Igor Kononenko
The name of Igor Kononenko is not known to the general public, but he is a very influential politician. He is called the “gray eminence” of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, where he holds the position of first deputy head of the faction. He served with the president in the army and was his business partner for a long time. Even a plot of land measuring 1.1 hectares in Tsarskoe Selo is shared between him and Pyotr Alekseevich. And unlike faction leader Yuriy Lutsenko, he has direct access “to the body” of the Guarantor and to the “first lady,” he talks about this in his interviews. Which, as we know, among officials is a sign of enormous influence and political weight. Thus, today it is he, and not the leader of the faction, who is the main communicator between the president and his political force. However, Igor Vitalievich himself claims that he is simply “exchanging information” with the president.
Igor Kononenko comes from the Komsomol; in the eighties and early nineties he was the secretary of the Komsomol organization of the Kyiv Road Institute and was a member of the headquarters of the student construction brigade. And when capitalism came, he, like many Komsomol members, went into business. Together with Petro Poroshenko, he stood at the origins of Ukrprominvest, a management company that included many different assets. From the Bogdan plant to the Roshen concern, from Leninskaya Kuznya to Channel 5. Igor Vitalievich held the position of vice president in this structure. During the time he and Pyotr Alekseevich were managing the concern, Ukrprominvest, through its enterprises LuAZ, Bogdan-Service and others, laundered money. A fictitious export of goods from Ukraine to the United States and the import of laundered money back was organized. The origin of these funds is still unclear. In addition, Ukrprominvest actively evaded paying taxes. The concern’s automobile enterprises imported many components and assemblies from abroad. They were required to pay VAT on this. In order to avoid paying taxes, the enterprises of Kononenko and Poroshenko organized a scheme of fictitious export enterprises, which allowed them to “optimize” (that is, heat up the state) by many millions of hryvnia.
In 2006, Igor Vitalievich moved into politics. He became a deputy of the Kiev City Council from the most corrupt political force at that time, the Leonid Chernovetsky Bloc. Here he worked in the commission on transport and communications. However, in this position he was not remembered for any special achievements or deeds. He is remembered for the fact that his commission passed the decision to build a heliport on Park Alley. It is associated with structures close to Alexander Yanukovych, and in addition, it was built with many violations of construction and environmental legislation. The second thing Kononenko was remembered for was his position on Gostinny Dvor in Podol. He advocated rebuilding and turning it into a shopping center. That is, in fact, for the destruction of this architectural monument. Well, like all the deputies of the then Kiev City Council, he participated in the dispossession of Kyiv land.
Igor Kononenko squeezed out one piece of land, let’s say, not only for himself. But also for his friend, the President of Ukraine. We are talking about a site in the center of the capital, in Pechersk in “Tsarskoye Selo”. It originally belonged to the Kyiv state-owned Zelenstroy, then the private enterprise Zelenbudservice-K was organized, to which this piece of land went, and Kononenko joined the board of this enterprise. In general, the scheme is quite standard. As for the plot itself, it is a plot of 1.1 hectares. On 46 acres of this site, the estate of Igor Vitalievich himself was built, and across the road, apparently, a “tent house” for the family of Pyotr Alekseevich will soon be built. So, they will be neighbors and can go to each other’s houses for tea. Well, they will see each other more often, which means that Kononenko’s influence will skyrocket almost to the skies. He will be able to reach the President at any time of the day or night, in the literal sense of the word.
The latest scandal that Igor Vitalievich got himself into is related to Ukrtransnafta. This scandal included everything possible: the seizure of the office, the change of directors, incidents with armed guards, the disarmament of police guards, the intervention of the SBU in the case, and the beating of a member of the Supervisory Board with bats. In general, all the delights of raiding. Then Igor Kolomoisky publicly stated that Igor Kononenko personally was behind the conflict with this enterprise. Judging by how quickly the President personally intervened in this situation, and by how harshly Kolomoisky paid for it, his statement seems to be true.
Each of the Ukrainian presidents had their own “gray cardinal”. Kravchuk had Khomenko, Kuchma had Tabachnyk (Read more about it in the article Dmitry and Mikhail Tabachnik. Brother for brother), and then Medvedchuk. Yushchenko had Baloga, Yanukovych had Prygodsky (Read more about him in the article Anton Prigodsky: Yanukovych’s first “gray cardinal”), then Ivanyushchenko and Levochkin. The current head of the Presidential Administration, Boris Lozhkin, does not at all look like a “gray eminence”. But a holy place is never empty, and, apparently, it will be occupied… and most likely it has already been occupied by Igor Kononenko.
Denis Ivanov, for SKELET-info
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