Odessa has long been a place of business and criminal disputes. Not long ago we wrote about the “exploits” of Igor Markovcriminal and separatist, as well as “king” of Odessa smuggling, Vadim Alperin. Today we will talk about one of the most influential clans of Odessa and the region – the Kruk family. This family is an excellent example of nepotism, heavily involved in the merger of business and government.
Yuri Kruk Jr.
So, the father of Yuri Borisovich Kruk had three sons: Vyacheslav Yulievich, Boris Yulievich and Yuri Yulievich. This youngest one has been getting into big scandals lately, so let’s start with him. Yuri Kruk Jr., who from 2007 and until recently held the rather lucrative positions of the head of the port “Yuzhny”, and then the head of the port “Ilyichevsk”, in the Odessa region, in narrow circles was called “man-conflict” and “Yura-barrier” . He, then a very young man, was “dragged” into these positions by his father, deputy Yuri Borisovich Kruk. In order to help his son with his work, he made remarkable efforts. As a deputy from BYuT, he constantly blackmailed his boss with the withdrawal of her signature on the coalition agreement. And in 2007, he finally achieved his goal: my son was assigned to the Yuzhny port (the appointment was marked by various scandals and raider takeovers). In 2012, Father Kruk defected to the Party of Regions. The next year, his son was appointed head of the port of Ilyichevsk.
As port director, both one and two, Crook the son took approximately three dollars in kickback for every ton of cargo. For this, the port did not harass the shipowner with long downtimes and turned a blind eye to the lack of certain documents. Moreover, some port fees, channel, pilot, sanitary, etc. it could be carried out through the cash register, or through the offices of Crook Jr. Naturally, in the second case it was cheaper and faster. Both “Ilyichevsk” and “Yuzhny” are large ports, and therefore a hefty sum of 64 and a half million dollars ended up in the boss’s pockets per year. But there are some companies that wanted or could only work “in white”. Such companies in these ports were pressed as best they could. They delayed loading and unloading, checked for a very long time and very closely, in a word, they did everything to get a kickback. As a result, the cargo turnover of the Yuzhny port fell by 40 percent during Kruk’s work there. The same situation is with “Ilyichevsk”. Before his arrival, almost one hundred thousand cars a year passed through the port alone, and with his arrival this number decreased to thirty thousand. Such respected car manufacturers as Renault, Hyundai, Nissan and Infiniti, Honda and Acura, Mazda, Suzuki, BYD, Lifan, Geely, Toyota and Lexus, Subaru, Peugeot and Citroen refused the services of Ilyichevsk. Until recently, a representative of the Krukov clan got away with all this, and only this year, through the efforts of Governor Saakashvili, with the support of President Poroshenko, they managed to… no, not imprison him, but only remove him from his duties for the duration of an official investigation.
Vyacheslav Yulievich Kruk
What about the other family members? Yuri’s older brother, Vyacheslav Yulievich, is very interesting. He is also a civil servant. At one time he was the deputy mayor of Odessa, then from 2003 to 2005 the first deputy minister of ecology. Ecology, as we have already written, is a very profitable thing. Odessa residents who wanted to solve “environmental” problems carried suitcases with money to Vyacheslav Yulievich at the Otrada hotel. All of Odessa knew about this, as the song says. But these are just rumors. But in 2014, Vyacheslav Kruk was detained by SBU officers. The case was about the illegal takeover of the “Ukrainian National Stevedoring Company” in the interests of the State Public Procurement Company. The deal was clearly corrupt, and it was supervised by Vyacheslav Yulievich. However, he did not sit there long. At first he was released on bail, but now the case is being delayed and, apparently, they are not going to take it to court.
Boris Yulievich Kruk
“Average” – Boris Yulievich Kruk, the least exposed of the entire family. According to some reports, he is involved in conversion centers in his native Odessa. And also fraud with the return of VAT. The thing is that it doesn’t like noise and dust. According to some reports, he is involved in thirty or so companies and the charitable foundation “Planet of Good People”, through funds it is always convenient to “optimize” taxes and launder money. In addition, he, together with the son of the mayor of the city of Yuzhny, Denis Novatsky, controls the transshipment of chemical products through the port. Apparently, this business remained from the times when his “younger” brother was the head of the port.
Yuri (Juliy) Borisovich Kruk
And finally, the father of the family, Yuri (Juliy) Borisovich Kruk. People’s Deputy, though a former one. He served on the Transport Committee and the Subcommittee on Maritime and River Transport. He is the president of the Ukrainian Ports Association. In a word, he is, as they say, on topic. As a politician, he personally does not appear in scandals, except for those related to the family business, but we will talk about this below. But when candidate for deputy Vyacheslav Strashilin was “trampling” in his constituency, even though he was running from the then ruling Party of Regions, he received a call “from Krukov” and promised that he would have “the earth to burn under his feet.” . He had another scandal with the son of the Odessa governor Nikolai Pundik. Then disagreements arose due to the sale of Izmail’s city property.
As for the joint ownership of the Kruk clan, this too was not without scandals. The loudest of them happened with the Maristella housing and entertainment center on Bolshoy Fontana. To build this complex, the family took the boat station from the city. It was placed in violation of all environmental standards, in a landslide-prone area. At first, local authorities strongly objected to this construction, but somehow they came to an agreement. In addition, their sphere of interest includes companies that begin with the word “Into”, for example the same clinic “Into Sana”, due to the inaction of which the famous actor Krasko died at one time. However, according to the latest information, this business is being sold to Americans.
sex scandal with Lilia Tomashevskaya
But the Kruk family is not limited only to people who proudly bear this surname. It also includes such characters as, for example, the head of the Odessa KRU Lilia Tomashevskaya, a person involved in a sex scandal and a lover of strippers.
And also such characters as Gennady Kazachenko, the brother of the wife of Vyacheslav Kruk, who was caught taking a bribe of 100 thousand hryvnia, deputy Pavel Unguryan, and so on, in small things, Baptist priests, heads of district administrations, heads of companies associated with Yuzhny and Ilichevsk.
Wikipedia says that a “krook” is a type of raven. Coincidence? And despite the new times, the Crooks are circling over Odessa and tearing more and more tidbits from it. And they are especially dangerous precisely because of their clannishness and family organization. By the way, Yuri Borisovich has fourteen grandchildren growing up. If they continue family traditions, Odessa will not feed them.
Denis Ivanov, for SKELET-info
