Kirovograd “king” Igor Sharov: greed is not a vice? PART 1

Ukrainians are already well acquainted with the corruption-oligarchic and criminal clans of “Donetsk”, “Vinnitsa”, “Odessa”, “Dnepropetrovsk”, “Transcarpathian”, “Lviv” and “Bukovina”. Well, it’s worth broadening your horizons and paying attention to the “Kirovograd players,” one of whose prominent representatives is Igor Sharov. Always quiet and politically very cautious, and therefore little known to Ukrainians outside his native Kirovograd (Kropyvnytskyi), he was at one time involved in large schemes and colossal sums. And some of this money then stuck to his hands, and in such quantities that it allows Sharov to lead a luxurious life even in our time of crisis.

Igor Sharov. First capital

Igor Fedorovich Sharov was born on August 10, 1961 in the village of Skalovskie Khutory, Novoarkhangelsk district, Kirovograd region, in the family of Maria Korneevna and Fedor Makarovich Sharov. They had four children: Alexander (1957), Valentina (1959), Igor and Yuri (1965), but only Igor received all-Ukrainian fame. In 1967, Fyodor Makarovich abandoned his family, and the mother had to raise the children alone. So the childhood of Igor Sharov and his brother Yuri was not entirely cloudless, and they do not laugh when they joke about wooden toys. This left a deep imprint on their developing character: chronic materialism, constant material dissatisfaction and the desire to earn as much money as possible by any available means.

After school, Igor Sharov, at the insistence of his mother, entered the Kiev Medical School, graduating in 1980, and even managed to work for several months as a paramedic in narcology. At that time, narcologists mainly dealt with alcoholics, but soon, once in the army, he learned the almighty power of drugs. This happened in Afghanistan, where Igor Sharov himself volunteered for extra-long duty (to earn money) as a military paramedic – becoming the commander of a medical platoon in the 103rd Airborne Division. If in the peaceful USSR opiate painkillers were hidden from soldiers (even taken out of first aid kits), then in hot Afghanistan there was no way without them, and some servicemen from time to time “relaxed” with a dose of morphine or methadone. And it was possible to get them only in the medical unit – thus, Sharov had a good opportunity to earn extra money, and he, according to sources Skelet.Infotook advantage of this opportunity. So, not without benefit, he spent in the ranks of the SA from 1980 to 1983, where he even became a member of the CPSU. According to the same sources, Igor Sharov was allegedly expelled from Afghanistan back to the USSR ahead of schedule precisely because the consumption of painkillers in his medical unit exceeded all reasonable limits.

Working as a military paramedic in some Karaganda did not appeal to him, and he returned to civilian life, home. One day in his interview with Fakty, Igor Sharov will say that he earned so much money in Afghanistan that he even had enough of it to open his first enterprise, Inkopmark, in 1993. But did he really return from Afghanistan with a suitcase full of dollars, which he then hid under his bed for ten years – despite the fact that he lived in a rented apartment? Just some Koreiko! Apparently, Sharov lied to the journalists after all, and the reason for this was an attempt to explain the origin of his first capital. After all, there is another version.

In 1983, Igor Sharov entered the Kirovograd Pedagogical Institute, graduated in 1987 and remained there to work as a history teacher, also becoming the chairman of the trade union committee and the Komsomol cell (as a young communist). It is worth noting that he took his membership in the party seriously – not ideologically, but as a career ladder. Igor Sharov even wrote his first candidate’s dissertation on the history of the CPSU, “The working class of Ukraine in the sphere of production in the conditions of the formation and strengthening of a command economy,” but did not have time to defend it: it was 1991. However, Sharov did not throw away his party card, and it came in handy in 1993, when the Communist Party was reincarnated again. A little-known fact, but in 1993-95. Igor Sharov was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine!

So, although Sharov was late with his dissertation, he managed to organize a youth cooperative, having received money for it from the Komsomol cash register, and was enthusiastically engaged in small-scale wholesale trade in deficit: he traveled around the country, got food, household chemicals, cosmetics, brought them to Kirovograd and sold them at a good price. “fat.” In this business, he was helped by two brothers: the younger Yuri, who also turned out to be a smart businessman and quickly got used to the bazaars of Kirovograd, and the elder Alexander, who worked at the Kirovograd Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and covered the brothers’ business from attacks from criminals and law enforcement agencies.

Igor Sharov. “Push” with Bakai

In 1993, the Sharovs incorporated the family business into the Inkopmark enterprise, which became the basis of the corporation of the same name. Yes, yes, this is the same enterprise, allegedly opened with money “earned in Afghanistan,” as Igor Sharov assured! The interest of journalists in Inkopmark was not accidental: after all, before expanding into a network of enterprises of various directions, well known to the residents of Kirovograd, this company became in 1994 a co-founder of the Respublika corporation, well-known throughout Ukraine. Let us remind you: the notorious one, which warmed up the state by many millions of dollars, and even left Ukraine with a half-billion-dollar debt to Turkmenistan.

The story of the appearance of Kirovograd businessman Igor Sharov in Kyiv still remains an intriguing mystery. He himself admitted that he suddenly rose to the metropolitan level with the help of a powerful lobby of influential people, but he never named the names of his patrons. Once upon a time, journalists wondered who it could be, listing the names of influential people from Kirovograd: SBU General Yevgeny Marchuk, Russian businessman and high-ranking official Dmitry Kozak. Marchuk? It is quite likely, because just in 1994 he became deputy prime minister in the new government, and then he himself sat in the chair of the first

minister. But there is no visible connection between Sharov and Marchuk. Therefore, with the greatest probability it could be Yuriy Kravchenko, who until the end of 1992 worked in the Internal Affairs Directorate of the Kirovograd Region (and probably knew Alexander Sharov), and in 1993 became the chairman of the State Customs Committee of Ukraine.

So, in 1994, some influential people brought Igor Sharov together with businessman Igor Bakai – and they immediately became business partners, creating the Respublika corporation, which was engaged in gas operations and became the largest gas trader in Ukraine in 1995. Bakai himself got this business only thanks to the presence of very large connections, and not only in power. Among his “business partners” they named the then criminal “authorities” of Kyiv, Vladimir Kisel (Grandfather), Viktor Rybalko (Fish), Alexandra Presman (person Semyon Mogilevich). Accordingly, Igor Sharov also had close contacts with them.

Already in 1995, Bakai prepared to wind down the activities of Respublika and was preparing a new project: Intergaz CJSC, intended to implement more profitable (from the point of view of its shareholders) and more corrupt schemes. In particular, on August 11, in Pennsylvania (USA) under number 2664703, the company Intergas Inc (a subsidiary of Intergas CJSC) was registered, intended to evade taxes and transfer abroad foreign currency funds earned by Intergas. The director of this “Intergas Inc” was Igor Sharov, the chief accountant was Stanislav Melnik. It is interesting that at the same time Bakai and Melnik bought their own houses in Pennsylvania. Whether Sharov also got hold of a “khatynka” there remains unknown. But then Skelet.Info it is known that in 1996 he headed the main company in Kyiv, becoming the chairman of the board of Intergaz CJSC. However, not for long.

In 1995, Igor Sharov won repeat elections in the Rozdolny constituency No. 41 (running as a communist), receiving the mandate of a people’s deputy and immediately joining the parliamentary Committee on the Fuel and Energy Complex. But Igor Sharov had no intention of defending the interests of the working class: he immediately wrote a letter of resignation from the Communist Party of Ukraine, moved to the deputy group “Constitutional Center” and quietly sat there, not showing any political initiatives, but not forgetting to quietly lobby the interests of his business and fulfill the requests of important people. For which, apparently, he was appreciated by Leonid Kuchma, who in 1996 made Igor Sharov his representative in the Verkhovna Rada. But then things didn’t go well for Sharov and Bakai with the gas business: perhaps the reason for this was the vigorous activity of the UESU corporation, the “roof” of which was the new Prime Minister Pavel Lazarenko, who replaced Yevgeny Marchuk in this post.

In 1997, Kuchma made Igor Sharov his adviser (he remained so until the Maidan), and in 1998 he appointed him deputy minister of the Cabinet of Ministers. However, Sharov did not stay long in this obscure position: in the 1998 elections he again received a deputy mandate, now on the list of the NDP (headed by Prime Minister Pustovoitenko). But now he has already received a place not on the fuel committee, but on the committee on health protection, motherhood and childhood. Strangeness? Not at all!

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Kirovograd “king” Igor Sharov: greed is not a vice? PART 2

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