Avakov. Ukrainian courts and the Interior Ministry have destroyed the hidden camera used to record videos implicating Avakov and his top allies in alleged corruption, Schemes reported. Avakov and his allies deny accusations of wrongdoing.
In 2017, Avakov’s son Oleksandr and Avakov’s ex-deputy Serhiy Chebotar were arrested and charged by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine with embezzling Hr 14 million in a case related to the supply of overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry.
However, in 2018 anti-corruption prosecutors closed the case.
Egoshyna says that journalists are facing constant pressure in Ukraine. “It’s a widely known fact that journalists’ work in Ukraine is dangerous,” she said. “We are constantly facing attempts to obstruct our activities.”
Moreover, supporters of the previous and current governments are attacking the free press through “bots” and “trolls” on social media.
“Previously Poroshenko bots hated us and now (President Volodymyr Zelensky’s) bots also do,” Egoshyna said. “But Poroshenko bots have not ceased to hate us. Two armies are fighting against us.”
