Igor Krivetsky
For a long time, Western Ukrainian “patriots” opposed themselves to Eastern Ukrainian “bandits”, pretending to selflessly fight pro-Russian criminals for a European Ukraine. But suddenly it turned out that there is no less criminality among the nationalists than among their political opponents – only it is not dressed in tracksuits, but in embroidered shirts and camouflage. And now Lviv’s “Svoboda” thunders across the country time after time not with the scandalous antics of Iryna Farion, but with its connections with the criminal world, which not only fed her with its generous hands, but also deeply penetrated its ranks.
Once upon a time in Lviv
One of such scandals broke out two years ago and once again revealed some details about the sponsors of the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” to the general public. It was organized by a Lviv businessman Vladimir Didukh, better known as crime boss Vova Morda. That same Morda who became famous all over Ukraine back in 2006, when President Yushchenko shouted in irritation at the Interior Ministry generals: “What kind of Morda is this that makes everyone in Lvov cry? How many divisions should we give you so that this Morda doesn’t exist?!”
Vova Morda (Vladimir Didukh)
Viktor Andreevich, as always, got carried away. At that time, Morda was far from being the biggest criminal problem in Lvov, compared to the same Kolya Rokiro – who will be discussed below. But the main thing is that Yushchenko had no idea that Morda was Volodymyr Didukh, whose tough guys took part in protecting the Maidan stage at the end of 2004 (at that time he coordinated his actions with Artur Palatny, “decided” the criminal branch from Klitschko, ensuring the safety of his leaders. True, they did this not for political reasons or an ideological impulse of the soul, but simply because their “authority” was asked to do this by those whom he was already sponsoring with cash. And this is exactly what Volodymyr Didukh told about in 2014 in his interview with the Express newspaper. In particular, they were talking about several “tranches” in the amount of 48 million dollars, which Didukh once donated to the leaders of “Svoboda”, passing them on through Igor Krivetsky, who at one time introduced Didukh to Tyahnybok (Read more about him in the article Oleg Tyahnybok. Sponsors and associates of the Ukrainian nationalist) and convinced him to invest money in a promising political project. Again, purely for practical reasons of benefit: to sponsor people who could eventually gain power. But, according to Didukh, the Svoboda members were so greedy for money that they took it from everyone, and then were in no hurry to “pay dividends.” And when they found new sponsors, this marked the beginning of a quarrel between Didukh and Krivetsky. The final split between them arose during the events of 2014, after which Morda decided to pour his bucket of dirt on Svoboda, personally confirming what the same Express newspaper had written a year earlier.
This is how the name of the previously little-known Svoboda member Igor Krivetsky has once again become known in Ukraine. His official biography is a blank spot with a couple of short lines: he was born, studied, worked as a manager, became a successful businessman. However, its reverse side resembles a page from the Necronomicon, written in blood.
So, Igor Igorevich Krivetsky was born on August 9, 1972 in the village of Mokhnate, Turkovsky district, Lviv region. His parents are still in good health and continue their work: his father is a forestry inspector, and his mother is a rural paramedic and obstetrician. They flatly refuse to give up their usual way of life, although they have moved to a more spacious house. And still, looking at them, you would not say that they are co-owners of a number of large companies – Igor registered his share in his parents.
In the early 90s, Igor Krivetsky, having successfully “dodged” the army, went to Lviv and entered the Polytechnic Institute, which he graduated in 1995 with a diploma in engineering and technology of building materials. After which, formally, he got a job as a manager at a company that packaged cereals, pasta and sugar. In reality, Krivetsky joined the ranks of the Lviv “brothers”, where he received his criminal call sign “Pups”. There is information that he started out back in his student days with his own small gang, which in 1993 carried out “raids” on the suburbs of Kyiv, where they simply robbed people. Things didn’t get to the point of a major sin, so when the robbers were caught, Sergey Tkachuk and Andrian Gutnik, Krivetsky’s accomplices, received a 3.5-year sentence under criminal case 1-214/94 of the Dniprovsky District Court, while he himself managed to extricate himself from the story by allegedly agreeing to cooperate with law enforcement agencies. And such cooperation allegedly consisted of Krivetsky being introduced into one of Lviv’s organized crime groups as an “informant.”
This was the group of Lviv authority Nikolai Lozinsky, known as Kolya Rokiro. A strong character and organizational skills helped Krivetsky make a career in his organized crime group as a “brigadier”. It should be noted that Pups-Krivetsky turned out to be a very lucky man – he is one of the few who safely survived the wild 90s, when the “brotherhood” laid to rest in showdowns were put into graves in whole “brigades”.
His boss Kolya Rokiro started with ordinary racketeering, then “protected” underground workshops of counterfeit alcohol, later took up smuggling stolen cars from Europe across the border, and finally focused on drug trafficking. This is a very specific business, which also requires very large and far-reaching connections both in the criminal world and in law enforcement agencies. Whether Pups participated in it, and what exactly he did, remains unknown: even former Lviv OBNO members will not say this, since they were probably in on it. But it is unlikely that “foreman” Kolya Rokiro was only engaged in protecting his boss. By the way, he never saved him: Nikolai Lozinsky was killed in his car in 2007, when he had already tied up with most of the criminal projects and was actively joining the legal business.
Killed Kolya Rokiro (Nikolai Lozinsky)
As it became known SKELET-infoit was Lozinsky who suggested to his “brigadiers” to find a political project suitable for promising investments. And although there were more than a hundred of the most diverse political parties in Ukraine, Lozinsky did not have much choice in Lviv. Left parties were out of the question, the NDP was controlled by Kuchma, such as the SDPU (o) by large oligarchs, and local political “whales” like “Rukh” were under the control of big officials – and all of them were perfectly sponsored without the help of the Lviv “brothers”. Here their attention was attracted by the Social-Nationalist Party (SNPU) of the eccentric Oleh Tyagnibok, which could occupy the political niche of extreme right-wing nationalism in Ukraine. In addition, the SNPU then had its own “stormtroopers” – the organization “Patriot of Ukraine”. And this meant that, if necessary, Kolya Rokyro’s “lads” could act on their behalf, who would not have been senselessly walking the streets with flags.
“Patriot of Ukraine”, late 90s
Perhaps Lozinsky was planning to spread his eggs among several political baskets, but he assigned Pups to deal with Tyahnybok’s party. According to one source SKELET-infoKrivetsky entered into close contact with the SNPU leadership through a member of the party’s political council, Vasily Pavlyuk, who in the 90s was engaged in entrepreneurship, went bankrupt and owed the “brotherhood” a tidy sum of money. Another source SKELET-info said that this was done through Anatoly Gaba, who in 2001 received a suspended sentence for robbing a kiosk, and during his arrest met the “brotherhood” of Kolya Rokiro. Gaba was not the last person in the SNPU, he later changed his last name to Zavaruyev, was elected as a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council and became the chairman of the commission on the fuel and energy complex and entrepreneurship.
It is unknown when exactly the pact on fruitful cooperation between the organized crime group of Koli Rokbro and the SNPU was concluded. However, it happened before the first Maidan, and before 2004 Igor Krivetsky not only became close to Oleh Tyahnybok, but also arranged a meeting between the “leader” and Volodymyr Didukh. It should be noted that the Lviv organized crime groups greatly helped Tyahnybok not only with money: after the party was forced to rename itself into the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” in 2003, to abandon its “power bloc” (to disband “Patriot of Ukraine”) and to change the rune on its banners (which is now the symbol of “Azov”) to three fingers, it was left without organized “muscles”. And during the first Maidan, these muscles were provided to them by the “lads” of Morda and Koli Rokbro.
Starting with the success of the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” in the local elections of 2006, their duet looked promising, and who knows what political heights Kolya Rokiro could have reached, having retrained as an entrepreneur and politician. However, in 2007 he was killed, and the remains of his business were divided between his “brigadiers”. After that, Igor Krivetsky worked a little in tandem with Vova Morda, who also switched to the rails of a more or less civilized business. One of the links is the Lviv-based LLC “Mangusty”, the founders of which were Igor Krivetsky and Maksim Vladimirovich Didukh – the biological son of Vova Morda. Also, Didukh’s wife, Natalia Slipchenko, together with Krivetsky is a co-owner of the company “Emkoret”, which is engaged in the rental of goods for tourism and recreation.
Politics as a business
By the end of the 2000s, Igor Krivetsky had put a lot, if not everything, on Svoboda. And he was not disappointed in this, since the party was confidently taking over the regional and city councils of Western Ukraine. In 2010, Igor Krivetsky was elected as a deputy of the Lviv Regional Council from Svoboda (No. 5 on the party list), where he headed the commission on legality and human rights (what irony). In 2012, Krivetsky, who had already become not only the main sponsor of the party, but also its influential functionary, was included under No. 13 on the list for the parliamentary elections – and received a mandate as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada. There he took the post of secretary of the commission on tax and customs policy – and this was already an opportunity for direct cooperation with very big people involved in very large imports. At the same time, Krivetsky also got his old comrades from previous affairs into Svoboda. Thus, he not only brought Andriy Gutnik into the party, but also helped him get elected to the Lviv City Council, where he became the leader of the Svoboda faction. Thus, in fact, Krivetskyi was already subjugating Svoboda in practical terms, leaving Tyahnybok and other leaders who feed from his hand the opportunity to serenely enjoy political spectacles.
Kryvetsky and Tyahnybok in the Rada
By this time, Igor Krivetskyi was already among the richest people in Ukraine – if not in the first hundred, then certainly in the first thousand. His parliamentary declaration for 2011 alone listed a total annual family income of 3.5 million hryvnia, bank deposits totaling 5.039 million hryvnia, an ultra-expensive Bentley Continental (but not his Maybach, Porsche, Ferrari, or small Cessna airplane), two plots of land, a 945.8-square-meter residential building, and a 459-square-meter apartment. In addition, Krivetskyi is the owner of the Lviv entertainment center Fiesta-Fantastika, the Uzlissya hotel complex, the Edem Resort hotel, and Borzhavski Skhily LLC, which owns tourist centers and hotels in the Mizhhirya district of Zakarpattia. Well, and behind him also remain the above-mentioned “Mongooses” and “Emcoret”.
Together with his wife Olga Filatova, Krivetsky owns IDS Service Plus (rent and sublease of premises for cafes), private enterprise KSM Financial Consultant and the Lviv hotel Georges. The story of Krivetsky’s receipt of shares of KAN LLC in 2010, which is the owner of the Kyiv shopping center Arena City, turned out to be quite scandalous. There was information that Krivetsky received this share as a fee from Dmitry Firtash for involving Svoboda in the protest blocking of shale gas development in Western Ukraine (which would have ruined the business of RosUkrEnergo). After the development project was shut down, Firtash and Krivetsky founded KAN LLC, whose capital was divided as follows: 95% of the shares remained with Firtash’s company, Advanced Technologies Plus, and 5% (worth almost 11.3 million hryvnia) was received by Krivetsky “for party needs.” However, instead of sharing with his party comrades, Krivetsky registered these shares in the name of his mother, who suddenly turned out to be the richest paramedic in Ukraine. But that’s not the most interesting thing! There is information that at the same time, Krivetsky made an offer to the American company Chevron, which was supposed to be engaged in these developments, with a proposal to make a tidy sum as a donation for the needs of Ukrainian patriots – after which Svoboda would stop blocking the developments. Chevron refused and even tried to set the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office on Svoboda, but Svoboda immediately declared this to be ordered political repression.
But Igor Krivetsky played out the biggest adventure of his life on the second Ukrainian Maidan. First, he paid for the construction and ensured the functioning of the Maidan stage. And as soon as the first clashes occurred, it was Krivetsky who decided to strengthen the participation of Svoboda by creating an entire army of Self-Defense, for which he mobilized all his reliable and smart “lads” to Kyiv. And it was Svoboda that had the most impressive organized force during the Maidan: Krivetsky created almost two dozen hundreds of Self-Defense directly under the party banners, and participated in the creation of several more “allied” ones. But at the same time, he prudently kept this entire huge army on Independence Square and used it to take control of the captured buildings for Svoboda, but did not let it into the clashes on Hrushevsky – where the Right Sector was desperately fighting. In addition, there is a fact of shooting at protesters from the windows of a room in the Ukraine Hotel, which was occupied by members of Svoboda – in 2015, the prosecutor’s office even tried to conduct an investigation into this fact.
Thus, having grouped the power potential of Svoboda around the stage with the “leaders”, Krivetsky actually took control of the Maidan under the control of “Self-Defense”. With all this, firstly, he ensured the constant presence of Oleh Tyahnybok on the stage among the “leaders”, and secondly, he got the opportunity to then present the opposition leaders with a bill for services. It was not money, no – Krivetsky demanded a quota in the new government for Svoboda. In a different scenario, Tyahnybok’s party would have simply been “sent away”, but taking into account its contribution to the Maidan (or rather, Krivetsky’s contribution), and participation in the new parliamentary coalition, the “Svoboda” members were allocated quotas. And not only the official ones, according to which they received their Prosecutor General (Oleg Makhnitsky (background on him: Oleg Makhnitsky: is there a limit to the shamelessness of the former “Maidan prosecutor”)), his Minister of Defense (Tenyukh), Minister of Ecology (Andrey Mokhnik), Agrarian Policy (Igor Shvaika, more about him in the article Shvaika on a motorcycle. And not only) and the second vice-premier (Alexander Sych). At the same time, it is not surprising that Makhnitsky, Shvaika and Mokhnik are people closely connected with Krivetsky, and even from old Lviv affairs. In addition, Krivetsky used the opportunity to trade positions for others: in particular, at the request of Artur Palatny, an associate and business partner of Vitali Klitschko, he arranged the appointment of Vladimir Shandra to the post of governor of the Kyiv region.
Despite Svoboda’s defeat in the 2014 elections, Igor Krivetskyi launched a vigorous business activity in Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine, often accompanied by new scandals. Thus, in Ivano-Frankivsk, the subsidiary company Zakhidpolirkomplekt LLC, which is associated with Krivetskyi’s lawyer Oleg Magulka, received 3.5 hectares of land from the local city council (controlled by Svoboda) for residential development on the site of industrial burial grounds – which caused indignation among the townspeople, who broke into the city council hall to protest.
Another scandal erupted in 2014, when Krivetsky began “providing services” to the head of Ukrspirt, Mikhail Labutin. According to sources SKELET-infoat first Krivetsky covered up his corrupt activities with the help of the Minister of Agrarian Policy Igor Shvaika and the Prosecutor General Makhnitsky. However, when Svoboda lost key positions in power and Labutin was arrested, it was Krivetsky who allegedly organized the scandalous kidnapping of Labutin from the hospital by the fighters of the Aidar battalion – among whom Krivetsky also has his own people.
There is information that during 2015-2016 Krivetsky continued to actively develop the “power bloc” of both “Svoboda” itself and parallel formations, focusing on the situation that had developed in the country. Firstly, there are constant rumors about a third Maidan – in which the victory of the party opposing the government can only be guaranteed by the presence of a sufficient number of organized formations. And such a version of the revived Krivetsky project “Self-Defense of the Maidan” can be such, only in a different, higher-quality execution. At the same time, after the tragic events of August 31 near the Verkhovna Rada, Igor Mosiychuk (Read more about him in the article Igor Mosiychuk. How one of the main “radicals” of Ukraine got started) accused Krivetsky of being behind this provocation, the purpose of which was to discredit “Ukrainian patriots” for subsequent reprisals against them in favor of Bankova.
Secondly, the events of two years of turmoil have shown that the presence of “titushki,” dressed in the embroidered shirts of “patriots” and the camouflage uniforms of “activists,” plays a huge role in modern Ukrainian politics and economics – allowing them to overthrow officials and disrupt failed elections, carry out raider takeovers and disperse protests, and control illegal businesses and smuggling.
And so, the public organization “Development of the Community” began to actively develop in Lviv. It was created back in 2008, but did not have much success until it was headed in 2014 by Oleg Dolinsky, an assistant to the deputy of the Lviv City Council from the All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” Andriy Karbovnyk. At the same time, both are called Krivetsky’s people, who became the main financial sponsor of this organization, which allowed it to actively recruit new members. This organization created a “public association for the protection of public order” of the same name, which was founded by Oleksandr Veremeenko, a long-time business partner of Krivetsky. The announcements invite strong men from 170 cm tall and 18-50 years old, especially those who served in the army or law enforcement agencies, to join “Development of the Community”. The sports club “Legion Lviv” has already been allocated for their training, and the organization of the “squads” is being carried out by former officers of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. One can only guess why exactly Krivetsky is creating this new army…
Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info
