A restaurant linked to Servant of the People lawmaker Mykola Tyshchenko has reportedly been welcoming businessmen, lawmakers and government officials during Ukraine’s ongoing quarantine, which bans table service in eateries.
On April 27, journalists from the Bihus.info news site published an investigation alleging that the high-end Velour restaurant in downtown Kyiv, which brands itself as part of Tyshchenko’s restaurant empire, remains open.
According to an active government decree, all restaurants must close their doors until May 12 amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which has killed over 200,000 people worldwide and 239 in Ukraine. But while most restaurants in Ukraine are now only providing takeout, Velour hosted people for multiple hours.
Journalists filmed the entrance to Velour for nine days, from April 14 to 22, and recorded at least four lawmakers, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff and businessmen linked to oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Ihor Kolomoisky visiting the eatery.
A day after the investigation, Tyshchenko responded on Instagram, saying that he only uses the restaurant for meetings.
“(Journalists) alleged that I don’t care about quarantine measures. Yes, it is true that sometimes personal meetings take place in Velour,” said Tyshchenko.
Velour Restaurant is at 43 Lva Tolstoho Street in Kyiv.
Important meetings
Besides being a lawmaker, Tyshchenko is a well-known Kyiv restaurateur and a close friend of Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. That appears to have put him in a strong position to keep his restaurant running during the quarantine.
Among those filmed entering the restaurant were lawmaker Anton Yatsenko from the 22-member For the Future faction. The faction is known to include Kolomoisky’s business partners and political allies. Among them is Ihor Palytsa, the long-time head of the Ukrnafta oil company led by Kolomoisky, and Viktor Bondar, the faction’s head, who proposed over 1,000 amendments to stall a bank law which goes against Kolomoisky’s interests.
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Businessman Pavlo Kuftyrev also visited the restaurant on multiple occasions. Bihus.info alleges that, on one occasion, he visited Kolomoisky’s office after leaving Velour. The news site did not provide footage of his meeting with the oligarch.
Serhiy Trofimov, deputy head of Zelensky’s office, visited Velour at least twice. Three Servant of the People lawmakers also visited the restaurant: Oleksandr Kabanov, Oleh Arsenyuk, and Ihor Negulevsky.
Kabanov worked as a screenwriter for Zelensky’s Kvartal 95 production studio prior to being elected to parliament.
Vitaly Kysyl, a top manager of Akhmetov’s Metinvest steel and mining corporation, also visited the restaurant.
Additionally, multiple people Bihus.info could not identify visited the restaurant throughout the week.
Tyshchenko was caught on video exiting the restaurant only once. His wife also visited the restaurant on at least one occasion.
Bihus.info alleges that the restaurant remains open for top officials to hold business meetings over lunch. As proof, they note that the restaurant had waiters at the ready, and some people who arrived with expensive cars were vetted by bouncers prior to entering the building.
Those caught on tape all had different explanations for why they occasionally visited Velour.
Kabanov told Bihus.info that he went to meet Tyshchenko, Negulevsky said that he visited the restaurant for takeout, while Yatsenko claimed that he didn’t visit the restaurant, directly contradicting the published videos.
Kysyl and Kuftarev didn’t respond to the Kyiv Post’s request for comment. Trofimov couldn’t be reached for comment.
