Efim Zvyagilsky: patriarch of Ukrainian corruption and father of Donbass separatism. PART 1

The permanent owner of the mine named after. Zasyadko, a veteran of all convocations of the Verkhovna Rada, is the oldest active Ukrainian politician and a living relic of the high-profile corruption scandals of the early 90s. Zvyagilsky continues to look from his deputy chair at Ukraine and Ukrainians solely as a means of his enrichment, and neither the hundreds of dead miners nor the thousands of killed residents of Donbass touch his callous soul. He only cares about one thing: how and for how much to ensure his safety and comfort. That’s why the Prosecutor General’s Office once surprisingly forgot him and didn’t notice him for many years, just as NABU doesn’t even notice him now.

Efim Zvyagilsky. Bright path

Efim Leonidovich Zvyagilsky was born on February 20, 1933 in the city of Donetsk (then Stalino) into a family of Soviet employees. Skelet.Info I learned that in the 80s, many heroic tales were written about Zvyagilsky, in which he had a simple, almost proletarian origin, and rose to the top “from the very bottom.” But these stories were written for the miners: they say, our boss is a hard worker like us! In fact, Zvyagilsky’s parents were far from small people in all respects: descendants of respected leaders of Jewish communities, they made a good career in the structures of Soviet power. Otherwise, their family would not have been evacuated from Donetsk in 1941 – thanks to which they safely survived the Holocaust in the rear, and returned home after the war. Thanks to this, young Fima was not forced to work hard after the 7th grade, like most of his peers in those difficult post-war years. And thanks to this, he did not go to the army for 3 years (or to the navy for 4 years), but entered the mining faculty of the Donetsk Industrial Institute (now Donetsk National Technical University), from which he graduated in 1956.

So Efim Leonidovich, contrary to the stereotypical opinion about Jews, became a miner – however, not a simple miner, but an assistant to the head of the section of mine No. 13 of the Donetsk Kuibyshevugol trust, a few years later heading it. In 1970, he already became the director of the Kuibyshevskaya mine management, and in 1979 he headed the Zasyadko mine, one of the largest in the Ukrainian SSR and in the Union in general. As they said in Donetsk, it was not only about the personal qualities of Zvyagilsky, who was excellent at manipulating people, but also about his close connections with Vladimir Ivanovich Degtyarev, the secretary (1957-62) and first secretary (1963-76) of the Donetsk regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, who was called the head of the “Donetsk clan” created by Zasyadko himself.

It is interesting that one of Degtyarev’s associates was Vasily Mironov (chairman of the Donetsk City Executive Committee, first secretary of the city committee, then the regional committee), who became Degtyarev’s successor in the early 80s. And as already reported Skelet.InfoVasily Mironov was called father-in-law Victor Nusenkis.

The “Donetsk clan” of the Soviet era represented the ruling elite of the region, primarily party bosses and directors of coal departments, closely associated with the Ministry of Coal Industry of the Ukrainian SSR. They will later be called “Starodonetsk”, about whom Skelet.Info also already talked in the material about Vladimir Logvinenko. The Donetsk clan was the leading clan in the Ukrainian SSR during the times of Stalin and Khrushchev, but under Brezhnev they lost leadership to the Dnepropetrovsk clan. And then the first seeds of separatism, which then had a purely economic direction, ripened in their ranks: they wanted to have direct relations with Moscow, bypassing Kyiv, in order to preserve economic privileges for the region. All these ideas will emerge later, in the 21st century, in independent Ukraine, adopted by the Donetsk oligarchs.

Under Gorbachev, the USSR Council of Ministers began to develop a plan for the gradual reduction of coal production in the Donbass, since some of the mines there were unprofitable even by Soviet standards, and support for the development of new coal basins, in particular Kuzbass. Realizing that this would be the beginning of the end of the special status of Donbass, turning it into the most ordinary region of the country, the “Donetsk clan” became the organizer of the famous miners’ strike of 1989. It began in the Kemerovo region (where the young director of the Donetsk Zhdanovskaya mine, Viktor Nusenkis, already had great connections), and a week later it was supported by the mines of Donbass – and the mine named after them was the only one to go on strike in an organized manner. Zasyadko, which was led by Hero of Socialist Labor Efim Zvyagilsky. The economic demands of the strike committees were mixed with political ones – to put pressure on Moscow and Kyiv.

If the Kuzbass miners advocated for a better supply of food to the region and higher wages and pensions, the “Donetsk clan” also sought maximum economic independence of both the mines and the region – with simultaneous financial support for coal enterprises with state subsidies. As a result, mine directors received the right to control the marketing and sale of coal themselves, and also manage foreign exchange earnings from its exports. In addition to the “cooperatives” that already existed at the mines, this gave them a wide field for big business already in 1989. But Zvyagilsky and Nusenkis went further, creating a fraudulent scheme to obtain government subsidies for coal that their mines did not produce. And if, according to Nusenkis’s scheme, “leftist” cheap coal was purchased in Kuzbass, and then passed off as produced at his Zhdanovskaya (now Pokrovskaya) mine, then Zvyagilsky in the early 90s mastered the scheme of purchasing coal from other Donbass mines that were not could implement it independently (all schemes created by the Donetsk ones) for 50% of the cost.

Later, Zvyagilsky’s scheme was embodied in the schemes of Akhmetov, Yuriy Ivanyushchenko and Alexander Yanukovych, who in the same way processed the coal extracted from the mines from “digs”. And this is not a coincidence, because it was Efim Zvyagilsky who was called the person who, at the very beginning of the 90s, drew attention to the Bragin-Akhmetov group and recommended it to the “Starodonetskys” – an alliance with which turned bazaar racketeers into the strongest organized crime group in Donbass, and then into the richest oligarchs of Ukraine. That is why Rinat Leonidovich was always very grateful to Efim Leonidovich, and this gratitude, in particular, was expressed in Zvyagilsky’s guaranteed receipt of a deputy mandate on the Party of Regions list. But Zvyagilsky’s continued influence was ensured not only by his past achievements.

Efim Zvyagilsky. Flight to Israel

In the wake of the 1989 strike, Zvyagilsky was first elected as a people’s deputy of the Soviet Verkhovna Rada (in 1990). And his relationship with Leonid Kravchuk was quite complicated, based on constant blackmail from the Donetsk people. When the Soviet Union began to fall apart, Zvyagilsky told Kravchuk that Donbass might want the same autonomy as the Crimean region (an autonomous republic since 1992), and maybe more: it was reported that Zvyagilsky then hinted at the possibility of reviving the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (DKR) ). A few years later, these hints were embodied in the image of the “South-East”, opposing itself to the rest of Ukraine, in 2004 in the form project of the “South-Eastern Autonomous Republic” (nicknamed “PiSUAR”), and in 2014 became the basis for the project “Novorossiya”. Another interesting fact: Zvyagilsky is the author of the slogan “No one will bring Donbass to its knees!” (now the separatists constantly use it), and he pushed it back in 1993, against the backdrop of another miner’s strike he organized (which started from the Zasyadko mine). By that time, Zvyagilsky had already been elected chairman of the city council and city executive committee of Donetsk (retaining both his deputy mandate and actual management of the mine), and therefore spoke not only on behalf of the miners.

Why did he need her? In 1992, threatening Kyiv with separatism, Zvyagilsky obtained from Kravchuk consent to allocate state subsidies to Donbass mines. Despite the fact that the capital already knew about the fraud with the “leftist” coal, there was nowhere to go: this was a kind of payment for the political loyalty of the “Donetsk people”. But in 1993, they decided to enter the Ukrainian government (having moved the “Dnepropetrovsk” in the person of Kuchma there), and the strike became a good method to put pressure on Kyiv again – now not with the threat of separatism, but of the coal collapse of the economy, and without that suffered from hyperinflation. And he succeeded: in June 1993, Zvyagilsky became the first deputy prime minister, and his partner was Valentin Landyk, who became deputy prime minister for foreign economic activity and investment. But this was only the first stage. “Donetsk” continued to put pressure on Kravchuk with the roar of miners’ helmets (after the events of 1993, the threat of a new arrival of miners to Kyiv would be used again by Yanukovych’s supporters in 2004), and finally achieved the resignation of Prime Minister Kuchma – whose place as acting Zvyagilsky immediately took over, and acting. Landyk became the first deputy prime minister.

With the transfer of the government into the hands of the Donetsk people, inflation in Ukraine really slowed down. But how was this achieved? It was reported that if the trick of the governments of Fokin and Kuchma was hyperinflation, which allowed enterprises to save on wages and taxes (they were paid after the next fall of coupon-karbovanets), then Zvyagilsky introduced a method of months-long delays in salaries and payments to the budget, with the circulation of money in commercial banks and businesses -schemes.

However, this first and last membership of Zvyagilsky in the Cabinet of Ministers ended for him in a series of scandals, a criminal case and a hasty flight to Israel. There were many accusations, because not only “Dnepropetrovsk”, but also “Kyiv”, as well as national patriots took up arms against Zvyagilsky. But two cases stood out among them.

Firstly, it was a scandalous and very complicated case of the Nordex company, which he represented in Ukraine Vadim Rabinovich. This company was created by Jewish emigrants in the early 90s Boris FuksmanGrigory Luchansky and Vladimir Dvoskin, under the roof of the international “mafia” Leonid Minin – whose group included Odessa residents Alexander Angert And Gennady Trukhanov. Nordex, in particular, did business with the Ukrainian state concern Ukragrotekhservice, and was an intermediary between the supply of Russian oil to Ukraine and payments for it from sold Ukrainian agricultural products and food reserves of the State Reserve. This venture ended in scams and scams, and Nordex itself stated that it had suffered colossal losses – only a criminal case was opened regarding multimillion-dollar losses to Ukraine. Zvyagilsky’s responsibility was direct: he signed contracts with Nordex, he also controlled the operation of these schemes, and he determined the cost of goods – which then changed all the time due to inflation. The first scandal broke out when deputies of the Verkhovna Rada announced that, under the signature of Zvyagilsky, the state was selling sugar to Nordex at the old reduced prices.

The second was the case of Damiana Bank (head of the board Yuriy Sidorenko), who transferred payments for petroleum products between Ukragrotechservice and its business partners, which included other companies in addition to Nordex. In particular, these were the Panamanian “Glancourt International SA” and the Cypriot “Ukvar-Petroleum”, which turned out to be companies created by Yuriy Sidorenko and his companions Alexander Dvoryanchikov (Russian businessman) and Vyacheslav Kramny (CEO of Ukrinvaluttorg). The activities of Damiana Bank ended with a scam of $19.9 million, which were withdrawn from the account of Ukragrotechservice and transferred to Switzerland. A few weeks after this, the director of Ukragrotekhservis, Bortnyk, was shot near his own home, barely surviving from several bullet wounds. What does Zvyagilsky have to do with it? And despite the fact that Skelet.Info there is information that the co-founder of Damiana Bank CJSC is “a certain mine” directly related to the acting premiere.

At first, Zvyagilsky cheerfully denied all accusations, declaring that he was an “honest hard-working miner.” However, after Leonid Kuchma, who was elected a new president in 1994, returned to power and, taking revenge on Zvyagilsky, ordered the Prosecutor General’s Office to launch a major investigation against the fact that the Verkhovna Rada had already demanded, Efim Leonidovich decided to flee the country. And on time: soon after this, giving him a head start, the Rada voted to bring deputy Zvyagilsky to criminal liability (resolution No. 247/94-BP of November 15, 1994).

First, he allegedly went to Kislovodsk for treatment, citing poor health, and then ended up in Israel – where he arrived as a simple repatriate. It was an ingenious solution: repatriates received Israeli citizenship quickly and without delay. But then information appeared in the media that repatriate Efim Zvyagilsky arrived in Israel not empty-handed, but with 300 million dollars!

Whether this is true or not, the fugitive prime minister safely stayed in the Promised Land until March 1997.

after which he returned to Ukraine again – where there were no longer any claims against him. The Verkhovna Rada, by its new resolution No. 66/97-VR dated 02.12.1997, recognized its previous resolution No. 247/94-BP as no longer in force, dropping the charges against Zvyagilsky and returning him immunity. But after his “immigration” and “amnesty”, Zvyagilsky’s former ardor disappeared: he no longer acted as a political battering ram for the “Donetsk”, and conducted his activities behind the scenes.

The return of Zvyagilsky then completely surprised many. How can a person who has been involved in high-profile corruption scandals for almost three years, against whom criminal cases were opened, who was asked to be arrested and deported back to Ukraine, sit quietly again in the Rada, and not in prison? Everyone understood that this was the result of an agreement “at the very top”, that considerable sums were “paid” for him, that not only “Donetsk” but also international Jewish organizations asked for Zvyagilsky – but still it did not fit into the heads of those who naively believed in the justice of the law.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUATION: Efim Zvyagilsky: patriarch of Ukrainian corruption and father of Donbass separatism. PART 2

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