Evgeny Muraev: new candidate from the old Kharkov clan

Ukrainians will be watching this political actor diligently smiling at the audience on their televisions for a very long time. After all, Yevgeny Muraev is being promoted, no more, no less, as a candidate for prime minister, or even for president. And there are already many voters who are ready to vote for him, who consider him a new face in Ukrainian politics, and a very attractive one at that. However, they would probably be very disappointed if they got to know him better! Muraev has experience of both political struggle and leadership work, albeit only on the scale of his native Kharkov region – and not all his fellow countrymen remember him on the positive side.

Born, studied, married

Evgeniy Vladimirovich Muraev was born on December 2, 1976 in the city of Zmiev, Kharkov region, in the family of Vladimir Kuzmich and Olga Alekseevna Muraev. He is often called a distant relative of ex-Prime Minister Mykola Azarov (Read more about him in the article Mykola Azarov. Survivor) then the former Kharkov governor Mikhail Dobkin – explaining with this the rather rapid career of the “prodigy Zhenya”. However, no evidence of family ties was found between them, although there is enough information about their close business relationships (of a very different nature). However, for Ukrainian politics, and even more so for regionals, such relationships are the norm, but through family line Evgeniy is connected with completely different, but no less influential people. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

M. Dobkin, N. Azarov and E. Muraev

After primary school, Zhenya’s parents enrolled her in one of the most prestigious schools in Kharkov: the 27th Physics and Mathematics School (which has become a lyceum since 1990). Already at that time, such schools not only gathered gifted children within their walls, but also separated the offspring of “thieves” families from the hooligan “rabble.” So Evgeny Muraev stopped communicating with ordinary people as a child, making friends among the “golden youth” of Kharkov.

In 1993, after graduating from the Lyceum, Muraev entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Kharkov State University (KSU). He dropped out of his first year: something happened that Muraev never talked about, and which forced him to re-enter the same KhSU in 1994, but as a first-year student at the Faculty of Economics, majoring in finance and credit. Although many of his fellow students were also not from the bottom of society, it was Muraev who often received various bonuses: for example, in 1996 he represented Ukraine at the European Congress of Students in Liege (Belgium).

In 1999, Evgeny Muraev graduated from KhSU with honors, and in 2000 he became director of the newly created company Enclave 2000 LLC, which was engaged in the wholesale trade of fuels and lubricants. Since the beginning of the 90s, this business in Kharkov was under the hard roof of first organized crime groups and then corrupt “city fathers”, so it was simply impossible to enter it without appropriate patronage (and capital). In 2001, Muraev became director of MKM LLC (since 2005, MKM Kharkov LLC), also engaged in the wholesale trade of fuels and lubricants.

Today there is an opinion that Muraev was allegedly only a vice-chairman, taken to this position from the street by a boy with honors. However, figureheads do not climb the social ladder so successfully and do not rapidly accumulate their own capital. Evgeniy Muraev owed his success not at all to an imaginary relationship with Mykola Azarov, but to his wife Valeria. More precisely, her father and her father-in-law Oleg Taranov, another “prominent Kharkov resident.”

Taranov Oleg Vladimirovich

Even in Soviet times, Oleg Taranov was a fairly influential person with great connections, and among these connections was the then Kharkov “guild worker” Vadim Rabinovich (Read more about him in the article Vadim Rabinovich: secrets of an underground billionaire), by the way, they studied at the same Automobile Institute. Their fates were different: Rabinovich sat down in the early 80s, and Taranov became the director of a reinforced concrete plant and a people’s deputy of the Ukrainian SSR. However, some relations between them remained, and subsequently Rabinovich and Taranov were called members of the “old Kharkov clan”, to which Mikhail Dobkin is most directly related. In the 90s, Oleg Taranov became Deputy Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (1996), then a member of the Supreme Economic Council under President Kuchma (1997), Chairman of the National Agency for the Management of State Corporate Rights (1998). He was called involved in the privatization of the Nikolaev Alumina Refinery (2000) by the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska through the specially created Ukrainian Aluminum company (a subsidiary of RUSAL).

Since 2001, Oleg Taranov has left power in the shadows, no longer appearing in the media, and arranges the fate of his daughters: Yulia (born 1975), Valeria (born 1977) and Eva (born 1998 from the second marriage). It was Valeria who became the wife of the young “prodigy” Evgeny Muraev. At the same time, she still hides from the press not only her biography, but even the date of their wedding.

Valeria Taranova and Evgeny Muraev

Family business

At the local elections in March 2006, Evgeniy Muraev was elected deputy of the Kharkiv Regional Council of the 5th convocation, running for the Veche party – which was headed by Kharkiv resident Inna Bogoslovskaya (read more about her in the article Inna Bogoslovskaya: a woman without complexes and a politician without principles) . Then “Veche” joined the Party of Regions, but Evgeny Muraev continued to master the gasoline topic, becoming chairman of the regional council commission on issues of the fuel and energy complex, energy saving and housing and communal services. A good position for the director of a company selling fuels and lubricants!

But since 2008, Muraev begins to master a new business: he occupies the position of general director of Eastern Financial Group LLC, whose founders were his parents – at least, it was registered in their name. In the same year, his company acquired 98.72% of the shares of JSC Ukrainian-Siberian Industrial Association Rapid Plant. And now the most interesting thing: in 1989-94. the director of Rapid was the future Muranovsky father-in-law Oleg Taranov, who then privatized Rapid and included it in the capital of the Ukrainian-Siberian Investment Corporation, of which he was a director. By the way, at the same time, Oleg Taranov headed UkrSibBank (until 1992 called Kharkovinkombank) in the early 90s, and in 2006-2010. sold to the French financial group BNP Paribas, and is now one of the ten largest banks in Ukraine.

Thus, having bought “Rapid” from his own father-in-law, Evgeny Muraev actually received it as an addition to the dowry of Valeria’s husband. It was also a great gift for Taranov’s grandchildren: Mikhail Muraev (2007) and Igor Muraev (2009).

The plant became a real family business: Muraev’s father, Vladimir Kuzmich, sat in the chair of its director, and his wife Valeria Muraev headed the supervisory board. However, at first their business did not work out: in 2008, JSC Rapid Plant distinguished itself only by issuing additional shares, after which the crisis struck. First of all, the crisis hit the tenants of the premises of the former mechanical plant. To a lesser extent, it affected production: part of the plant was repurposed for woodworking and production of building materials, purchasing imported equipment for this. And, nevertheless, in November 2011, JSC “Rapid Plant” was declared bankrupt. However, its bankruptcy only helped AOZT get rid of excess debts and unnecessary shareholders (who bought up additional shares in 2008), after which Rapid continued its work again. There is information that the savior of the Muranovo family business was their new partner Hendlik Tekhnik LLC, whose beneficiary is the Austrian Paul Thorsten, and the actual owner is the family of Nikolai Azarov, who by that time had become the Prime Minister of Ukraine.

However, among Kharkov residents this enterprise has a very bad reputation as an employer. Reviews about working conditions at the plant, the size of workers’ salaries and the boorish behavior of its director Vladimir Kuzmich Muraev are often filled with the most negative emotions.

Hendlic Technician LLC is also a co-founder of another Muraiev company Altep (legal code 34954406), which received a lucrative contract to equip Kharkov schools with solid fuel heating boilers – powered by wood pellets produced by JSC Rapid Plant. The second founder of Altep was the same Muraev Sr. Moreover, Kuzmich’s business partner was Konstantin Pivovarov (before his appointment to the Cabinet of Ministers), who is Mykola Azarov’s confidant. Apparently, these business connections between the Murayev and Azarov families were subsequently mistaken by journalists for related ones.

The Muraevs’ business is not limited to these companies. Their Eastern Financial Group LLC is the founder of Commercial Security Agency LLC, Teplosnabbud and Agropark Vostok. Valeria Muraeva is registered with Robinson and CO LLC (Internet channel), Spetsstroymontazh and the Step by Step charity foundation. They also have a joint business with representatives of other political forces: the co-founders of the Kharkov private enterprise “Vegabud”, which is engaged in the construction of the Zhuravlevsky hydropark, are Vladimir Kuzmich Muraev and the deputy of the Kharkov City Council from “Samopomoch” Andrey Saenko.

War for the Gomolshansky forests

The victory of Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 presidential elections immediately revived the Kharkov regionals: they prepared to take leadership positions instead of the dismissed people Yushchenko and Tymoshenko. Those who seemed to have no reason to be fired decided to “help”. At the beginning of 2010, Evgeniy Muraev, as a deputy of the regional council, suddenly lashed out with devastating criticism of the head of the Zmievsky district administration, Anatoly Gatsko (who supported Tymoshenko). With his usual eloquence and persuasiveness, Murave began to accuse Gatsko of all sins: rising prices, bad roads, low milk yields, high crime, etc., etc.

It soon became clear why Evgeniy’s soul suddenly ached so much for his native Zmiev: on March 18, 2010, Mikhail Dobkin was appointed Kharkov governor, who immediately initiated the removal of Gatsko. And on April 15, 2010, Evgeniy Muraev became the new head of the Zmievskaya Regional State Administration. Moreover, he was the only one of the then newly appointed heads of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration whom Mikhail Dobkin personally came to introduce to his subordinates.

E. Muraev at one of the Zmiev folklore festivals

In his new position, Evgeny Muraev launched a very vigorous activity. He attracted his company Altep to re-equip Zmievsky schools and government institutions with solid fuel boilers – and later took credit for achieving a reduction in utility tariffs in the region. He was going to evict the Zmievsky Museum of Local Lore into the building of the former city bathhouse in order to transfer his two-story old mansion in the city center to commercial structures – and only pickets from the townspeople and an appeal from the museum staff to Kyiv saved him from death.

Muraev, bypassing the tender, entered into an agreement on road repairs with his own company Geospetsservice LLC, which he owned through front men. And when in the spring of 2011, according to statements from local social activists, the district prosecutor’s office tried to initiate a criminal case, Muraev attacked its district prosecutor Oleg Burtsev. Protests were organized by local “entrepreneurs” who allegedly suffered from Burtsev’s extortions, and in their wake, Evgeny Muraev acted in his role as a defender of the persecuted and disadvantaged, publicly calling for help from Governor Dobkin. As a result, it was decided to arrange an unscheduled rotation for Burtsev: he was sent as a prosecutor to the Volchansky district, and from there Igor Golub was sent to the Zmievsky prosecutor’s office.

Replacing the disloyal prosecutor brought Yevgeny Muraev closer to the main goal of his “voivodeship”: the liquidation of the Gomolsha Forests national park, located in the Zmievsky district. Later they said that this was precisely why he was appointed head of the district: the Kharkov elite decided to have their own analogue of Koncha-Zaspa and was looking for a picturesque place for their “royal villages”. In addition, Mikhail Dobkin planned to set up his hunting grounds on the territory of the reserve.

In the Gomolshansky Forests Nature Reserve

Everything went according to Muraev’s traditional tactics. First, there were some complaints from the local population that the evil rangers did not let them into the forest to pick mushrooms, and in the forests themselves there were so many animals that they came out to the villages to trample vegetable gardens and bully cows. “We don’t need such a reserve!” – they declared. Then Evgeny Muraev spoke as a defender of the people, making what seemed to him a smart speech that, in his professional assessment, no one was looking after the park, and it had fallen into disrepair. “There are too many animals, the trees are not cut down,” Muraev argued. This was a mistake: for the first time in his life he was not in the know, he did not understand that he was talking nonsense. In response, environmentalists said that they knew better what wild nature should look like, and Mr. Muraev was familiar with trees only as raw materials for his factory. The majority of local council deputies also took their side. The first attack on the Gomolshansky Forests in 2010 was repulsed.

In 2011, Evgeny Muraev again raised this issue, but from a different angle: he said that the reserve needed an investor who would turn it into a popular modern recreation area that would generate income for the area, and outlined the projects of the Zmievsky New Vasyuki. Once again, park ecologists objected that the purpose of the reserve is to preserve nature, and not to generate income. And then, in April 2012, the heavy artillery was brought into play: Alexander Motlyakh, who had been the director of the Gomolsha Forests National Park since its creation in 2004, was refused an extension of his annual contract, and his deputies resigned under external pressure. Muraev began lobbying for Motlyakh’s place with his protégé Ivan Severin, director of the Zmievskoye Forestry enterprise – whom local residents described as nothing less than a poacher. Fortunately, Kharkov ecologists stood up for the park, as well as teachers from KhSU, the Ukrainian Research Institute of Forestry, the Forestry Academy of Sciences of Ukraine and other authoritative luminaries who directly appealed to the president with an appeal to save the reserve.

The park was defended, and Muraev’s trophies were only the areas that were not part of it along the banks of the Seversky Donets, which were distributed through the Zadonetsk post-Soviet. The distribution of these plots continued after Muraev was replaced by the new head of the Zmievsky District State Administration, Vahram Gulyan (Kernes’s man), and after 2014. Among the owners of these plots are noted: Anna Gaysinskaya – the mother of the wife of the mayor of Kharkov Gennady Kernes (more than a hectare in the village of Koropovo) (Read more about him in the article by Gennady Kernes. Dark pages of the past of the Kharkov mayor ), children of the ex-mayor of Kharkov Vladimir Shumilkin (two plots in the village of Koropovo), three plots were rented by structures associated with Arsen Avakov (Read more about him in the article Arsen Avakov: the criminal past of the Minister of Internal Affairs), and the whole lake (10 hectares) was rented by Alexander Veretennikov – who in the fall of 2015 ran for the Zmievsky district council on the list of the Center party (now Life) together with Evgeny Muraev.

Opposition Bloc’s last trump card

In the 2012 parliamentary elections, Evgeny Muraev ran as a candidate in the 181st single-mandate electoral bloc (Zmiev), and won with a result of 56.15% of the vote, ahead of his opponent from Udar, Mikhail Yarmalyuk (12.29%). The fact that he would go to work in the Verkhovna Rada was determined in advance – apparently, as head of the Zmievsky District State Administration, he did not live up to all the hopes of the “Kharkov team” and the Party of Regions.

A year and a half in parliament passed completely calmly for Muraev, without any scandals. The only thing that could be presented to him was voting for the notorious “January 16 laws,” which in today’s Ukraine no longer look so restrictive on democracy. But in February 2014, Evgeniy Muraev acquired the News One TV channel from Vadim Rabinovich, which became his main media mouthpiece, and gradually began to promote him as a public politician on an all-Ukrainian scale. It is interesting that at the same time Vadim Rabinovich began to do the same with the help of her media – thus, the political horizon of Ukraine in 2014 was replenished with two new “stars”.

Supporters of the “Maidanov camp” argued that Yevgeny Muraev is a project of a candidate of a new formation being played out by the Opposition Bloc: a young, intelligent intellectual with a modern appearance and views, strikingly contrasting with the previous “leaders” who could not really put three words together. What after Sergey Tigipko (Read more about him in the article Sergei Tigipko: Komsomol oligarch covers his tracks) finally moved away from the collapsed Party of Regions, Mikhail Dobkin failed in the 2014 elections, and Yuri Boyko (Read more about him in the article YURIY BOYKO – “UNTOUCHABLE”) “pricked up the skis,” the Opposition Bloc urgently needed some new popular political top manager with whom they could not only go to the polls, but also actually fight for victory. Accordingly, opponents of the ex-regionals have developed a certain attitude towards Muraev, labeling him “separatist”, “Ukrainophobe”, etc.

However, they were mistaken: the departure of Yevgeny Muraev from the Opposition Bloc to Vadim Rabinovich’s “Center” (now “Life”) demonstrated the intention of these two figures to play their own party in politics. The “Kharkovites” have finally said goodbye to the “Donetskies” – at least the old Kharkov clan, to which Rabinovich and Muraev’s father-in-law Oleg Taranov belong.

Muraev’s vulnerability is that he is a completely stereotyped person who can be calculated, “read” and predicted. For example, he owes his current popularity and fame among opponents of the government to his role as a “truth teller”: Muraev regularly appears on TV shows and TV discussions, enthusiastically attacking the authorities, criticizing Euromaidan, nationalists, government reforms, etc. For people who did not know Muraev before 2014 year, it looks spectacular: here it is, the voice of one crying out! But there are also those who remember how Muraev used his oratorical gift in the same way to free up the chair of the Zmievsky Regional State Administration for himself, remove prosecutor Burtsev, who was interfering with him, and take over the Gomolshansky Forests reserve. And how this “defender of the people,” having received mandates and positions, then used them for the benefit of his family’s business. These people clearly see that Evgeny Muraev is repeating himself again today, albeit under a different party brand…

Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info