Gennady Vatsak: alcohol wars of the smuggling barons of Vinnytsia. PART 1

At first glance, Mogilev-Polsky is an unremarkable provincial town. But it is located right on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border and has long had a reputation as the main gateway for alcohol smuggling. Therefore, local corruption and criminal clans have been fighting for control over these gates for many years. During this time, their leaders and henchmen managed to change their leather jackets to business suits, and then patriotic embroidered shirts, they were elected mayors and deputies – but at their core they remained bandits and “werewolves in uniform”…

Residential high-rise buildings in Mogilev-Podolsky are located just fifty meters from the border checkpoint. And under the water of the Dniester flowing nearby “spirit pipes” have been laidthrough which “fire water” is pumped in tanks. However, alcohol is not the only smuggled item in this region. According to numerous sources Skelet.Infodrug trafficking routes are already being created there, and on such a scale that they may soon simply overshadow the traditional local alcohol “business”! It is not surprising that passions have been running high in this city lately and even blood has been shed.

True, local clans try not to wash dirty linen in public, so information about these events usually did not spread beyond the regional media. And therefore, for all Ukrainians, Mogilev-Podolsky remains a small provincial town in which nothing seems to be happening. And in which, in 2019, Gennady Vatsak, who has an impeccable legend as a local businessman-confectioner and the appearance of a Hollywood action hero, was elected to the Verkhovna Rada. However, this man is not as simple as his hometown!

Gennady Vatsak: Family organized crime group

Vatsak Gennady Anatolyevich was born on February 9, 1972 in Mogilev-Podolsky (Vinnitsa region). His official biography very laconic and more like a resume: studied, worked, ran for office, was awarded. It seems like there’s nothing to complain about! And it’s unlikely Skelet.Info I would have paid attention to such an exemplary entrepreneur and deputy, if not for numerous publications in the Vinnitsa press about his “gangster methods” of doing business. As you know, there is no smoke without fire! And the search for this fire allowed us to learn a lot of interesting things not only about the life of Vatsak and his entourage, but also about the dark affairs going on in Mogilev-Podolsk.

First, let’s look at his biography. There is no information about his parents, but, according to his neighbors, Gennady Vatsak was from a simple family, even by provincial standards. At school, he was not distinguished by his thirst for knowledge, preferring physical education to geometry. Therefore, I surprised many when in 1987, after finishing 8th grade, I entered the Mogilev-Podolsk Medical College (now a medical college). After graduating, he avoided being drafted into the army (false certificate?) and until 1994 he was listed as a paramedic in a children’s hospital. And then he suddenly threw away the stethoscope and thermometers and went into catering, spending another five years as a waiter in a restaurant. And finally, in 2002, Vatsak became the founder and director of the Vatsak Confectionery House (USREOU 42796845, after re-registration in 2019). In 2010, he was elected as a deputy of the Vinnytsia Regional Council from Batkivshchyna, in 2015 he was again elected from the BPP, and in 2019, as an independent candidate, he received a mandate as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada. That’s all, actually!

And now about what is never written about in custom articles about the brilliant and hardworking owner of the Vatsak confectionery factory. For some reason, they are silent that the closest person to Vatsak (well, besides his family) is the almost permanent mayor of Mogilev-Podolsky, Petr Petrovich Brovko (mayor of the city in 1994-2006 and in 2011-2020). Close at least since the early 90s. However, local residents said that Gennady Vatsak has been friends with the Brovko family since school days, since the mid-80s. It was then that Pyotr Brovko and his brothers Viktor and Valery put together a family “brigade”, which started with “thimbles” and rose through the racketeering of local entrepreneurs. The Mogilev residents who spoke about this also mentioned the code phrase “Ivan Ivanovich”, used by Brovko’s “brigade”.

Gena Vatsak started with the Brovko brothers as a young “sniff”, but he really dreamed of becoming a tough “fighter”. That’s why he began to actively engage in boxing, then kickboxing, which was then fashionable, and spent hours on the “rocking chair.” The members of Brovko’s group were very young, and therefore were fond of American action films, and not domestic thieves’ romance. They got so carried away that Pyotr Brovko and Gennady Vatsak still wear their “Schwarzenegger” hairstyle (aka “platform”), which was once the signature style of their “brigade.”

It was Peter Brovko, who himself graduated from it back in 1978, who advised (and helped) Vatsak to enter the medical college. Perhaps deep knowledge of science was not in great demand at this educational institution! Well, after his graduation, Vatsak was really only listed as a paramedic, and then as a waiter – because in reality he did a completely different job for the Brovko brothers. By the way, he was listed as a waiter in one of the establishments controlled by Pyotr Brovko. It seems that even in the very same place near which they tried to blow up Brovko on November 7, 1999. However, the clumsy execution of the bombing gave rise to persistent rumors in the city that he simply staged the assassination attempt in order to gain the image of an anti-corruption fighter and free state security. The latter had a number of advantages compared to his “boys”, and Brovko needed protection from rival groups who wanted to wrest from him the mayor’s chair and control over flows – primarily alcohol smuggling.

In general, the story of the rise of a local “authority”, who shook out money from “suckers” and “commercialists”, into the mayor’s office is very interesting. The only pity is that there is almost no one to tell it in detail. Petr Brovko was one of the first to understand the importance of Mogilev-Podolsky as a smuggling gateway. Moreover, he himself organized a lot of flows, often traveled “on business” to neighboring Moldova and even received Moldovan citizenship in 1994! About his second passport reported back in 2010, which then became the cause of scandalous legal proceedings and almost led to re-election, but the Party of Regions, under whose flag he was running at that time, cleared him out. In 2015, people started talking about Brovko’s Moldovan passport again, but he again won the elections without any problems.

It was rumored that Brovko’s mayoralty was put in place by “respected people” in the 90s, to whom he promised to organize and cover up smuggling flows. Therefore, Brovko’s first elections in 1994 were practically “uncontested,” since all the other candidates were simply intimidated by bandits. And in the future, his victory or defeat depended on the support of criminal and corruption circles.

The mayor’s office gave Pyotr Brovko the opportunity to carry out the “privatization” of local enterprises (almost all of them were bankrupt and sold off in 1994-2006), as well as practically unlimited access to budget funds. Due to which, for example, he carried out a major overhaul of the Smaragd Hotel, framing it as restoration after a flood. At the same time, he registered both “Smaragd” and a number of other enterprises in the name of his common-law wife Larisa Andronyuk (then he transferred them to his grown sons).

As for Gennady Vatsak, his youthful dreams have completely come true. With his fists, he quickly achieved a high place in the Brovko group, heading its “power squad” in the 90s. By that time, they had already moved on from handing out blows to cooperators to seizing enterprises and protecting their smuggling schemes, so Vatsak and his “boys” faced more serious tasks. For which he was rewarded: in 2001, he received a “feeding” enterprise, which, with the help of the boss’s dirty money and the imagination of his wife Victoria, he turned into the Vatsak Confectionery House. They started by processing surplus sugar and molasses, and then began making cakes and pastries. It is curious that the entire history of “Vatsak” until 2019 was practically erased; it was even specially re-registered (with an authorized capital of 1000 hryvnia) in order to remove the previous information from open databases. Agree, this is very strange! What secrets are they hiding? Maybe the talk that Vatsak confectionery products are just a cover for smuggling schemes, and that some cakes delivered throughout Ukraine have a “special filling”, are not just empty rumors?

By the way, about the “Vatsak” cakes, for which the owner of the enterprise spares no money for direct and hidden advertising. In 2019, a film crew from the “Stop Corruption” program arrived in Mogilev-Podolsky to film a report about the illegal sand mining of Kamelot LLC (42663802). This is another Vatsak company, which also has an authorized capital of only one thousand hryvnia. And along the way, journalists became interested in another topic – the appalling quality of the products of the Vatsak CD. In his cakes, experts found an excess of the permissible norms of transisomers that are extremely harmful to health (causing cancer and heart problems), as well as a whole bunch of different microflora that can cause a lot of serious diseases – from sepsis to meningitis! But instead of establishing basic sanitary order at his enterprise, the alarmed Vatsak only tried to remove from public access the report “Toxic “Tenderness” by Gennady Vatsak” posted by StopCor on YouTube. Thus, taking advantage of the ignorance of the Ukrainians, Vatsak continued to poison the Ukrainians with his cakes (as well as their “special filling”).

And then, as if the staphylococci in the cream weren’t enough, Vatsak decided to add coronavirus to it too! Well, how else could one interpret the fact that at the height of the second wave of the epidemic, when at the Vatsak factory, five people are infected at oncehe did not close the enterprise for quarantine, but ordered it to continue working. Apparently, it was very important for him not to disrupt the delivery of the next batch of his cakes! And the workers who fell ill with Covid continued to make cakes, spraying them with coronavirus…

And judging by the current scandalous publications about Vatsak, he still has at his disposal certain “titushki” who do not disdain assault even against women. It was reported that he controls them as chairman of the regional kickboxing federation. Well, as you know, the leaders of strength sports federations in Ukraine are very often former “brothers”! So in this case, this once again confirms the “unofficial” information about Gennady Vatsak’s past.

Huttfields and McCoys in Mogilev style

In February 2019, the prosecutor’s office served the mayor of Mogilev-Podolsky with suspicion of corruption activitiesand a week after that, by decision of the Vinnytsia City Court, Pyotr Brovko was sent under house arrest. It seemed as if the occupied chair beneath him was swaying threateningly. But soon the power in the country changed, Brovko returned to his office, and his case was forgotten – like all previous scandals and proceedings. In this he was greatly assisted by the new people’s deputy Gennady Vatsak, who became a reliable “cover” for his boss. For which, in fact, Vatsaku was organized to win the 2019 parliamentary elections.

This unsuccessful attempt to bring Pyotr Brovko to criminal responsibility was far from the only misadventure in which he fell during the long history of his “reign” in Mogilev-Podolsky. As we noted in the first part of this story, other clans also tried to gain power over the city, so Brovko’s position largely depended on his agreements with big people. But sometimes it happened that these agreements were broken down or violated, and then serious conflicts arose. Some did not go beyond local crime news, and some unfolded in the capital itself. Let’s remember a few of them!

Unfortunately, the media left no mention of either the heated events of 1998-99, when the city was on the brink of a criminal war, or the panic of 2005-2006, when Brovko, who had lost his Kyiv patrons, was thrown out of the mayor’s chair for 4 years. Someone even deleted articles about the scandal surrounding the Stavisky city market, half of which Peter Brovko literally seized with the help of a scam, falsifying the decision of the City Council session! Then he created Rynok Stavisky LLC (USREOU 32354981) from this half and gave it to his 21-year-old son Denis for his wedding. He immediately began to charge entrepreneurs trading at the market, in addition to rent, 3 hryvnia (0.6 dollars at the then exchange rate) for each square meter (the total area of ​​his half of the market is more than a hectare). Those who called these extortions illegal and tried to fight were persecuted and “nightmared” by bandits from the Brovko clan. Thus, local businessman Alexander Tsarenko had his sales tent destroyed, crashed the car intimidated the family.

The crimes of the Brovko clan were covered up not only by the then city prosecutor Gulko (godfather of Anatoly Kinakh), but also by the scandalous prosecutor of the Vinnytsia region Alexander Shmorgunabout whom they wrote that he tried to put the leader of the public anti-corruption movement Andrei Bondarenko in a mental hospital. It was thanks to Shmorgun that criminal case No. 06130052, initiated on the fact of falsification of the city council’s decision to sell the Stavisky market, was then put on hold and forgotten.

The haste with which the Brovko clan then pocketed city property was explained by the fact that he felt the loss of power. After the first Maidan, competing families intensified in the city, which in 2006 promoted Mykhailo Savolyuk, a member of the political council of Our Ukraine, to the mayor’s seat. He was remembered by Mogilev residents only for the fact that under his leadership the city budget was stolen so much that there was not enough money even for street repairs, and Savlyuk himself went to Kyiv and begged for new subsidies (http://www.golos.com.ua/rus/article /180918). But they didn’t give him money, because the Brovko clan then began to support BYuT, and Tymoshenko was the prime minister. When in 2010 the power in Kyiv changed again, and not in favor of Yulia Vladimirovna, Brovko immediately came to an agreement with the regionals. And with the help of prosecutor Shmorgun, before the 2010 local elections, he got Savolyuk out of his way, setting the prosecutor’s office on him. Savolyuk received three years probationand Petr Brovko won the elections. However, his competitors pulled out a trump card – Brovko’s Moldovan citizenship, so Brovko returned to the mayor’s chair only after several months of litigation and with the help of his regional friends.

CONTINUED: Gennady Vatsak and Petr Brovko: smuggling barons of Vinnytsia. PART 2

Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Info

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