Editor’s Note: The periodic series “Justice Delayed, Justice Denied” looks at criminal cases stalled in courts and investigations not conducted despite evidence of crime and corruption.
Their alleged misdeeds have, if true, robbed the nation on a grand scale and shaped Ukraine’s reputation as a corrupt haven for mega-rich oligarchs and millions of impoverished citizens.
Their cases have made scandalous headlines, been the subject of investigations by law enforcement or journalists and, yet, none of these 10 major public figures have faced criminal charges.
All 10 have denied accusations of any wrongdoing. But all are politically powerful and, because Ukraine’s law enforcers are impotent, the nation may never know whether they are guilty or innocent.
With public anger rising over the failure to convict anyone for corruption since the EuroMaidan Revolution drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014, the Kyiv Post looks at allegations made against 10 of those who appear to be untouchable by law enforcement no matter what they do.
Arsen Avakov
Interior Minister Arsen Avakov is the nation’s top cop, but if the accusations against him are to be believed, he is in contention to be one of the nation’s top criminals.
His son Oleksandr is accused of embezzling Hr 14 million in supplying overpriced backpacks to the Interior Ministry, the 220,000-employee law enforcement agency that his father leads. The son was arrested in October by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, but released without bail.
Video footage published on the internet allegedly shows Oleksandr Avakov and Arsen Avakov’s former deputy, Serhiy Chebotar, discussing the alleged scheme in Chebotar’s office.
In a different video recorded by the Security Service of Ukraine and recognized by courts as genuine, Chebotar, Interior Ministry state secretary Oleksiy Takhtai and state firm Spetsvervis CEO Vasyl Petrivsky, an ex-aide to Avakov, are seen negotiating in Chebotar’s office another corrupt deal to sell sand at a rigged auction. In the video, Chebotar says that Avakov is aware of the deal and is worried that the sand has not been sold yet. Petrivsky pleaded guilty and has been convicted in a theft case for selling the sand.
Also, the weekly news magazine Novoye Vremya has published an investigation into alleged tax evasion in natural gas production projects by Avakov — accusations that Avakov denies. And Avakov’s top ally — lawmaker Ihor Kotvitsky, informally known as “Avakov’s wallet” — is under investigation by the NABU over an undeclared transfer of $40 million to Panama.
Ihor Kononenko
The NABU is also investigating President Petro Poroshenko’s top allies, lawmakers Ihor Kononenko and Oleksandr Hranovsky, and Olga Tkachenko, an ex-aide to Hranovsky, in a graft case linked to the state-owned Odesa Portside Plant, a fertilizer maker. Tkachenko is an ex-member of the plant’s executive board.
Oleksandr Vizir, an aide to Kononenko, became a member of Odesa Portside Plant’s board of directors in 2016.
Meanwhile, fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko has claimed he had been paying Hr 2,000 per 1,000 cubic meters in kickbacks to Kononenko so that Onyshchenko’s company could supply natural gas to the Odesa Portside Plant and state-owned power producer Tsentrenergo. Kononenko denies this.
Before quitting in February 2016, Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius also accused Kononenko of trying to install his proteges at his ministry and state firms.
The NABU is also investigating an embezzlement, abuse of power and forgery case involving Kyiv’s Rybalsky Kuznya shipyard, which is owned by Poroshenko and Kononenko.
President Petro Poroshenko’s then chief of staff Boris Lozhkin (L), Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (C) and Poroshenko attend the National Council of Reforms meeting on May 25, 2016. No one has been convicted in a big corruption case, a fact that many attribute to Ukraine’s elite covering for each other’s corruption. (UNIAN) (source)
Dmytro Firtash
Straight up, Dmytro Firtash denies all wrongdoing — and there’s plenty of accusations dating back for more than a decade.
Austrian authorities arrested Firtash in 2014 after the U. S. Federal Bureau of Investigation accused him of bribing Indian officials in exchange for uranium mining licenses. Austria has so far refused to extradite Firtash, who is also wanted by Spain on money laundering charges.
In 2011, a firm linked to Firtash and his partner Serhiy Lyovochkin bought state telecommunications giant Ukrtelecom for $1.3 billion. The buyout caused a huge scandal. The firm was the only bidder and its owners were unknown at the time.
Firtash has also been accused of siphoning massive amounts of the nation’s wealth by selling Russian and Turkmen gas in Ukraine through shady intermediaries called Eural TransGas and RosUkrEnergo.
In 2015, Ukraine’s Interior Ministry also opened an embezzlement case against executives of Firtash’s chemical firm Ostchem.
However, Firtash has not faced any charges in Ukraine due to the alleged “Vienna Agreement,” a deal he struck with a visiting Poroshenko on the eve of Ukraine’s presidential election on May 25, 2014. Firtash testified in an Austrian court in 2015 that he had met with Poroshenko in Vienna in April 2014 and reached a deal to support Poroshenko’s presidential bid. Poroshenko denies any such deal.
Serhiy Lyovochkin
Serhiy Lyovochkin, Yanukovych’s former chief of staff, has escaped any charges. He is also one of Firtash’s business partners and has been accused of participating in many of the oligarch’s schemes.
In 2016, lawmaker Sergii Leshchenko published an investigation according to which Lyovochkin owns an undeclared villa worth 40 million euros in the town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera. In September, the NABU opened a criminal case into Lyovochkin’s French villa. He’s innocent of all wrongdoing, he says.
Yuriy Boyko
In May, Leshchenko published the text of what he says is a draft parliament motion to strip Yuriy Boyko, the former energy minister and the leader of the Opposition Bloc, of his immunity from prosecution.
Boyko, an ally of Firtash and Lyovochkin, could then have been arrested and put on trial in a case that involves alleged embezzlement worth $700 million during the sale of natural gas. However, Leshchenko said the motion was blocked first by ex-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, and then by his successor, Yuriy Lutsenko. Both Shokin and Lutsenko deny this.
Boyko is also under investigation in a separate case involving the embezzlement of $400 million during the purchase of oil and gas rigs. He denies all wrongdoing.
Rinat Akhmetov
The NABU is investigating the controversial Rotterdam+ coal supply scheme, which was introduced by the energy regulator headed by Dmytro Vovk, a presidential protégé, in 2016.
The scheme introduced a new formula for calculating the price of electricity from coal-fueled power plants. The price of the coal in the formula was inflated: It was calculated for the coal that is to be imported from abroad and transported from the Rotterdam port. But in fact, the coal used at the plants is domestic.
Many critics, including lawmakers and energy experts, claim that Poroshenko and tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, the nation’s richest billionaire who sells electricity through his energy group DTEK, have reached a deal to introduce the scheme.
DTEK denies accusations of wrongdoing, saying that the energy prices are fair.
In 2015, prosecutors also opened a terrorism financing case against Akhmetov, accusing him of funding Kremlin-backed separatists. He has also been questioned in relation to the murder of more than 100 EuroMaidan protesters in 2014. But Akhmetov is a shrewd operator. He stays out of the public fray and lets his army of lawyers and PR people do his denials of wrongdoing — and they have.
Ihor Kolomoisky
Earlier in January a report by forensic auditor Kroll into PrivatBank uncovered a “large-scale and coordinated fraud” scheme that emptied $5.5 billion from the bank’s vaults when the bank was controlled by billionaire oligarchs Ihor Kolomoisky and Gennadiy Bogolyubov. The bank was nationalized in December 2016.
In December, a London court froze assets belonging to Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov worth $2.5 billion in a theft case filed by the nationalized PrivatBank and the Finance Ministry. Kolomoisky says he is innocent.
Viktor Medvedchuk
Viktor Medvedchuk, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s friend who is known as the “Prince of Darkness” by his legions of critics, has been openly promoting the Kremlin’s agenda in Ukraine. His Ukrainian Choice party has spread pro-Russian and separatist propaganda.
And yet, unlike many less prominent separatists, Medvedchuk has not been charged with separatism, treason or infringing on Ukraine’s territorial integrity. On the contrary, he has enjoyed close relations with Poroshenko.
Meanwhile, Medvedchuk associate Nisan Moiseyev has been accused of elbowing his way into Ukraine’s liquefied petroleum market with the help of Poroshenko, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Russian authorities. He says he’s a clean patriot.
Oleh Hladkovsky
Oleh Hladkovsky, Poroshenko’s business partner and a deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, is linked to Cypriot firm HUDC Holding Limited, which sold four used armored Toyota Land Cruiser V8 cars worth $428,000 to state-owned defense company SpecTechnoEksport in May. The cars were allegedly overpriced, with the state overpaying by $56,000.
Hladkovsky has also managed to receive several lucrative military contracts for his automaker Bohdan, formerly co-owned by Poroshenko, including a supply of 60 military ambulances worth $2 million, according to the Nashi Groshi state procurement watchdog. Hladkovsky denies the accusations of graft.
Natalia Korchak
Hanna Solomatina and Oksana Divnich, top officials of the National Agency for Preventing Corruption, said in November that the agency, including its head Natalia Korchak and other top officials, is involved in large-scale corruption and is controlled by the Presidential Administration. The NAPC and the Presidential Administration denied the accusations.
Solomatina accused Korchak and other officials of soliciting bribes to ensure that some officials’ disclosures were investigated, while others were not. They deny the charges.
Solomatina published what she says is her correspondence with Oleksiy Horashchenkov, a Presidential Administration official, in which he tries to give her orders. The Kyiv Post has also obtained documents from the audit on which the corruption investigation is based.
Many of the declaration checks with alleged violations were conducted by Tetiana Shkrebko, one of the deputy heads of the NAPC’s department for financial and lifestyle monitoring, according to the audit. Shkrebko was given a 5-year suspended sentence in 2016 for embezzling Hr 3 billion in a scheme spearheaded by Yanukovych.
In November a case into alleged NAPC corruption was transferred on the orders of Chief Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Nazar Kholodnytsky and Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko from the independent NABU to the presidentially controlled SBU, in what critics, including Solomatina, believe to be an effort to destroy the case.
The NABU has also investigated Korchak for failing to disclose in her yearly declaration a Skoda Octavia A7 car that she uses.
