Evgeniy Chervonenko: racer for life. PART 2

CONTINUATION. START: Evgeniy Chervonenko: racer for life. PART 1

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Around the mid-90s, Evgeniy Chervonenko already had that specific vocabulary (swear words mixed with prison words), because of which he was often perceived as a bandit – especially since he behaved accordingly. Skelet.Info there is even a legend that Chervonenko is a criminal “authority”, and his race car drivers and truck drivers are “brothers”. In fact, real “authorities” do not behave like half-shot “bulls” from the 90s, and one can only guess about the origin of Chervonenko’s bad manners. However, he once commanded an entire “regiment” of criminal hooligan rabble, and this was during the first Maidan in 2004. However, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Business with gangster money is nothing compared to what Chervonenko himself did when he achieved power and the ability to distribute and divide. His ascent began in 1995, when he became a member of the newly formed USSP (Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), a few months later he joined its board, and in September 1997 he headed the Council of Entrepreneurs under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. A year later, Chervonenko became an adviser to President Kuchma (later he loved to brag about how he gave Kuchma strategic advice). Such a rapid rise would have been impossible without the appropriate patronage, but the details of this remained hidden, it is only known that he was helped by someone from Dnepropetrovsk, perhaps Tigipko or Pinchuk.

In June 2000, Evgeniy Chervonenko received the post of head of the State Agency for Management of State Material Reserves (Gosrezerv). You couldn’t even dream of a more delicious place! And in just a year, he managed to become involved in a number of scandals and accusations of causing damage to the state worth hundreds of millions!

The first thing Chervonenko started stealing from the State Reserve warehouses was grain. He sold it at prices below market prices, and also sold it on credit (also at prices below market prices), but not to everyone, but only to CJSC Agroinvest-Group, which was owned by his brother Igor Chervonenko. However, he was not the only one – Evgeniy Chervonenko simply hid his share of Agroinvest shares in one of his foreign companies. The brothers emptied the State Reserve bins in such volumes that Igor Chervonenko even began exporting this grain abroad. Another client of the head of the State Reserve was the Odessa company Brix LLC, which received from him “temporarily on loan” 2 thousand tons of food wheat. But the granaries of the homeland were not limitless! In general, when in the summer of 2000, “Kyivmlyn” asked the State Reserve for 100 thousand wheat to curb seasonal price fluctuations, Chervonenko threw up his hands and said that he could only provide 47 thousand tons. He did not explain where the strategic reserves went—whether they dried out or were eaten by mice. However, this incident then caused a small bread crisis in the capital, as a result of which bakery products became more expensive throughout Ukraine, and there was a shortage of flour in stores for about a month.

Secondly, Chervonenko carried out an “oil scam”, heating up the state by several more millions. Namely: between the State Reserve on the one hand, and Khreshchatyk Trading House LLC and the State Enterprise NPO Lebed (operator of the State Reserve), on the other, agreement No. 766 dated 09/08/2000 on barter exchange was concluded. These enterprises undertook to supply 2 thousand tons of butter to the State Reserve at market price, in exchange for allocating 13 thousand tons of diesel fuel to them. The scam was that diesel fuel was sold at a cost of 1,400 hryvnia per ton, while its market value then fluctuated around 1,970-2,230 hryvnia per ton! After which information appeared that the Khreshchitik Trading House sold this diesel fuel to the Kharkov Regional Contract company at a price of 2,100 hryvnia per ton. Of course, the “profit” was shared with the head of the State Reserve.

Thirdly, before he could sit in the chair of the head of the State Reserve, Chervonenko carried out another scam – with petroleum products from the same state enterprise NPO Lebed. Back in February 2000, this enterprise was allocated 249.4 million hryvnia for the purchase of petroleum products, which it was supposed to distribute among the bases of the State Reserve and the Ministry of Agricultural Policy in accordance with agreement No. 7/7-2000 dated February 29, 2000. However, in August, the management of NPO Lebed decided without permission (not without Chernovetsky’s approval) to sell 86.3 thousand tons of fuel oil – intended for agricultural producers and sugar factories. They sold it at 579-636 hryvnia per ton, with its market price being 720-750 hryvnia. And again the “fat” spread into my pockets.

Fourthly, the very complicated story with JSC Bari turned out to be quite loud. Which back in the 90s, working under the “roof” of Igor Bakai and Alexander Volkov, assumed the obligations of the companies “Dneprenergo”, “Centrenergo” and “Donbasenergo” to return to the State Reserve 2.6 billion cubic meters of gas borrowed from it, as well as pay interest in money for using a trade loan. However, CJSC Bari handled the return of gas and money poorly, the matter even went to court – and here Chervonenko unexpectedly began to defend the interests not of the state, but of a private company. The media reported it this way:

Evgeniy Chervonenko: racer for life. PART 2

There were enough similar scandalous cases involving Chervonenko that President Kuchma was simply bombarded with memos about the machinations of the head of the State Reserve. A criminal case was even opened against him in April 2001, but he ignored the investigation: until August 2001 he sat in his office and chuckled, and after his resignation he “drew” right up until the spring of 2002, when he was put on the wanted list.

Zenko Aftanaziv

It wouldn’t be out of place to mention those who helped Chervonenko “saw” the State Reserve’s bins. This is businessman Zenko Aftanaziv, with whom Chervonenko became friends back in the early 90s in Lvov. In February 2001, Chervonenko took him to the State Reserve as his deputy, and after their expulsion, he made Aftanaziv vice-president of his Orlan concern. Another character is Dmitry Kryuchkov, the eldest son of Vasily Kryuchkov, head of the department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in 1974-84. Thanks to Chernovitsky, in 2000, the son of a former party boss was given a job at SE Lebed, and in 2002 he was already transferred to his old place at the State Reserve – where he soon staged a scam with the theft of 36.8 million hryvnia.

Evgeny Chervonenko. Rise of the Governor

In the 2002 parliamentary elections, Yevgeny Chervonenko was on the Our Ukraine list, where he ended up thanks to good relations with Viktor Yushchenko and his entourage (in particular, Rybachuk). There was even information that Chervonenko’s companies, registered in the USA and Canada, participated in some financial transactions to transfer money to Ukraine to sponsor Yushchenko’s election campaign – and they were spent not on publishing newspapers and orange symbols, but on bribing the right people.

It is worth noting that those elections were held with considerable tension for Chervonenko. In addition to the fact that the prosecutor’s office sent him subpoenas to the investigator in the case of fraud in the State Reserve, he was almost removed from the elections at the suit of journalist Dmitry Ponomarchuk, who stated that Chervonenko had Israeli citizenship. In response, Chervonenko began to get very nervous, shouting at the television cameras that this was a machination. Vadim Rabinovichthen claim that this is a “manifestation of anti-Semitism.” The accusations turned out to be not empty, but only in 2004 the Ministry of Internal Affairs established that Chervonenko had a passport of an Israeli citizen and submitted a proposal to the Presidential Administration to deprive him of Ukrainian citizenship. But in the yard he was already screaming “Yu-schen-ko!” the first Maidan, which was guarded by the “titushki” and “bulls” of Lviv and Kyiv “authorities” and criminal businessmen: Vladimir Didukh, Igor KrivetskyVladimir Kiselev, brothers Konstantinovsky, Arthur Palatny, Alexandra Presman. Moreover, Chervonenko himself once told reporters that he convinced Presman to make a choice in favor of Yushchenko.

Why wasn’t the defense of the first Maidan (as later the second) organized from former “Afghans”, security officials, athletes not involved in crime, physically strong students, but this was entrusted to an organized crime group? This question should be addressed, first of all, to Evgeniy Chervonenko. Who, during the presidential elections, received the unofficial position of “chief of security” under Yushchenko – more precisely, became the main fists of “Our Ukraine”. Chervonenko enthusiastically attacked journalists who asked Yushchenko uncomfortable questions, broke the arm of a member of the Brotherhood, broke the camera of a Zerkalo Zaporozhye correspondent, in Kherson beat up a truck driver who overtook Yushchenko’s motorcade, beat up a policeman in Crimea, and during raids by “our Ukrainians” in The Central Election Commission beat up Berkut officers there. And he also carried out the general coordination of the criminal guard of the first Maidan.

Well, the support of “Our Ukraine” was very useful for Chervonenko. When he was put on the wanted list in 2002, he waited for his mandate, then he himself appeared at the prosecutor’s office and soon left it with the words that “all questions are closed.” Then Chervonenko will declare more than once that he himself came to the investigator, but he did not find any guilt behind him. At the same time, but with the comprehensive support of Our Ukraine, the case against Orlan-Trans OJSC, initiated at the request of the State Tax Inspectorate of the Lvov Region, was closed. Then inspections established that Orlan-Trans deliberately generated unprofitable performance indicators, and also purchased and imported vehicles into Ukraine under the guise of external investments (tax-free), thus evading payment to the budget of 5.5 million hryvnia (more than a million dollars). At the same time, the Lvov State Tax Inspectorate claimed that it had unraveled only the top of Chervonenko’s schemes, and these were not the last accusations against him. Yushchenko’s team immediately stood up for Chervonenko’s business, focusing on the fact that the Lviv State Tax Inspectorate was headed by Sergei Medvedchuk, the brother of the head of the Presidential Administration, and this case was “political repression.”

They said that Yevgeny Chervonenko was supposed to become the new head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but for some reason this chair was given away Yuri Lutsenkobut Chervonenko got the place of the late Kirpa – at the head of the Ministry of Transport and Communications. It turned out to be another very profitable position for Chervonenko – and he immediately dragged along his inseparable companion Zenko Aftanaziv, seating him in the chair of the director of Ukrzaliznytsia. During his several months at the Ministry of Transport, Chervonenko managed to become involved in a number of corruption scandals. Skelet.Info lists some of them:

• Creation of a transit transportation scheme consisting of seven companies (65 operated on the Ukrainian market), monopolizing 85% of freight traffic. These were: CJSC “Plaske” (Odessa), PE “Transservice” (Odessa), DP “Fiacre” (Kyiv), “Ukrrailtrans”, “Etransa Slovakia”, “Asotra” (Hungary) and “Intertrans”. The latter, which accounted for 60% of all transportation, was a state company, but Chervonenko and Aftanaziv took over it, turning it into a closed joint stock company. At the same time, E-transa, Asotra and Ukrrailtrans were registered in Europe and did not pay taxes in Ukraine – although they belonged to Russian businessman Andrei Kochetkov. The total damage caused to the state by Minister of Transport Evgeniy Chervonenko and his deputy Zenko Aftanaziv in 2005 was estimated at half a billion hryvnia.
• An attempt to obtain a bribe of $3 million for the position of head of the Odessa seaport. While receiving this bribe, SBU officers burst into Chervonenko’s office (then headed by Turchinov), he was practically arrested, but everything was decided by calls to the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Petru Poroshenko and President Yushchenko. It was decided to hush up the case, and the head of the SBU department, Alexander Skibinetsky, who objected to this, and who was in charge of the detention, was fired – and they explained to him that it was better to keep his mouth shut. However, the information was still leaked to the media, and Russian deputy Alexei Mitrofanov even threatened to publish the video of Chervonenko’s arrest, although he never did (according to available information, this video simply did not reach him). As a result, Chervonenko himself later outlined his version of events: they say that he was offered a bribe of 3 million dollars, but he proudly refused and called the SBU himself, but the scoundrels managed to escape!
• Appointment of the heads of the seaport of Yalta Yuri Formus. Whether this was done for a bribe or in payment for services that Formus personally provided to Chervonenko and Viktor Yushchenko is unknown. But the scandal was that Yuri Formus is the person most closely associated with the Crimean organized crime group Salem. In addition, Chervonenko allowed Formus to rebuild the port of Yalta into an elite yacht club (at public expense), after which it was also planned to privatize it.
• Issuance of orders No. 363 and No. 364 on the creation in the Ministry of certain services designed to combat terrorism in the structures of transport and communications. Among other things, there were clauses providing for the taking of Ukrainian Internet sites under the strict control of these services – in fact, under the control of Chervonenko. This initiative was called his attempt to establish censorship on the Internet to prevent revealing publications and “denigrating the authorities.”
• An agreement between the Ilyichevsk seaport and the private enterprise “Ukrtranscontainer” on the transfer to the latter for use of a container terminal in exchange for promises to help attract investment in the development of the port’s infrastructure. It was reported that this combination was developed by Alexander Presman, whom Chervonenko appointed as his adviser, and Presman, in turn, declared himself to be “in charge” of the Odessa and Ilyichevsk ports. Alexander Turchynov, who had already been removed from his post as head of the SBU, personally opposed this agreement, calling it “a free transfer of the port.” This scandal was the last in the career of Chervonenko as a minister: a few days later he was dismissed along with the entire Tymoshenko government.

Thus, Evgeniy Chervonenko, like Petro Poroshenko and David Zhvaniawas one of those “beloved friends” of President Yushchenko (and his godfather), accusations against whom provoked the political crisis in the fall of 2005. But Viktor Andreevich did not abandon his godfathers and “friends” to their own devices: in December 2005, Evgeniy Chervonenko was appointed head of the Zaporozhye regional state administration, serving in this chair until December 2007 (the formation of Tymoshenko’s second government).

Evgeniy Chervonenko

The first days of work of the new governor of Zaporozhye were marked by the loss of hot water in the city. But the problems of little people (“mice,” as Chervonenko calls them in prison) never bothered him. Then the governor beat up his driver (official car), who did not want to organize a rally led by a drunken “navigator.” Another driver hastened to resign himself, out of harm’s way. Well, Chervonenko’s governorship itself was accompanied by a number of new corruption scandals:

· Participation in the scam around Zaporizhstal in 2006, when there was an additional issue of shares, which diluted the shares of minority shareholders. The owners of the plant were the rival JSC “Zapad-Reserve” (directors of the Satsky plant), Vasily Khmelnitsky and the Midland Resources group of Eduard Shifrin and Alex Schneider. And then it was the latter who received the main stake in the enterprise. Chervonenko’s role in this remains unclear, but sources Skelet.Info reported that they settled with him with a small share, making him minority shareholders of Zaporizhstal (he later sold his share). It is interesting that Shifrin and Schneider are called partners of the Solntsevskaya lads, which includes Semyon Mogilevich – thus, their support for Chervonenko becomes clear.

• Lobbying the interests of Regionpromsevris LLC (owners Yuri Gladun and Stanislav Stukalsky) in the fight for the Balka Srednyaya slag dump site, where the Zaporizhstal, Dneprospetsstal, and Zaporozhye Ferroalloy Plant dumped them for decades. According to experts, these slag dumps contain up to 7% metals, including non-ferrous ones. In the 90s, spontaneous “mining” began on the dumps, and then the criminal business became interested in them, the dumps were divided into sections. However, such development of dumps threatens an environmental disaster. Since 2005, between Dneprospetsstal, which is responsible for the environment in the dump area, and Regionpromsevris LLC, there has been a conflict with litigation and raider attacks, in which in 2006 a new governor joined on the side of Regionpromsevris.
• An attempted raider takeover of the Orgselmash enterprise in the town of Orekhovo, Zaporozhye region. The customers for the seizure were the same LLC Regionpromsevris.
• After Chervonenko’s appointment, a wave of contract killings swept across Zaporozhye: Vladimir Malyar, Yuri Sakvarelidze, Pavel Kulyatov, Vladimir Razgulyaev. Sources reported that, at least with Razgulyaev, Chervonenko had a conflict of business interests.

Governor Chervonenko and the owners of Regionpromsevris LLC at the Balka Srednyaya dumps

Evgeny Chervonenko. Divorce!

The fact that Evgeniy Chervonenko is a womanizer was known even during his youth. But the problem with his wives was not his husband’s infidelity, but his attitude towards them. He lived with his second wife, Margarita Chervonenko (nee Bykova), in perfect harmony for 15 years, and then their relationship cooled down sharply (Evgeniy Alfredovich had just been appointed minister). He became rude, picky, often let his hands go and rewarded his wife with an “Irish kiss” (under the eye).

Margarita and Evgeniy Chervonenko

In Zaporozhye, Evgeniy Chervonenko became completely unbearable. At the same time, according to eyewitnesses, every Friday the governor went to the Zaporozhye Sich restaurant, where the head of the security service of Industrial Bank Sergei Suprunyuk (they claim that he was the leader of one of the organized criminal groups of Zaporozhye) brought girls from variety show and casino. He would party with them on Friday evenings.

And in 2007, Evgeniy Chervonenko started a divorce. But not just a divorce, otherwise it would remain just boring secular news, but a grandiose division of property according to the principle “this is for me, this is for me, this is also for me!” For some unknown reason, the oligarch governor turned into an unbalanced robber, literally robbing his wife like a stick. Margarita Chervonenko only assumed that this could be due to her husband’s large debts to some tough people, perhaps in this way he was withdrawing from his business and giving shares to his criminal partners. But this could hardly be a good reason for taking absolutely everything from the once beloved woman, who had already been the president of Orlan for several years! Including even jewelry and fur coats.

At the same time, Chervonenko resorted to mind-blowing combinations. So, in order to take away Margarita’s house in Kozin, which she received as a gift from a certain I. Sukhorukov, Evgeniy Chervonenko first removed all the furniture from it, then disconnected the house from communications, and then forced Sukhorukov to file a claim for termination of his deed of gift. Well, so that the house would not be returned to Sukhorukov, but would go to Evgeny Chervonenko, Sukhorukov wrote a receipt according to which he once borrowed 3.5 million hryvnia from Evgeny Alfredovich. True, the governor, who declared that he could live on one salary, could not have that kind of money, so his brother Igor Chervonenko borrowed it from Sukhorukov. And now here’s the most ridiculous thing: Sukhorukov allegedly left his house as collateral, as a “temporary gift” – but he left it not to Evgeniy Chervonenko, and not even to his brother Igor, but to Margarita Chervonenko. But Sukhorukov also wrote a receipt for his debt not to Igor, but to Evgeny Chervonenko – which means he now owns this house! But if you decided that such formulations would only make the judge laugh, then you are mistaken: the governor’s judges were well-fed and knew their job.

In a similar scheme, Chervonenko took away an apartment in Yalta from his mother-in-law, which had also been previously sold to her by Sukhorukov (the role of this strange man in the life of the Chervonenko family was not specified). Only Sukhorukov had nothing to do with the Kyiv apartment on Reitarskaya Street: Evgeniy and Margarita Chervonenko bought it back in the 90s, and then transferred it to Victoria Chervonenko. So, Chervonenko’s father did not hesitate to throw his own daughter out of the apartment! Did he really need the money so badly? Or is he just such a… bad person?

But Evgeniy Alfredovich did not walk around for long. Already in the fall of 2007, he was seen in the company of his new passion, Nina, with her figure reminiscent of Pamela Anderson. A year later, Evgeniy Chervonenko married for the third time.

Nina Chervonenko

Evgeny Chervonenko. Useless to everyone, nobody’s to everyone

In 2004, Chervonenko protected the “people’s messiah” from Yanukovych’s supporters, back in 2006 he fought with his bodyguard, and already in January 2010 he called on Ukrainians to vote for Viktor Fedorovich. As he later explained, because he never had a common language with Tymoshenko. Well, with Yanukovych, he quickly found him, which he contributed to Victor Balogawho assigned Evgeny Chervonenko to the Ministry of Emergency Situations – to the aviation department.

Unlike the “orange times”, in his new post in the “Donetsk” government, Chervonenko no longer “bullied”, and “earned” money without loud scandals. And he directed his zeal into serving the new Guarantor, to whom he tried in every possible way to get closer (he even tried to get his son Alexander interested in auto racing). In particular, it was Yevgeny Chervonenko who was the “father” of the famous Yanukovych helicopter, which cost the Ukrainian budget $17 million – twice as expensive as the helicopter of the American president and three times as expensive as the helicopter of the British queen. And since this project was initiated and lobbied by Chervonenko himself, who for a long time assured journalists that moving the Guarantor by air would be convenient for the people of Kiev (there is no need to block avenues for motorcades), then he probably got the “profit” from it. This helicopter will still be remembered by him after the Maidan – for example, during his scandal with Tatyana Chernovol on live television.

The support of Yanukovych and the participation of regionals in the government cost Yevgeny Chervonenko dearly: the new government stubbornly did not notice the oligarch who was confused in his guidelines. And if the long-standing enmity with the Turchynovs explained why Chervonenko did not come close to the “Popular Front”, then it was strange why his former comrades from among the “beloved friends” also turned away from him. Chervonenko was at one time close to Petro Poroshenko, and now he could well have joined his “Solidarity” (there are few former regionals in it?), but they continued to ignore him. In the despair of a man forced to stand and watch as others excitedly “sawing” the country, Chervonenko tried to nominate himself for the post of new governor of Odessa after the scandalous resignation of Saakashvili.

Well, it looks like things are getting worse for him, and the worse it gets, the more nervous the already unbalanced Evgeniy Chervonenko becomes. But he made enemies in literally all political forces of Ukraine: from radicals and Batkivshchyna to Zhizn and the Opposition Bloc. This means that even he won’t have another return to power, either after the next (or early) elections, or even after the third Maidan.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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