Fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych recently did not appear for questioning at the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine. This news was replicated by all Ukrainian media. However, almost none of the journalists mentioned the fact that Yanukovych’s accomplices are freely roaming around Ukraine and have caused Ukraine almost more harm than the prisoner president. We are talking about the notorious judicial tandem of Viktor Tatkov and Artur Emelyanov. For many Ukrainian businessmen, these names have become synonymous with judicial lawlessness. And not only in the Yanukovych era, but, unfortunately, in modern times as well.
The main “achievement” of the Tatkov-Emelyanov tandem is the system of distributing cases among the judges of the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine. They created it when Tatkov headed the VHSU, and Emelyanov was his deputy. Emelyanov managed the system.
This or that judge was presented with a case and told how the case should be decided. If the judge did not want to get dirty, the hearing was scheduled for the day of his vacation, and the case, through automatic distribution, went to someone else. Some cases, therefore, sometimes went through 5-8 judges, however, in the end, there was always an accommodating judge.
The described scheme was used to legitimize the raider takeovers carried out by the Tatkova-Emelyanova organized crime group. However, they also had “clients” from outside. Oligarchs, deputies and businessmen of a lower rank who wanted to be guaranteed to squeeze out other people’s business. The cost of a court decision under the Tatkov-Emelyanov system ranged from $500,000 to $10,000,000. Everything depended on the level of lawlessness and the size of the disputed property or capital. Over time, thanks to the “organizational work” of the tandem, a whole galaxy of millionaire judges was formed in the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine.
Moreover, most of them still remain in their places. The lustration announced by the new government hardly affected judges. The only thing the “lustrators” were honored with was to dismiss Tatkov from the post of head of the VHSU. At the same time, both Tatkov and Emelyanov remained judges.
A number of unlawful court decisions testify to how successful their raiding business is. For example, in May of this year, Viktor Tatkov issued a ruling in case No. 910/19289/14. The inspection commission of judges found that “judge V.I. Tatkov, as the former head of the Higher Economic Court of Ukraine, continues to influence the judges of his fiefdom – the Economic Court of the Donetsk Region.”
Members of the commission admitted that the judges of this court consider cases in such a way as to make the work of Alexei Zhmailo, the state liquidator of bankrupt enterprises, easier. Zhmailo is one of the members of the Tatkov-Emelyanov gang, who bankrupts captured enterprises so that they can be redeemed for pennies and on supposedly legal grounds. They admitted it, but things didn’t go any further.
Perhaps because the activities of robber judges are covered by a reliable “cover” in the High Council of Justice. This is one of Emelyanov’s partners – Pavel Grechkovsky. Journalists from the “Schemes” program on Radio Liberty studied Grechkovsky’s activities and his connection with Emelyanov and discovered many interesting facts.
Even under Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, Grechkovsky (he was then a deputy of the Kiev City Council) together with Emelyanov received 7.5 hectares of protected forests on Zhukov Island near Kiev. This site was rented for 10 years by a certain company “Cecile”, declared as a health organization. Before Maidan, in addition to politics, Grechkovsky was a lawyer and was a co-owner of the Cecil company.
Even under Yanukovych, the prosecutor’s office considered the removal of lands from the reserve fund a violation. Prosecutors waged a protracted legal war with the owners of Cecil. However, the company always emerged victorious from the courts. And it is not surprising, given that one of its owners headed the Kiev Economic Court at that time. This, naturally, was Artur Emelyanov.
Why was Grechkovsky appointed to the High Council of Justice after the revolution? Because Tatkov and Emelyanov needed a person who would definitely pass lustration in the judiciary and, at least for external observers, would be a new face. It is not yet known how much they paid for this appointment. However, knowing these figures, we can assume that we are talking about millions of dollars.
We must pay tribute to the Tatkov-Emelyanov “tandem”: they never skimped on bribes to solve their problems. According to various sources, Emelyanov paid either 9 or 40 million dollars just to circumvent the lustration law (it was amended specifically for the “client”).
Be that as it may, after his appointment, Grechkovsky had to hastily hide his assets offshore. However, if desired, the involvement of both Emelyanov and Grechkovsky in the illegally seized forest area can be traced. The first is connected with these assets through his wife and the offshore companies Orion 2000 and Multi-Investment Establishment. The second is through the same offshore company Cheval Blanc.
All the facts listed above are easy to check. Moreover, all of them were established by various investigative bodies and inspection commissions. Over the past years, evidence of the crimes of Tatkov and Emelyanov has accumulated not even hundreds, but thousands. However, for some reason there is no logical conclusion to all these investigations. Raider judges continue to rob Ukrainian businesses. And neither war nor revolution interferes with them. It is sad to realize that for these people in Ukraine nothing has changed over the past 1.5 years.
Olga Obashidze, for SKELET-info
