Mystery of Ukraine's Richest Man and a Series of Unlikely Suicides
Wealthy
Ukrainians with knowledge of privatization cannot stop killing
themselves.
Many former allies who could tell most about the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov’s activities have been found dead
13
April, 2015
This
article originally
appeared in Newsweek
Rain
lashes the ninth-floor balcony from which Ukrainian prosecutor Sergei
Melnychuk was thrown to his death. On the concrete below, his
portrait and a few candles in glass jars form a meagre memorial. Wind
off the Black Sea has dashed one jar to the ground, the shattered
glass a grim reminder of his body after the all.
Ukraine’s
war with Russian-sponsored separatists is not the only conflict in
the country. Across the post-revolutionary nation, reformists inside
and outside government are fighting to free corrupted state
institutions from the stranglehold of a few incredibly wealthy
businessmen.
Largely
fought behind closed doors, this conflict spilled into the public
arena when between 19 and 23 March the billionaire governor of
Dnipropretovsk region, Ihor Kolomoisky, sent Kalashnikov-wielding men
with gas masks to seize the Kiev headquarters of two state-owned
energy enterprises. He was promptly sacked by billionaire president
Petro Poroshenko, but the powerplay is far from over.
Feuding
oligarchs are battling to retain or increase their influence in the
new order, and their lieutenants are turning up dead.
Melnychuk
was a prosecutor in the southern port town of Odessa, governed by
Kolomoisky ally Ihor Palytsia. He is just one of at least eight
officials appointed by the Yanukovych regime, ousted by pro-democracy
protesters in February last year, to die in mysterious circumstances
over the past three months.
And
Ukraine’s law enforcement doesn’t want to talk about them.
When
Melnychuk’s body was found on 22 March, police initially told local
journalists he had committed suicide. But it soon emerged that
alarmed neighbours had called police on hearing of a late-night
struggle. Pathologists found he had been badly beaten before the
fall. Later the same day, Odessa prosecutors registered Melnychuk’s
“suicide” as a murder, and arrested a former police officer they
describe only as “citizen K”.
In
reply to a legal request by Newsweek for
information on investigations into the deaths of seven other former
officials, all tied to Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, the
General Prosecutor’s Office responded that all the information
about all the deaths was a state secret – a staggering claim to
make about a series of apparently unrelated civilian deaths they told
the press were suicides.
After
an intervention by the Presidential Administration, the General
Prosecutor’s Office disclosed that four of the seven deaths are
being investigated as murders, with another investigation as yet
unclassified. The two remaining cases had been closed with no
evidence of a crime. No other information was provided.
At
the heart of this murder mystery is one wealthy businessman in
particular – 48-year-old billionaire Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s
richest man with a fortune estimated at $7bn. A former lawmaker for
the Party of Regions (rebranded as the “Oppositon Bloc” for the
current parliament) he retains serious clout in the country through
his purchasing power and long-standing allies in law enforcement and
parliament.
“Ahkmetov was the grey cardinal of the Party of Regions,” says Dmitriy Gnap, an investigative journalist for Ukrainian TV channel Hromadske who has spent more than a decade reporting on the oligarch’s activities. “Yanukovych was the official leader, but Ahkmetov was the man who controlled all the financing, all the political actions of the party.”
Ukraine’s
new government has opened numerous criminal probes into those
political actions, but with several of those who knew most about
Akhmetov’s activities now dead, they can never be compelled to
testify in court.
On
9 March Akhmetov’s fellow Party of Regions lawmaker, Stanislav
Melnyk, was found shot dead in his home with a suicide note. Widely
known as “Akhmetov’s guard”, Melnyk ran a security firm that
looked after the assets of Systems Capital Management, a holding
company set up by Akhmetov to manage his diverse range of
investments.
Melnyk’s
relationship with Akhmetov goes back to the 1990s when budding
oligarchs all over the collapsed Soviet Union acquired state-owned
enterprises for a fraction of their real value, often using coercion
or violence to do so.
Ukrainian
President Petro Poroshenko, left, listens to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky
during their meeting in Kiev March 25, 2015 | Photo: Mikhail
Palinchak, Ukrainian Presidential Press Service
In
1999 Melnyk assumed management of Donetsk Brewery, a state company
acquired by its Soviet-era manager, Yuri Pavlenko, in 1991. Pavlenko
was murdered in 1998, allowing Akhmetov’s Systems Capital
Management to acquire it through a complex network of other holding
companies. Melnyk headed the brewery until 2005, when he moved to
head Luks, another firm controlled indirectly by Systems Capital
Management. Both companies have spent more than a decade dominating
the lucrative Ukrainian beer market, making a number of hostile
takeovers in Akhmetov’s home region of Donetsk.
“Melnyk knew a lot about Akhmetov, about how he acquired state property,” says Gnap. “Some oligarchs are interested in hiding the people who know a lot about their taking control over big state enterprises.”
Three
days after Melnyk’s death, another former Regions MP and the former
governor of Zaphorizhia region, Oleksandr Peklushenko, was found shot
in the neck at his home.
Peklushenko
was closely tied to Akhmetov’s business interests. In 2011, the
first year of his governorship, System Capital Management’s
enormous subsidiary Metinvest acquired 50% of a company called
Industrial, giving it control over a majority stake in Zaporizhia’s
former state steel producer, Zaporizhstal.
Shortly
prior to the deaths of Melnyk and Peklushenko, the lives of Mykhaylo
Chechetov, Oleksiy Kolesnik, Mykola Serhiyenko, Serhiy Walter and
Oleksandr Bordyuh were all cut short between 26 January and 28
February. All appointed by the Party of Regions, all were under
investigation by the new government.
Chechetov,
once the party’s deputy chairman, oversaw the sale of billions of
dollars’ worth of state assets when head of Ukraine’s State
Property Fund. He was bailed out by an anonymous benefactor and
awaiting trial when he fell from his 17th floor apartment, leaving a
suicide note.
One
of the assets sold under Chechetov was an iron ore mine, KZhRK. That
deal is now the subject of a mud-slinging lawsuit in the UK High
Court between ex-Dnipropretovsk governor Kolomoisky and another
prominent oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk. The third businessman to benefit
from the sale was Rinat Akhmetov.
Chechetov
and his successor at the State Property Fund, Valentyna
Semenyuk-Samsonenko, would have retained a wealth of knowledge about
the privatisation of some of Ukraine’s most valuable assets. But
Semenyuk-Samsonenko was found shot dead in August last year. Law
enforcement officers concluded that she had killed herself with her
husband’s hunting rifle.
Without
the benefit of crime scene evidence, it’s impossible to know if
Akhmetov ordered hits on his old allies, if someone else did, or if
nine affluent individuals simply succumbed to the pressure of being
under investigation.
That’s
the line taken by the former administration.
“I still consider it suicide. I don’t consider these expert opinions that they knew too much to be serious,” a former top official from the Yanukovych administration tellsNewsweek.“They [the dead officials] were simply not very deep and thoughtful people. In life, too, they were weak.”
Watching the country’s top prosecutors leaving the General Prosecutor’s Office in sharp suits and stepping into gleaming Porsches, BMWs and Land Rovers, it’s clear that the average state prosecutor’s wage, equivalent to €400 per month, isn’t their only source of income. Within the same building, officials are representing an array of different interests.
With
such great wealth at stake, the truth about these deaths is unlikely
to emerge any time soon.
Back
in Odessa, three prosecutors laugh as they dismiss allegations that
their office tried to cover up Sergei Melnychuk’s murder. They have
good reason to be happy. They’re off to the Rugby World Cup in
London later this year, an event where one ticket to a group stage
game sells for the equivalent of €400.
Kiev's Witch Hunt Continues: 39 Pro-Russian 'Saboteurs' Arrested in Odessa
In
Ukraine, a "saboteur" is anyone who doesn't lick
Poroshenko's boots.
Ricky
Twisdale
European democracy in action!
13
April, 2015
I
live in Ukraine. I do not trust anything that the Kiev regime says.
Nothing. They tell huge whoppers about literally everything. They say
10 Russians have been arrested. If they can lie about endless columns
of Russian armor, they can lie about capturing Russians. It is easy
to get some Russian passports to wave around like Porky the Pig did
in Munich.
I
am quite sure that if asked, the regime's official spokesman, Col.
Lysenko, or "Yats" or any of the other radical rabble
rousers would lie about what they had for breakfast. Probably they
would say they were having bacon and eggs until Putin snuck in the
kitchen and disappeared with the eggs out the window.
-----
This
article originally appeared at Agence France Presse
KIEV
(AFP) - Ukrainian authorities on Thursday said 39 people had been
arrested for planning a pro-Russian rebellion in the southern port
city of Odessa which has been rocked by mysterious explosions in past
months.
The
announcement came on the eve of President Petro Poroshenko's visit to
the city to mark the 71st anniversary of its liberation by Soviet
troops from the Nazis.
Ukraine's
SBU security service said 29 people had been arrested and a large
cache of arms and explosives was seized.
They
were taking orders from pro-Russian separatist leaders in Ukraine's
rebel-controlled east and were planning the murder of a lawmaker and
several pro-Western activists, SBU chief Valentin Nalivaichenko said.
"According
to their plan, this would be the start of the seizure of territory to
wrest Odessa and its surrounding region and create a new
quasi-republic," he said.
Two
days earlier, the SBU had announced the arrest of 10 other people,
all Russians, who they accused of planning bombings in the run-up to
Friday's event in Odessa marking the liberation of the city during
World War II.
They
were "planning acts of sabotage and bombings," the SBU
spokesman said.
Although
Odessa lies far from the fighting in Ukraine's east, dozens of
unclaimed attacks here have stirred up an atmosphere of mistrust in
the already divided Russian-speaking Black Sea port.
Founded
in 1794 by Russian Empress Catherine II, the bustling city lies deep
in government-controlled territory but some here fear that it could
eventually be in Moscow's sights.
Russian
President Vladimir Putin last year said Odessa was not historically
part of Ukraine but of Novorossiya -- a tsarist-era term now used by
pro-Russian rebels for territory in the east.
More
than 6,000 people have been killed in fighting between the
separatists rebels and the Ukraine authorities that began a year ago
this week.
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