Anton Yatsenko: the history of the tender combiner

Ostap Bender knew 400 relatively legal ways of taking money. One thing was enough for Anton Yatsenko and his partners to turn first the tender procurement system, then electronic tax reporting, then the real estate valuation market into their own golden failure. These scams brought in billions, fabulously enriching everyone who was involved in them. At the same time, participants in these combinations still continue to be elected to parliament, occupy leadership positions and engage in economic activities. It seems that nothing has changed in the state either after the first or after the second Maidan…

Anton Yatsenko. “The Union of Sword and Ploughshare”

The appearance of Yatsenko in the corridors of the Verkhovna Rada was somewhat akin to the appearance of Ostap Ibrahimovich in front of the most respected people of Stargorod – but the role of “a powerful old man close to the emperor” seemed to be played by Vasily Tsushko. Jokes aside, almost nothing is known about our hero’s past, and this is more than strange! After all, the Ukrainian authorities do not allow anyone into their offices who just walks in like that – unless you are a finalist in a regional beauty contest. And she certainly doesn’t mess up big business in equal partnership with young men who don’t have influential and wealthy relatives behind them. This begs the question: who is Anton Yatsenko?

Yatsenko Anton Vladimirovich born on July 13, 1977 in Kyiv – that’s his entire public biography! His father, Vladimir Porfiryevich Yatsenko, is a man about whom nothing is also known, except that he is a co-owner of his son’s business. That is, in the era of late socialism and in the 90s, Vladimir Porfiryevich could have been anyone, even a Turkish citizen – we still won’t know this, as well as the reasons for such secrecy.

And then comes 1998, when 21-year-old Anton Yatsenko, having successfully avoided military service, graduates from the Kiev Economic Institute of Management (EKOMEN). A very interesting educational institution: one of the first Ukrainian private universities, where in 4 years, without particularly worrying, you can get a bachelor’s degree in economics. But if the Kiev EKOMEN can be called a more or less tolerable forge of accounting personnel, then for the residents of the province it is known as one of the “basement universities”, since its branches were opened in rented premises that could be found: a vocational school dormitory, a closed club, a wing of the mechanical engineering building technical school This often depended on who exactly opened such a branch under the purchased “license” of the Kyiv EKOMEN office: the caretaker of a technical school or the physical education teacher of a vocational school.

In the Ukrainian outback of the 90s, all these private educational institutions often looked like parodies and were perceived by the local population as shops for “selling” diplomas. At the same time, EKOMEN was rated lower in all respects than the notorious MAUP – and training there was cheaper.

So, if local businessmen from the plow and officials of executive committees (as well as their children) received higher economic or legal education at MAUP, then young people from simpler families went to EKOMEN to get an accounting diploma. They didn’t give me in-depth knowledge of economics, but they taught me how to understand tax reporting. Even today, judging by numerous reviews, EKOMEN graduates have little chance of getting a job in large companies or government agencies – employers look at their “crusts” askance. Therefore, it is all the more surprising that after graduating from EKOMEN, Anton Yatsenko joined the Verkhovna Rada Office directly. It seems that this obviously could not have happened without someone’s patronage or a major “skid”!

But more than 800 people worked in the Apparatus at that time (now over 1100, as I found out Skelet.Info), and many of them humbly pore over regulations and analytical reports until their retirement. Anton Yatsenko managed to escape from this swamp in the first months, becoming an assistant-consultant to People’s Deputy Vasily Tsushko. Who hired whom will remain unknown, but it was through Tsushko that the “young specialist” Yatsenko was able to meet a lot of people he needed, and also for the first time have a hand in the topic of tenders.

Through Tsushko there was a direct path to meeting his colleague in the Selyanskaya Party, Alexander Tkachenko, who served as Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada from July 1998 to January 2000. There is information that Yatsenko even worked a little in his Secretariat (this service is also part of the Verkhovna Rada Administration). Perhaps, through Tsushko and Tkachenko, he met such an important character as Sergei Osyka – in 1994-99. who worked as the Minister of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade of Ukraine, and was named as a participant in many corruption schemes of a strategic scale. It was Osyka who was considered by many to be the ideological inspirer of the tender scam, and his close cooperation with Yatsenko continued afterwards – and by the way, in 2006-2010, at the height of the tender scandal, Osyka and Yatsenko were deputies of the BYuT faction together. However, the number of participants in the tender schemes was much larger…

Tender combination: beginning

So, Anton Yatsenko’s first acquaintance with tender procurement occurred back in 1999 at the stage of preparing the relevant bill – which was prepared, among other things, by Vasily Tsushko. Anton Yatsenko, who was running around the Rada with drafts of the bill, immediately realized that he had a gold mine in his hands, which could bring profit no less than a metallurgical plant or a gas scheme. Subsequently, a scandal erupted: it was reported that uncoordinated changes were made to the bill, which made tender scams possible. However, it was never possible to clearly establish who exactly did this: Tsushko, who was responsible for the bill, whose signatures endorsed every page of the document, or Anton Yatsenko, who forged them. Actually, the scandal flared up and died out, like many others associated with the name of Yatsenko.

And in 2000, two legal entities were registered, which then played a major role in the creation of tender schemes. Firstly, this is European Consulting Agencies LLC, registered on October 18, 2000 (IK 31172276). Among its founders, in addition to Anton Yatsenko and Vladimir Vrublevsky (a certain friend of the Yatsenko family), one could see the names of Evgeniy Kalny (son of Nadezhda Obushko, then head of the Public Procurement Department of the Ministry of Economy), Viktor Miroshnichenko (deputy head of the public procurement department of the Ministry of Health of Ukraine) and a certain Frenchman Remy Robert Duflot (allegedly a member of the supervisory board of VABank). Secondly, this is the public organization “Center for Tender Procedures and Business Planning”, registered on November 29, 2000, established by Viktor Miroshnichenko, Anton Yatsenko and Vladimir Vrublevsky.

The story continued in 2002, when Anton Yatsenko had already climbed the career ladder to head of the “information and analytical department of the Department of Social and Political Affairs of the Main Directorate for Internal Policy in the Administration of the President of Ukraine.” This is an interesting moment from the life of our hero! The fact is that at the beginning of 2000 there was a “right-wing coup” in the Rada (staged under the new Prime Minister Yushchenko) and the left lost their seats. And here Anton Yatsenko leaves the “villagers” Vasily Tsushko and Alexander Tkachenko, and flies to the Presidential Administration – which since November 1999 was headed by Vladimir Litvin. So, before that, Litvin worked as an assistant to the president on domestic policy issues, and then headed this department in the Administration – that is, in fact, Litvin accepted Yatsenko to his old place. Why would that be? At the same time, in 2000-2002. Anton Yatsenko received a second diploma (law) from the Kiev National Economic University (KNEU). And at the same time, Anton Yatsenko’s tender scheme began to work, giving him a stable income of colossal proportions.

This began under the government of Anatoly Kinakh. On May 31, 2002, an agreement was concluded between the Ministry of Economy and the public organization “Center for Tender Procedures” (signed by Deputy Minister Valery Zubarev), according to which the “Center” received the rights to develop samples of tender documentation, which it then had to provide to the ministry free of charge. However, this agreement was a scam, since by that time all the necessary documentation had already not only been developed by Yatsenko’s team, but also… privatized by them.

It seems that the essence of this agreement was only to legalize the scheme being prepared and put it into effect.

And in August 2002, Deputy Prime Minister Vladimir Seminozhenko sent a demand to the executive authorities “to pay the necessary attention to the issue of concluding relevant licensing agreements between customers and the Center for Tender Procedures or to involve it in joint work.” And in November 2002, the Yanukovych-Azarov government received a notification from the Center for Tender Procedures and Business Planning. He reported that citizens Anton Yatsenko and Vladimir Vrublevsky are the copyright holders of “Samples of tender documentation” (certificate PA No. 5086 dated January 17, 2002), “Methods for evaluating tender proposals” (certificate No. 6443 dated October 22, 2002) and “Methodology for verifying compliance by customers requirements of current legislation when purchasing goods and works and services at public expense” (certificate No. 6443 dated August 14, 2002). In connection with this, the government was warned that tender procurement should be carried out only using these “developments”: firstly, this would supposedly allow the state budget to save up to 1 billion hryvnia annually, and secondly, this is a requirement of copyright legislation.

In response to the impudent people, they sent down a commission from the Ministry of Justice and an investigative group from the SBU, which established a blatant scam. Firstly, the patented “developments” turned out to be parts of the Ukrainian law on tender procurement – on which Vasily Tsushko and Anton Yatsenko worked. It turned out that the latter simply “privatized” the law (!) and its applications, declaring them his “intellectual property” – and successfully makes money from this by selling forms of “official contracts” to tender participants. At the same time, the cost of a set of forms started from 350 and reached 10 thousand hryvnia (2000 dollars at the then exchange rate), and yet tens of thousands of tender purchases were carried out in the country over the course of a year! That is, Anton Yatsenko successfully applied the popular scheme of paid services in tenders, securing it with intellectual property rights. So much for Failure! But the schemer’s plans were not limited to this: he was going to raise a lot of money with the help of “chess lectures” – more precisely, paid seminars for officials participating in tender purchases. The cost of participation in these seminars reached 950 hryvnia for each listener.

Surprisingly, the impudent people were not imprisoned, they were not even given a slap on the wrist. Moreover, a few months later Anton Yatsenko became… an assistant to First Deputy Prime Minister Mykola Azarov! Apparently, Nikolai Yanovich assessed the possibilities of this scam very positively (for himself). As for the test results, they were simply shelved – if not thrown into the trash. And for some reason, it is not surprising that this inspection was supervised by the then deputy head of the Main Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime of the SBU, Andrei Kozhemyakin, Yatsenko’s future comrade-in-arms in the BYuT parliamentary faction (in 2007-2010). According to some information, another future BYuT member, Sergei Osyka, who was then a people’s deputy from United Ukraine and a member of the legal policy committee, did not stand aside. Although there is no evidence of Osyka’s direct participation in these schemes, he was called one of their patrons. Sources reported that part of the income from the sale of forms was simply transferred through some other schemes to the accounts of the companies of high-ranking officials – perhaps also under the guise of payment for some expensive services.

The circle of participants in the scam was wider. “Provision of services” was carried out through two commercial companies: LLC “Center for Tender Procedures”, created on January 24, 2001 (founders: Anton Yatsenko’s father and wife) and LLC “European Consulting Agencies”. At the same time, Center for Tender Procedures LLC had many clone subsidiaries: starting with Center for Tender Procedures of Ukraine LLC (established on July 9, 2002 by Vladimir Porfiryevich Yatsenko and Vladimir Vrublevsky) and ending with the Interregional Center for Tender Procedures. In addition, the All-Ukrainian Training Center LLC and the Institute of Public Procurement LLC were created, whose task was to conduct the above-mentioned paid seminars and “training courses”. And for the successful functioning of the system, in 2004, the pro-presidential parliamentary majority adopted amendments to the law, which gave the public organization “Center for Tender Procedures” the powers of a state governing body.

Encouraged, Anton Yatsenko improved his business and began selling documentation via the Internet: paid, downloaded, printed! This saved him from the need to print forms in a printing house, deliver them throughout Ukraine and monitor their implementation.

Also in 2004, Anton Yatsenko and his colleagues decided to expand the base of their patented “intellectual property” and registered five more “inventions”. Which, in turn, allowed them to charge new “royalties” for the following operations and services:

* “Method for automated production of state purchases, goods, work and services” – patent No. 61042 dated February 16, 2004

* “Method of processing information during trading” – patent No. 61043 dated February 16, 2004

* “Method of creating electronic purchases for state funds” – patent No. 62907 dated March 15, 2004.

* “The process of data transformation with electronically posted, posted, periodically updated documents for the procurement of goods, work and services” – patent No. 70907 dated October 15, 2004.

* “The process of transformation of data during the transformation of electronic document management for the purpose of purchasing goods, work and services” – patent No. 70908 dated October 15, 2004.

It is interesting that during this period of tender schemes, their defenders were SDPU (u) deputy Oleg Lukashuk (from 2005 he defected to BYuT) and Our Ukraine deputy Vladimir Stretovich. Both of them made their mark in 2003, when they bombarded both government services and prosecutors with letters demanding to respect the rights of “intellectual property” belonging to the “Center for Tender Procedures” – that is, Anton Yatsenko. Thus, the latter had powerful support in his idea of ​​usurping the monopoly right to all the documentation necessary for the tender. After all, let us recall that Vladimir Stretovich then had the image of not only an “honest oppositionist”, but also a tireless fighter against corruption (head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee for Combating Corruption in Law Enforcement Agencies) – so his “roof” reliably protected him from all suspicions.

Success in the tender business also contributed to the further advancement of Yatsenko’s career as an economist. In 2003, he became a candidate of economic sciences at KNEU, and in 2004 he was appointed vice-rector of EKOMEN, another profitable commercial project from which he himself emerged several years ago.

Anton Yatsenko. Tender combination: continued

The Orange Revolution did not destroy the scheme of tender combinations. The voices of those few deputies from Yushchenko’s circle who tried to abolish this corrupt monopoly were not heard. On the contrary, the new government took tender schemes (as well as other gas ones) under its wing, they became even more profitable, and their “operators” generally lost all semblance of fear and decency.

Anton Yatsenko and his business partners managed to find contacts with the new government as quickly as they had become Azarov’s best friends two years before. Moreover, Yatsenko had many good friends in the ranks of the Orange. Firstly, the socialists who took Yushchenko’s side, among whom loomed his first “mentor” Vasily Tsushko. And secondly, Andrei Kozhemyakin, who in April 2005 became the head of the SBU Main Directorate for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime, and the Deputy Chairman of the SBU for Operational Issues. And the chairman of the Service at that time was Alexander Turchinov. And soon Turchynov will declare that “Yatsenko belongs to the young talented scientists” – and will stand by him with all his might. This is how the very “tender mafia of Ukraine” began to take shape, in which representatives of various political groups managed to participate.

Already on April 19, 2005, the public organization “Tender Chamber of Ukraine” was registered, which replaced the former “Center for Tender Procedures”. Its founders were the Association for Assistance in the Fight against Corruption (Tatiana Berezhnaya), the Center for the Development of Antimonopoly Law and Competition (Svetlana Legoyda), and the chairman of the board was Oleg Fadeev, Anton Yatsenko’s cousin. On June 16, 2005, the Verkhovna Rada adopted the law “On introducing changes to all legislative acts of Ukraine to provide additional guarantees for the protection of the financial interests of the state,” the authors of which were deputies of the BYuT faction Oleg Lukashuk and Anatoly Seminoga. This law gave the public organization “Tender Chamber of Ukraine” exclusive rights to carry out tender purchases and control them.

The name has changed, the essence of the scheme has changed somewhat, and new managers have appeared. Despite the fact that the Tender Chamber was also given the status of a public organization, it received a wider range of powers than the former Center for Tender Procedures. First of all, because the “public” was represented entirely by government representatives, primarily by people’s deputies. The supervisory board of the “Tender Chamber” included people’s deputies Igor Alekseev (CPU faction), Philip Buzhdigan (CPU), Igor Kalnichenko (Regions of Ukraine), Vitaly Khomutynnik Nikolai Karnaukh (Socialist Party), Oleg Lukashuk (BYuT), Anatoly Seminoga (BYuT), Nikolai Odaynik (Our Ukraine), Sergey Osyka (United Ukraine). In addition, it also included representatives of the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the State Treasury and the Antimonopoly Committee – controlled by the parties in power (Our Ukraine, BYuT, SPU). Nikolai Odaynik (Our Ukraine) was elected President of the Tender Chamber, Ksenia Lyapina (Our Ukraine) was elected first vice-president, and socialist Nikolai Karnaukh became co-chairman of the Supervisory Board. At the same time, Oleg Fadeev remained the chairman of the board of the Tender Chamber.

Although the charter of this “public organization” declared it non-profit, the powers of the “Tender Chamber”, which monopolized and crushed all tender operations in Ukraine to the market, were enough for all kinds of corrupt activities. It was possible to organize tenders for their own “pocket” companies, profiting from the “cutting” of budget funds. It was possible to take kickbacks from other companies, allowing them to participate in tender operations. As a rule, politicians and officials who controlled or sought to control the “Tender Chamber” specialized in one thing, which is why conflicts constantly broke out between them.

In addition, the activities of the Tender Chamber immediately aroused dissatisfaction among those Ukrainian businessmen who were forced to pay kickbacks or were not allowed to participate in tenders at all. This is where the nickname “tender mafia” arose, which flourished in 2006-2007 – after the law of December 15, 2005 “On the procurement of goods, works and services for public funds”, authored by Sergei Osyka, came into force. This law further expanded the powers of the “Tender Chamber”, which received the right to: explain the procedure for applying laws, determine the list of media that meet the requirements for information about government procurement, coordinate closed procurement procedures, consider complaints, publish information about tenders in the press, control implementation of government procurement.

What about our hero? Anton Yatsenko wisely stayed somewhat aloof from the Tender Chamber itself, although he was its vice president from 2005 to 2007. However, “cutting” and “kickbacks” at auctions were not his strong point, especially since leading political forces and the most powerful oligarchic groups crossed their swords over them. Yatsenko continued to take “fees for failure”, that is, to sell forms and documentation for tenders, and also patented and registered for himself (and his relatives) a system of electronic tenders – including privatizing the website “Portal Public Procurement of Ukraine”, through which all tenders were carried out. Bidding through alternative sites, including those that had already taken place, was declared not to comply with the law – which means that their participants had to “enter” again.

Meanwhile, battles with political scandals of strategic proportions unfolded over the Tender Chamber. Thus, the law of December 15, 2005 aroused objections from the World Bank, President Yushchenko vetoed it, but the Rada overcame this veto – not being afraid to go into confrontation with Bankova (however, parliamentary elections were still looming). And in July 2006, mass protest rallies began under the walls of the Verkhovna Rada against the corruption schemes of the “Tender Chamber”, the participants of which also demanded to deprive LLC “European Consulting Agencies” (Yatsenko, Vrublevsky) of the monopoly on the electronic tender procurement system (website “Public Procurement of Ukraine “).

The Accounts Chamber of Ukraine stated that from March to June 2006 alone it received over 2.6 thousand complaints about the results of tenders. Meanwhile, Anton Yatsenko convinced politicians and journalists that “criminal persons” were seeking to deprive the Chamber of Commerce of its monopoly powers and transfer tenders to the control of the Cabinet of Ministers. At the same time, Yatsenko and his fellow relatives dealt most mercilessly with publications that published facts about corruption in the Tender Chamber: they were declared slander and immediately sued. It is interesting that a year later, as a people’s deputy, Anton Yatsenko will initiate bill No. 2085 of February 15, 2008 on the criminal liability of journalists for libel.

In August 2006, after the scandalous “political coup”, during which a coalition of the Party of Regions, the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Socialist Party was created, changes occurred in the leadership of the Tender Chamber: Nikolai Odainik was dismissed, and Raisa Bogatyreva became the president of the chamber. During her short leadership of the Tender Chamber, Bogatyreva became famous mainly for scandals with tender purchases of medicines for the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Emergency Situations, as well as her conflict with Mykola Azarov, who became the first Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. Its essence was as follows: already in the fall of 2006, Azarov began to insist on transferring most of the powers to control tenders to the Cabinet of Ministers. It should be noted that Anton Yatsenko’s “small business” was only partially affected by this: he would have lost his monopoly on the electronic trading site (which caused particular dissatisfaction among entrepreneurs), but would have retained the right to “intellectual property.” However, the Verkhovna Rada not only did not support Azarov, but also, with new amendments to the law “On Public Procurement,” gave the “Tender Chamber” dated December 1, 2006, broader powers to control tenders. In short, he is his own auditor and prosecutor!

2007 was the last year in the history of the Tender Chamber, but also the most fruitful year for it. Its leadership changed again: on June 14, instead of the departed Bogatyreva, Alexander Tkachenko, who at that time was a deputy from the Communist Party of Ukraine, became the president of this “public organization,” and Yuri Pakhomov (adviser to Prime Minister Yanukovych) became vice-president. At the same time, they said that Tkachenko’s candidacy was lobbied by Yatsenko, who in return entered into an agreement with the communists to promote his people to power according to the Communist Party quota. At the same time, the “Tender Chamber” was taken over by two pro-presidential teams: from BYuT, Alexander Turchynov (deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council since May 2007) was involved in this, and from “Our Ukraine”, the head of the Secretariat, Viktor Baloga.

Sources Skelet.Info reported that the “income” from the corruption operations of the “tender mafia” in 2007 amounted to hundreds of millions of hryvnias monthly, and a considerable part of it went to finance the election campaign of NUNS and BYuT. Whether this is true or not, in the fall Anton Yatsenko was elected to the Rada on the BYuT list – just like Sergei Osyka, as well as their common old friend Andrei Kozhemyakin. The new parliament tried in February 2008 to once again revise the powers of the “Tender Chamber”, but by that time it was causing such a negative public response that on March 20, 2008, the Rada adopted Law No. 150-VI “On invalidating the Law of Ukraine “On the Procurement of Goods, works and services for public funds,” which deprived the “Tender Chamber” of all its powers. In fact, from that moment on, it was liquidated, formally remaining an abandoned and useless “public organization” in the process of liquidation – to which Ukrainian politicians hastened to forget their affiliation.

Not by tender alone

Anton Yatsenko skimmed the last “cream” from his brainchild in the form of providing paid services to tender participants, transferring fees to the accounts of the Royal Finance company, and from there to Brokbusinessbank, owned by Sergei Buryak (another BYU member). This scheme was very useful to them when, on December 27, 2007, Sergei Buryak became the chairman of the State Tax Administration of Ukraine (STAU).

Yatsenko’s method made it possible to turn not only tenders into a source of income. The same mechanism for monopolizing a service in order to make a good profit was implemented in the State Tax Administration. Once its management ordered that the acceptance of tax reporting in electronic form would be carried out only through the reporting operator Effective Information Systems LLC. And it just so happened that the director of this company was Pyotr Krasnov, one of Anton Yatsenko’s close friends, who worked with him at the Tender Chamber. It was reported that paid services were even provided in bulk, with discounts: the cost of an “annual subscription” for services for legal entities was 960 hryvnia, and for private entrepreneurs 360 hryvnia. Deputy Elena Lukash, who raised this topic then, stated that this scheme gave its authors more than 2 billion hryvnia annually!

At the same time, Yatsenko did not lose interest in good old government procurement, especially since from 2008 to 2012 he was the head of the Verkhovna Rada subcommittee on regulating the public procurement market, orders and competitions. As they say, let the fox into the hen house! Skelet.Info received evidence that he increased his income significantly. Well, only the “Tender Chamber” was liquidated (more precisely, it was deprived of the right to engage in tenders), and even Yatsenko’s monopoly on the Internet portal of electronic trading was taken away. However, his LLC, which sold documentation, and patents on “intellectual property” remained. And Yatsenko went with them to the Ministry of Economy, which has been involved in government procurement since 2008. The media reported that his then minister Bohdan Danylyshyn (the current head of the Council of the National Bank of Ukraine), together with Alexander Turchynov and Anton Yatsenko, formed a triumvirate that was able to “raise” several billion hryvnias – of course, divided not only between them.

By the way, when these and other schemes of Yatsenko began to collapse, the Royal Finance company suddenly ceased to exist, and its director Vasily Nikiforov (they wrote that he was convicted three times and became addicted to drugs) died under strange circumstances.

In the 2010 elections, BYuT members Anton Yatsenko, Sergei Buryak and Sergei Osyka, of course, bet on Yulia Tymoshenko – and after her defeat they defected to the camp of the winners. However, Yatsenko’s “flight” was difficult and protracted. So, in May 2010, the media reported a fight between Yatsenko and the newly appointed Minister of Economy Vasily Tsushko. More precisely, it was a beating of Yatsenko: they wrote that Tsushko broke his face and drew blood. Two reasons for the conflict were named: firstly, old hostility, and secondly, Yatsenko’s excessive impudence, with which he came to Tsushko to resolve issues of personnel policy in the Ministry of Economy. Apparently, Yatsenko tried not only to maintain his influence in the Ministry of Economy (and in the public procurement system), but also to expand it by lobbying for the appointment of several more of his people. But it turned out exactly the opposite: Tsushko fired several Yatsenko personnel from the ministry: Yuri Vitrenko (Natalia Vitrenko’s ex-husband), the head of the public procurement department Victoria Sukhova, as well as several heads of departments who previously worked at European Consulting Agencies LLC.

Literally a few days after this, Anton Yatsenko got into his next accident: his Bentley Continental GT (car price 169 thousand euros), did not want to give way to a narrow street in Kyiv, crashed into the wing of a VAZ-2110. A few minutes later, the frightened driver of the Lada hurried to hide, and the traffic cops who arrived at the scene of the accident, after a short conversation with Yatsenko, pushed his car to the nearest parking lot.

Failures followed Yatsenko one after another: in August 2010, he was accused of fraud in the amount of $1.5 billion! During this, he suffered a nervous breakdown (or was feigned) and on August 26, Yatsenko was placed in a psychiatric hospital, where he rested until the scandals subsided. And he soon left there with the firm conviction that he needed to “retrain as a house manager.” More precisely, to apply his scheme in the State Commission for Regulation of Financial Services Markets, which he had not yet mastered – which was headed by the former leader of the Union of Left Forces Vasily Volga. With his help, a new scheme was created, the key links of which were the Kiev offset factory, which produced strict accounting forms, securities, tickets, etc. and the specially created Kievholography LLC, which acted as an intermediary. The State Committee for Finance ordered forms of documentation and insurance policies from Kievgolografiya LLC at a 10-fold (!) inflated cost, the order was fulfilled by the Kiev offset factory, and the profits of clever combinators were dissolved in a dozen more companies. Well, when the scam was revealed in 2011, only Vasily Volga went to prison for everyone.

Yatsenko found an approach to the president’s son and in April 2012 organized a scam with Alexander Yanukovych (Sasha Dentist) on the market for appraisal servants. The scheme was the same: the assessment service was monopolized and assigned to a few selected companies, while the price of the service increased significantly. The business smelled like a huge profit, but a scandal quickly broke out: several thousand independent appraisers who were left without work began to organize protests and bombard all authorities with complaints; moreover, due to the increased valuation service, the real estate market began to fall. They hastened to wrap up the scam…

God gave – Anton Yatsenko took

Close cooperation with the new government brought Anton Yatsenko into the ranks of the Party of Regions already in 2011. However, in the 2012 elections, he had to run for deputy on his own, in majority constituency No. 200 in Uman. Apparently, he had enough money to not only win the elections, generously greasing everyone he could in Uman, but also literally buy this district for the future (he won the elections there in 2014 as well).

However, during the election campaign, Yatsenko got into a new story, this time with a fatal outcome. On September 1, 2012, on a highway near Uman, his Mercedes ML500 collided with a Daewoo Nexia compact car, the passenger of which died on the spot. Eyewitnesses claimed that Anton Yatsenko himself was driving, and drunk at that – and after the tragedy, he hastily removed the license plates from his car.

Soon the investigation into this case took an unexpected turn. The head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Cherkasy region, General Valery Dernovoy, provided an official letter stating that the driver of the Mercedes was not Anton Yatsenko, but a certain Sergei Gavrilenko. Moreover, the unfortunate deceased driver of the Daewoo was “assigned” to be the culprit of the accident; several empty bottles of alcohol were allegedly found in the car. It is noteworthy that General Dernovoy himself was convicted in 2006 of rigging the mayoral elections in Mukachevo.

Having won the elections in 2012, Anton Yatsenko headed the parliamentary subcommittee on securities and the stock market – once again finding himself in his native element. And although during 2013 his name did not appear in any high-profile scandals, none of the people who knew Yatsenko would have believed that he was bored with nothing to do and lived on one deputy’s salary. Although he assured his voters of this, for several years in a row he indicated in parliamentary declarations that he did not even have his own home. But in 2014, information appeared that Anton Yatsenko and his family (including his wife’s relatives) are the owners of not only a luxurious vehicle fleet that would be the envy of another oligarch, but also an impressive set of real estate in the capital with a total area of ​​8.3 thousand square meters. The market value of all these apartments, houses and offices is more than a billion hryvnia! Thus, our tender operator also turned out to be a Koreiko of his own!

Immediately after Euromaidan, along with other regionalists, Anton Yatsenko hastily left the ranks of the collapsing PR, and after being elected to parliament in 2014, he became a member of the Vidrodzhennia parliamentary group. But although this group is formally in “constructive opposition” to the ruling coalition, Anton Yatsenko was often caught practicing “button coding” while voting on laws needed by the authorities. And it is likely that he tried for a reason. At the same time, neither his open “button mashing” nor the very fact of the presence in parliament of a person with such a “glorious” reputation raised any questions among the “democratic majority”.

Moreover, it seems that in the company of deputies from the pro-presidential faction, Anton Yatsenko discovered for himself the possibility of a new profitable combination – this time in the field of public transport. Recently, he, together with deputies Roman Matsola and Ruslan Solvar, registered bill No. 5424, proposing a new mechanism for financing preferential transportation. The explanatory note to it states that the introduction of this mechanism will allow Ukrzaliznytsia to reduce its losses and the state to save billions of hryvnia. And this causes concern for the future fate of the Ukrainian railways – after all, Roman Yatsenko once “sang” the same thing when offering the services of his “Center for Tender Procedures”…

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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