By accusing the highest-ranking official in its five-year history, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) has gone all in trying to show that it is the most effective — and perhaps the only — institution fighting the nation’s endemic corruption.
The bribery case against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov came out of testimony given by former lawmaker Maksym Mykytas.
A deal between the NABU and Mykytas, a suspect in an embezzlement case, could have become the first effective plea bargain in a corruption case in Ukraine’s history. Apart from Tatarov, the bargain could have exposed many influential politicians and delivered a devastating blow to the nation’s kleptocracy.
Instead, the opposite happened: The case was taken away from the NABU, prosecutors refused to arrest and prosecute Tatarov and the police jailed Mykytas in a case that he said was fabricated to save Tatarov.
It’s the latest example showing the limitations of the new corruption-fighting institutions, especially in the face of sabotage and resistance by the old institutions, whose leaders have protected rather than combatted corruption in the nation’s nearly 30-year history.
The new institutions — the NABU, the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, and the High Anti-Corruption Court — came into being following the EuroMaidan Revolution in 2014 that ended the presidency of Kremlin-backed Viktor Yanukovych. But the better-financed, more powerful existing institutions — the Interior Ministry, Security Service of Ukraine, General Prosecutor’s Office and courts — have proven highly resistant to change and willing to sabotage the nascent institutions.
President Volodymyr Zelensky famously said that he gave Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova “until the end of 2020 to show results,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center said on Feb. 9 in a sarcastic statement of the nongovernmental organization’s displeasure. “If her task is to whitewash Tatarov, Venediktova has indeed fulfilled it.”
Mykytas has been charged with alleged embezzlement through an Ukrbud housing development contract for Ukraine’s National Guard in 2016–2017. On Dec. 18, Tatarov, who used to serve as a lawyer for Ukrbud, was charged with bribing forensic expert Kostyantyn Dubonos on behalf of Mykytas to give false evaluation results that helped the company.
Tatarov has denied accusations of wrongdoing. Tatarov’s lawyer Oleksandr Kuzmenko declined to comment, and the President’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Venediktova has previously denied accusations of sabotage. The Prosecutor General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
History of controversy
Controversies and scandals have accompanied Tatarov at almost every step in his career. From 1999 to 2014, Tatarov worked at Ukraine’s notoriously corrupt police.
In 2011-2014, Tatarov was a deputy head of the Interior Ministry’s main investigative department under then President Viktor Yanukovych.
According to Ukraine’s 2014 lustration law which forbids the appointment of Yanukovych-era officials, Zelensky had no legal right to make Tatarov his deputy chief of staff. Under the law, those who were heads and deputy heads of Interior Ministry units under Yanukovych for more than a year are banned from holding state jobs for 10 years.
Tatarov has been investigated and interrogated in cases into the unlawful persecution of protesters during the 2013-2014 EuroMaidan Revolution, although no charges were formally brought against him, Sergii Gorbatuk, the ex-top investigator for EuroMaidan cases, told the Kyiv Post. Police officers charged with persecuting demonstrators said that crackdown orders came
from the Interior Ministry’s leaders, who included Tatarov, according to Gorbatuk.
In his public speeches during the EuroMaidan, Tatarov repeatedly defended the police and lashed out at EuroMaidan protesters, calling them “criminals.”
Specifically, protesters were brutally beaten and tortured on Shchors Street and Kriposny Alley in Kyiv in January 2020. These facts were later confirmed by court verdicts.
However, Tatarov then claimed that the protesters were criminals, and the police did nothing wrong.
“He completely distorted information and lied about the detention of protesters by the police and pro-government thugs on Shchors Street,” Yevhenia Zakrevska, a lawyer for EuroMaidan protesters, told Ukraine’s First Channel in 2020. “In this way he legitimized the beating and arrests of protesters by the police.
Tatarov also claimed that EuroMaidan protesters were killed by other protesters on the back of the head, not by the police. Gorbatuk says this was a lie: investigators have proven that the police killed protesters, and no one was shot in the back of the head.
Maksym Mykytas, former owner of Ukrbud company and former member of the Ukrainian parliament, was arrested on Dec. 31, 2020. (Maksym Mykytas/Facebook)
At Ukrbud
Tatarov was fired from the Interior Ministry in April 2014 and became a practicing lawyer, defending Yanukovych’s ex-deputy chief of staff Andriy Portnov and pro-Russian lawmaker Vadym Novynsky.
In 2014 Tatarov also became the head of state property developer Ukrbud’s legal department.
Mykytas was the president of Ukrbud in 2010-2016, as well as the owner of Ukrbud Development, a private firm that profiteered from Ukrbud contracts. He was also a member of parliament in 2016-2019.
At the time, Tatarov apparently benefited from his connections at the Interior Ministry. Maksym Tsutskiridze, the current head of the police’s investigative department, is a longtime friend and co-author of Tatarov and used to work with Tatarov at the Interior Ministry.
After Tatarov was hired by Ukrbud, the construction firm received lucrative contracts from the Interior Ministry. In Kyiv, the allocation of land by state agencies often involves bribing state officials.
Tatarov has been investigated for his actions as an alleged intermediary between the Interior Ministry and Ukrbud, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Post. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
If the case had been allowed to proceed without hindrance, investigators could have shed light on his role in this, according to the sources.
Lucrative deal
One of the profitable deals that Ukrbud struck with the Interior Ministry’s National Guard during Tatarov’s stint at the firm involved swapping real estate.
In the 2000s the National Guard concluded a deal to exchange a land plot for an Ukrbud housing complex in Kyiv’s high-end Pechersk area. However, in 2016-2017 the National Guard agreed to get a different Ukrbud housing project near the Chervony Khutor metro station in Kyiv’s outskirts.
This constituted embezzlement since the market value of the two complexes differs by Hr 81.6 million, according to the NABU. Mykytas and ex-National Guard head Yury Allerov were charged in the embezzlement scheme in 2019.
The Kyiv Post’s law enforcement sources find it hard to believe that Tatarov was not aware of the embezzlement scheme at the time when it was conceived and carried out. However, Tatarov’s possible role in the deal is also likely to remain a mystery due to the obstruction of the case.
According to the NABU, Tatarov was later involved in an allegedly corrupt effort to save Mykytas and other suspects from responsibility for the embezzlement when the police opened an investigation into the scheme in 2017.
Activists hold a banner with combined portraits of President Volodymyr Zelensky and his deputy chief of staff, Oleh Tatarov, demanding to prosecure Tatarov for bribery, on Dec. 28, 2020 in front of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Evidence of a crime
In December the NABU published 2017 WhatsApp correspondence that they said is between Tatarov and other people implicated in the Ukrbud scheme.
In the correspondence, Tatarov and Mykytas discuss making forensic expert Dubonos’ institute, which is part of the Interior Ministry, declare that the two apartment complexes’ value only differs by Hr 7 million.
Tatarov also sent an employee of Ukrbud Development a photo of the passport of Dubonos, the forensic institute’s deputy chief. Tatarov asked the employee to give Dubonos a parking lot with a market value of Hr 250,000 for free.
The employee then asked Mykytas: “Maxim Viktorovych, did Tatarov get permission for transferring the parking lot free of charge?” Mykytas responded “yes.”
To minimize the difference in value, Tatarov and Serhiy Yakusevych, executive director of Ukrbud Development, also discussed forging a document by a firm called TOV Realty to indicate that the Pechersk complex is 52 percent complete, while in reality it was 64 percent complete. NABU detectives found that the signature on the document, which was needed for the forensic assessment, was forged.
Tatarov also asked Yakusevych to step up the transfer of additional Ukrbud apartments worth Hr 7 million to the National Guard to make up for the losses incurred as a result of the embezzlement scheme. According to their plan, this would absolve them of their responsibility for the scheme.
Apparently fearing that their actions would be exposed by the NABU, Tatarov said this should be done before the case is transferred to the bureau. “We’ll be fucked,” he added in a reference to the NABU taking over the case.
The NABU eventually received the case in 2018.
Judicial bribery
Mykytas has also testified that Tatarov acted as an intermediary in his alleged $600,000 bribe to employees of the High Anti-Corruption Court in October 2019, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Post. The bribe was allegedly given when Serhiy Moysak, a judge of the court, released Mykytas on Hr 5 million ($180,000).
The amount of bail was lambasted by activists as miniscule. In the same month the High Anti-Corruption Court’s appeal chamber canceled Moysak’s decision and increased the bail to Hr 80 million ($2.9 million).
The information on the alleged bribe was also confirmed by sources cited by the censor.net news site.
Additionally, Mykytas has testified that he had allegedly given a bribe through Tatarov to judges of Kyiv’s Solomyansky Court, according to the Kyiv Post’s law enforcement sources. They were allegedly bribed for releasing Ukrbud Development CEO Oleg Maiboroda on Hr 2 million bail and Yakusevych on Hr 1.5 million bail in 2019.
The High Anti-Corruption Court and the Solomyansky Court did not respond to requests for comment.
Activists burn flares and smoke bomb during a rally against President Volodymyr Zelensky’s deputy chief of staff Oleh Tatarov in front of the High Anti-Corruption Court building in Kyiv on Dec. 30, 2020. (AFP)
Corporate raiding?
But later Mykytas had a falling-out with Tatarov, Maiboroda and Yakusevych. He accused them and other businessmen of illegally seizing his real estate assets as a result of a corporate raid in 2019-2020, while they deny the accusations.
The redistribution of the assets, which coincided with the intensification of the case against Mykytas and Tatarov’s appointment to the President’s Office in August 2020, was covered by the Bihus.info investigative show on Jan. 25.
Tatarov’s father-in-law Oleksandr Pavlushin co-owns a firm called Daring Capital with a certain Lyudmila Myshchenko, according to Bihus.info. The only other firm co-owned by Lyudmila Myshchenko is Kiy Plaza, whose other co-owner is Valery Myshchenko.
Both Daring Capital and Kiy Plaza are registered at 131 Antonovych Street, where Tatarov owns real estate.
In October 2020 Valery Myshchenko received a 45 percent stake in controversial property developer Ecobudtrade as a gift – a highly unusual deal on the real estate market.
Mykytas has said that the stake had been previously owned by him. He bought it through a front man for $2 million in 2019.
Myshchenko denied being a front man for Tatarov and said Mykytas had gifted him the stake since he had been getting only problems, not profits, from the asset.
Ecobudtrade has received a highly lucrative City Hall contract to build Kyiv’s Podilsko-Voskresensky Bridge, on which the city government has spent Hr 13 billion.
In January the Prosecutor General’s Office opened an abuse of power case into an audio recording allegedly implicating the Podilsko-Voskresensky Bridge project in corruption. The recording was published by lawmaker and whistleblower Geo Leros.
Leros has also accused Tatarov of effectively controlling state-owned nuclear monopoly Energoatom. On Feb. 10, the NABU searched Energoatom premises in an embezzlement case.
Sabotage of the case
Courts and prosecutors continuously sabotaged the Tatarov case.
On Dec. 1, Venediktova replaced the group of prosecutors in the Tatarov case as they were preparing to bring charges against the deputy chief of staff. As a result, the charges were blocked for two weeks.
On Dec. 14, Kyiv’s Pechersk Court ordered Venedikova to take the case away from the NABU. However, the High Anti-Corruption Court suspended the Pechersk Court’s decision on Feb. 4.
Venediktova’s deputy Oleksiy Symonenko used the Pechersk Court ruling as a pretext to give the case to the more politically pliant Security Service of Ukraine on Dec. 24. The NABU believes the transfer of the Tatarov case to be unlawful.
Under Ukrainian law, the Tatarov bribery case falls squarely into NABU’s jurisdiction. NABU cases cannot be considered by other law enforcement agencies. Jurisdictional disputes can only be considered by the High Anti-Corruption Court not by the Pechersk District Court, which is refusing to transfer Tatarov case materials to the anti-corruption judges.
Meanwhile, in December the police arrested Mykytas and charged him with kidnapping. His lawyers believe this to be a fabricated case aimed at pressuring the former lawmaker to withdraw his testimony against Tatarov – a claim that the police denied.
Case buried
The Tatarov case was effectively buried on Dec. 30 when new prosecutors appointed by Venediktova refused to arrest him and said the legal grounds for the charges were not sufficient.
This contradicts the opinion of the NABU and anti-corruption prosecutors, who believe the grounds to be sufficient.
Mykytas confirmed the case’s validity by pleading guilty to bribery. The High Anti Corruption Court recognized the bribery accusations when it authorized Dubonos’ arrest in December.
The anti-corruption court ruled on Jan. 15 that the Tatarov case must be investigated by the NABU and ordered Venediktova to consider a motion to transfer the investigation to the bureau. However, the Prosecutor General’s Office refused to do so on Feb. 8, citing the Pechersk Court decision.
In January the Prosecutor General’s Office also changed the charges against Tatarov from bribery to document forgery – an article outside the NABU’s jurisdiction – in what the bureau believes to be another unlawful effort to block it from investigating the case. The NABU is continuing to demand the transfer of the Tatarov case back to the bureau.
“Venediktova has turned the Prosecutor General’s Office into the Office of Public Lying,” the Anti-Corruption Action Center said on Feb. 9. “Despite the fact that the law exclusively defines the case as NABU jurisdiction, Venediktova’s office is fooling the public.”
Plea bargain
Currently the NABU has Tatarov case materials but has been blocked from investigating it by Venediktova. Mykytas is in police custody, and the NABU has applied for interrogating him in other episodes at its premises but the police refused.
Before the case was blocked, the NABU and Mykytas were preparing a plea bargain, law enforcement sources told the Kyiv Post.
Mykytas has already paid compensation worth Hr 50 million to the state and given testimony implicating Tatarov, Allerov, judges and ex-Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman in alleged corruption. They deny the accusations of wrongdoing.
If the plea deal had been reached, Mykytas could have exposed even more powerbrokers and paid more damages, according to the law enforcement sources. But now he is unlikely to give testimony due to the Tatarov case being blocked and Mykytas himself being pressured.
“Now he has no incentives to testify,” one of the sources said.
Editor’s Note: This report is part of the Investigative Hub project, within which the Kyiv Post monitors investigative reports in the Ukrainian media and brings them to the English-speaking audience, as well as produces original investigative stories. The project is supported by the National Endowment for Democracy.
