Galasyuk Viktor: innovative window-dresser from Lyashko’s party. PART 2

CONTINUATION BEGINNING: Viktor Galasyuk: innovative window-dresser from Lyashko’s party. PART 1

Vasyl Khmelnitsky, the owner of the Kyiv Investment Group, has long been known as a megalodon shark that devoured hundreds and thousands of hectares of Kyiv real estate. He took over the territories of factories, agricultural firms, parks, a pumping station and the Zhulyany airport. Using a variety of fraudulent schemes: from creating fake dacha cooperatives to putting factories into debt with the help of Kyivenergo. The territory and its commercial development – that’s all that, according to the data Skeleton.Infointerested Khmelnitsky. Therefore, when he came up with a project to create a “Ukrainian Skolkovo” (it still did not pull the “Silicon Valley”), those in the know became wary: it was as if Vasily Ivanovich was “cheating suckers” again. But Khmelnitsky launched such a convincing PR campaign for this project that many gullible citizens believed him. And most importantly, he hired a young man of “IT appearance” with an almost angelic face and an impeccable reputation as a figurehead – that is, Viktor Galasyuk. Whose reputation was then truly impeccable, because he who did nothing is not guilty of anything. But with his participation in the “Bionic Hill” project, Galasyuk destroyed this reputation.

The project promised to build New Vasyuki for “IT specialists”: with residential, scientific, industrial, educational and administrative complexes, with a developed service and recreation sector. “About 35 thousand people will work in Bionic Hill, and about 12 thousand people will be able to live in the park. The budget will receive about 600 million hryvnia annually in income tax alone. We also expect that the opening of Bionic Hill will reduce the outflow of IT talent from Ukraine,” Viktor Galasyuk, consciously or not, acting as a “grandmaster”, made his speeches at the time. Khmelnitsky made him vice-president of the Bionic Hill project and head of Bionic Hill LLC, a company that was supposed to promote this project and subsequently become the manager of the “innovation park”. Why Galasyuk agreed to this scam, one can only guess. There were rumors that Khmelnitsky allegedly promised business cooperation to the audit firms of Galasyuk’s parents, and they blessed their son for his first business project.

The absurdity of the Bionic Hill project was obvious to professionals from the very beginning: the practice of squeezing programmers into a separate settlement is senseless in our time, and in production and scientific terms (development of computer hardware) it is simply utopian. Khmelnitsky’s true goal was 146 hectares of land allocated by the Kyiv City Council. Part of the “park” was to be located on the territory of a closed military town, from which they began evicting the families of servicemen who lived there (depriving them of their own housing and offering apartments belonging to Khmelnitsky’s company in return). Khmelnitsky himself promised to allocate a billion dollars for the project and attract international companies to it – but he was in no hurry, and instead waited for the Kyiv authorities, in accordance with the project, to finance the construction of a modern road to the future “innovation park”, for which they planned to allocate 337 million hryvnia (to pave it with marble, or what?).

Skeptics claimed that Khmelnytsky simply wanted to build a modern road to the construction site for free, which he would then build up with residential towers and supermarkets, and there would be no “Ukrainian Skokovo”. Khmelnytsky, through Viktor Galasyuk, assured that the project was developing at full speed. Like, to confirm this, Khmelnytsky did not spare a million dollars to restore the Brotherhood Cells on the territory of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and open the “Bionic University” there – supposedly as the first swallow. The US Ambassador was even invited to the opening ceremony – apparently, since then, Viktor Galasyuk has had close relations with the State Department (today, Galasyuk heads the “friendship group with the USA” in the Rada).

As is well known, the Bionic Hill project failed: Khmelnitsky froze it while waiting for the Kyiv authorities to build the road. And in 2014, after a series of courts making contradictory decisions, the Kyiv Commercial Court declared the allocation of land for this “Potemkin village” invalid. Nevertheless, Viktor Galasyuk remained at the head of Bionic Hill LLC until September 2014, continuing to defend the project – especially when, after the Maidan, he became an adviser to the Minister of Education and Science Liliya Hrynevych and an adviser to the Chairman of the State Investment Agency. That is, he was already lobbying for the allocation of state funds for this failed and initially fraudulent project.

It is difficult to say how Viktor Galasyuk’s fate would have developed if in August 2014 the leader of the Radical Party, Oleh Lyashko, had not invited him to be his economic adviser. Of course, Lyashko is an ambiguous and even eccentric person, and he recruited just about anyone into his party (from nationalists to criminal businessmen), but still, Galasyuk’s value as an economic adviser was low: this audit theorist had only one internship (the “Bionic Hill” project), which he successfully failed. But perhaps Lyashko simply wanted to use him for PR against the backdrop of the “innovation park” decoration. In addition, it was rumored that not only Viktor Galasyuk’s parents, but also the US Embassy had already asked for him.

And then Viktor Galasyuk’s importance in Oleh Lyashko’s eyes rose sharply because he included him in his party’s electoral list under No. 10 – although he could have profitably sold this place to some millionaire. And one can only guess why Oleh Valerievich liked this completely useless young man from a practical point of view so much? But this, as they say, is the problem of the Radical Party. But the fact that the Radicals immediately insisted on appointing Galasyuk as Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship was simply shocking…

Well, they appointed him, so they appointed him. It is probably not surprising that Ukraine’s industrial policy has finally reached a dead end over the past three years. In any case, Viktor Galasyuk remains the same as he was under Khmelnytsky: a lobbyist for economic projects who only pretends to understand the complexity of the Ukrainian economy. In addition to the bill with the loud title “Buy Ukrainian, pay Ukrainians” (which, of course, at first glance, is hard to argue with), he, together with Lyashko, is pushing the idea of ​​creating some “industrial parks” – and has already put the project on Prime Minister Groysman’s desk. Of course, Viktor Galasyuk will be able to convincingly and eloquently talk about how these “industrial parks” are simply essential for the restoration of the Ukrainian economy, just as he convincingly advertised Vasyl Khmelnytsky’s “innovation park”. But what and who is really behind Galasyuk’s new “Potemkin villages”? At best, the interests of oligarchs who want to revive the “free economic zones” of Kuchma’s time. And at worst, they will simply steal budget money again.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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