Maxim Burbak
The Ukrainians standing on the Maidan naively believed that they were taking power away from the corrupt and handing it over to new people: young, honest, professional and pro-European. Maksym Burbak was one of those who could be seen on stage in formation with the “leaders of the revolution”, and on whom the hopes of millions of our fellow citizens were pinned. And he became one of those who very quickly destroyed these hopes, demonstrating that the new is not always better than the old, but is often just a repetition of it…
Senya and his team
Maksym Yuryevich Burbak was born on January 13, 1976 in Chernivtsi, in an intelligent family of teachers at Chernivtsi University. His grandfather (on his mother’s side) Fedir Stepanovich Arvat was the head of the Philology Department, and his mother Elena Fedorivna worked at the Foreign Languages Department. It can be said that he owes much of his future career to his mother: she enrolled her sons Alexey (born January 1, 1974) and then Maksym in Chernivtsi Specialized School No. 9 with advanced English studies (now it is Gymnasium No. 9). There, the small and nimble Senya, the son of her friend and colleague, university teacher Maria Grigorievna Yatsenyuk, became a classmate of the older Alexey. The future Ukrainian Prime Minister sat at the same desk with Alexey Burbak and became his friend. Moreover, Alexey, due to his build and strong character, more than once saved Senya from hooligans and simply from his peers who were angered by his vigorous activity.
Thus, the close relationship between Yatsenyuk and the Burbak brothers began in childhood, and even earlier – with the friendship of their mothers. And another member of their school company later became Pavlo Petrenko (current Minister of Justice, Read more about him in the article by Pavel Petrenko. The “pocket” boy of the “Family” of Yatsenyuk), who is several years younger than Burbakov and Yatsenyuk.
Alexey Burbak and Arseniy Yatsenyuk in a student photo album
But the brothers maintain a stubborn silence about the Soviet past of their father, Yuriy Nikolayevich Burbaki. Their official biography only says that until 1991 he was engaged in “various activities,” but no one will admit what exactly. Nowadays, Maksym Burbak has repeatedly said that his father “reads books on the couch,” and any psychologist will explain that such words about family and friends are usually not far from the truth. It is also interesting that Yuriy Burbak officially took up business only in the early 90s, just when his eldest son Oleksiy and his friend Arseniy Yatsenyuk entered Chernivtsi University and already in their first year they went into commerce. Therefore, it is possible that all this time, the prominent Chernivtsi businessman Yuriy Burbak was in fact only a figurehead chairman of his sons’ companies.
In 1992, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who knew how to make the right connections, became close to Valentin Gnatyshev, the son of the then governor of the Chernivtsi region, with whose help he opened the firm YurEk Ltd. He took as partners his old friend Oleksiy Burbak and two other classmates: Andriy Pyshnyy (Read more about him in the article Andriy Pyshnyy. Yatsenyuk’s godfather and the killer of Oschadbank) and Andrey Ivanchuk (Read more about him in the article Andrey Ivanchuk. Friend of Yatsenyuk and lobbyist for Kolomoisky’s interests) – now MPs from the “People’s Front”. During their active work on privatization issues, their team became closely acquainted with such famous Chernivtsi residents as Mykhailo Papiyev and Oleksandr Zinchenko (who died in 2010). It is worth adding that the future military prosecutor of Ukraine Anatoly Matios also studied in the same group as Yatsenyuk and Oleksiy Burbak.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the Burbak brothers
Oleksiy Burbak was inseparable from Yatsenyuk for a long time and even went with him to Crimea when he was appointed Minister of Economy of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea in 2001. Oleksiy Burbak became his adviser and unexpectedly put down deep roots in the corridors of the Crimean government: even after his friend Yatsenyuk left for Kyiv, he remained in Simferopol, becoming an adviser to the Chairman of the Government and the Chairman of the Parliament of Crimea. But without losing ties with Yatsenyuk, Oleksiy Burbak became his trusted person on the peninsula, subsequently creating and heading the local branch of the “Front of Change”. At the same time, interestingly, Oleksiy Burbak avoided the positions offered to him, preferring to remain an adviser, consultant, researcher, engaged in purely behind-the-scenes politics and shadow business.
Oleksiy Burbak and Arseniy Yatsenyuk at the Easter ceremony
“Dobrobut” Burbakov
While the elder brother was constantly following his childhood friend, the younger Maksym Burbak graduated from the same Chernivtsi University in 1998 with a degree in law and went into business. The younger Burbak never disclosed the details of his first commercial experience, but there is information that at first he was engaged in the transfer of cars from Hungary and Slovakia to Ukraine, then opened a used car lot and a new car dealership. In 2008, he headed the company Bukovyna Auto Alliance, which sells TATA trucks, ZAZ buses, Lada, Chevrolet, Opel, and Chery cars. From this business, the Burbak family personally owned 35 (!) trucks and cars, which were included in Maksym Yuryevich’s declaration for 2013.
At the same time, Maksym Burbak went into business related to the Chernivtsi market “Kalinovsky” (popularly known as “Kalinka”), founded in 1990 and which is municipal property of the city. This is one of the largest markets in Ukraine (along with “Barabashovo” and “7th kilometer”), which has become the center of economic life not only of Chernivtsi, but of the entire region. In 2013, 22 thousand entrepreneurs and “sellers” worked at “Kalinovsky”, whose taxes, fees and contributions provided a very significant share of income to the city and regional budget (about 32 million). And the friendly team of Yatsenyuk and the Burbak brothers set their sights on this market back in the 90s.
In 1996, the director of Kalinovsky, Bohdan Kravchuk, known in Chernivtsi as a Soviet dissident and member of the Helsinki Group, was arrested on charges of bribery. In his place, the market was headed by Ivan Rynzhuk, who was a man of Mykola Fedoryuk, the former first secretary of the Chernivtsi regional committee of the LKSMU, who headed the Chernivtsi city council in 1994 and became the city mayor in 1997 (now a deputy of the People’s Front faction). Arseniy Yatsenyuk developed a very close relationship with Fedoryuk, and through him the Burbak family became close to him – first of all Maksym, who remained in Chernivtsi, and his “book-reading” father.
Maxim Burbak and Nikolai Fedoruk
For several years, the established scheme satisfied everyone, but in 2005, after Arseniy Yatsenyuk received the post of Minister of Economy of Ukraine, the following happened. The city authorities of Chernivtsi, with the active support of the mayor Fedoruk, allocated for lease to Invest-Alliance LLC (founder – Lidiya Stepanovna Leshcheva, Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s aunt) a land plot of 6.42 hectares on Kalinovskaya Street 13B. This “vacant lot” belonged to the local driving school DOSSAF and was located right on the border of the expanding Kalinovsky market. In fact, the market had nowhere else to expand, only in one direction – and this plot was acquired by Invest-Alliance LLC, allegedly for the construction of an educational and exhibition pavilion. But instead of an exhibition, a private market “Dobrobut” was created on the leased plot, the founders and owners of which were Invest-Alliance and the company “Bukotrading”. And as it turned out, the founder of Bukotrading itself (with a charter capital of 17 million hryvnia) is a modest Chernivtsi pensioner who likes to read books on the couch, Yuriy Mykolayovych Burbak. He never explained the origin of these 17 million contributed to the charter capital of Bukotrading.
In 2006, the leased area increased – in just a few years, Invest-Alliance LLC got its hands on almost 12 hectares of land, which were privatized for only 5 million hryvnia with the full approval of the city authorities in the person of Mykola Fedoruk. The essence of this scam was that the growing Kalinka was now smoothly flowing into Dobrobut: in fact, it was one big market, the old areas of which remained the municipal Kalinka, and the new ones – the private Dobrobut. In addition, parking lots and a site for trading from cars with a total area of more than 3 hectares were built on the territory of Dobrobut: in 2013, they charged 10 hryvnia (1.25 dollars) for each car to enter there, collecting tens of thousands per day! At the same time, using the fictitious status of an “exhibition pavilion” and privatizing the land, the Dobrobut market did not pay anything to the city budget! The takeover of Kalinka was not hindered at all and was even facilitated by its director Ivan Rynzhuk, who created unbearable conditions for entrepreneurs (including criminal methods) who fled from the municipal Kalinovsky to the private Dobrobut. The income of the Dobrobut owners was so huge that this market was called the main source of funding for the Front of Change.
And they could have been even bigger: in 2006, at Fedoruk’s insistence, the Kalinovsky market itself was almost “privatized.” It was transferred to MegaMarket LLC, whose owners were the Yatsenyuk-Fedoruk-Burbak triumvirate. However, the market’s entrepreneurs rebelled, reached Kyiv, and through the courts achieved the preservation of Kalinka in municipal ownership.
And in 2007, the owners of the Dobrobut market (Yatsenyuk and Burbaki) pulled off another scam. The market was mortgaged to AT Swedbank, the former TAS-Kommerzbank of Sergei Tigipko, (Read more about him in the article Sergey Tigipko: Komsomol oligarch covers his tracks) which he sold to the Swedes, while remaining its director. The amount of the loan taken was about 136 million, of which only 36 million was returned to the bank. It is unlikely that this would have been possible without a preliminary agreement with Tigipko, who generously handed out loans to Svedobank in 2007-2008, and after the crisis left the chair of its director, leaving the Swedes with colossal losses.
The scam turned out to be quite far-sighted. In 2011, a real coup took place in Chernivtsi: Mayor Fedoruk was dismissed by the city council, and the director of the Kalinovsky market Ivan Rynzhuk was arrested for a bribe of 250 thousand dollars. The new city government, represented by acting mayor Vitaliy Mykhaylyshyn (from the Party of Regions), initiated a lawsuit to annul the deal on the privatization of the land plot under the Dobrobut market, thus trying to “nationalize” it from Yatsenyuk-Burbaka. Interestingly, soon after this, Arseniy Yatsenyuk started his political action “Get up, Ukraine!”, calling for the rapid overthrow of the “Donetsk regime”. However, the expropriation did not take place, since the land was in the credit collateral of Svedobank, and the Swedes insisted on a postponement of the court decision until the debt was fully repaid – which never happened due to the well-known events that began in Ukraine. In May 2014, Oleksiy Kaspruk, a member of the Front for Change, a close friend of Yatsenyuk and Maksym Burbaki, was elected mayor of Chernivtsi. And in January 2015, the city court dismissed the criminal case against Ivan Rynzhuk, who had previously been released on bail.
The Splendor and Poverty of the “People’s Front”
In 2009, Yatsenyuk mobilized his classmates and business partners into his “Front of Change”. Maksym Burbak immediately headed its Chernivtsi regional branch: his lack of political experience was compensated by Yatsenyuk’s enormous trust in his childhood friend. However, experience can be acquired: in the local elections of 2010, Maksym Burbak was elected as a deputy of the regional council, and headed the “Front of Change” faction in it. For some time, this allowed the Burbaks and Yatsenyuk to protect their business interests in Chernivtsi, but then, on March 31, 2011, the Chernivtsi city council voted for the early termination of Mayor Fedoruk’s powers: only the “Front of Change” and “Svoboda” factions did not support the decision. Seeing that power in the city, and in fact in the region, was slipping out of his hands, Maksym Burbak decided to move to Kyiv. In the 2012 parliamentary elections, he received number 43 on the Batkivshchyna list, with which the Front of Change agreed to unite into one electoral bloc. Interestingly, in his candidate declaration, Maksimum Burbak indicated that he had earned nothing in 2011, not a penny. Incredible poverty, but quite explainable by the fact that he registered his business in his father’s name.
Up until Euromaidan, Maksym Burbak, like the other members of his faction, entertained themselves by blocking the parliamentary rostrum in between trips of the “Arise, Ukraine!” action. And already on February 27, 2014, Maksym Burbak received the portfolio of the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine: thus Yatsenyuk demonstrated that he does not forget his childhood friends and co-owners of his business.
It soon turned out that the replacement of “Donetsk” and “Kharkiv” with “Dnipropetrovsk”, “Vinnytsia” and “Chernivtsi” did not change the image of the Ukrainian government much, continuing to “grab”, saw and arrange for its people (and in a tenfold amount, compared to the previous ones). The first scandals did not take long to come and materialized in the person of Mykhailo Pankiv: Andriy Ivanchuk proposed his candidacy for the post of head of “Ukrposhta” to Burbak. As a result, “Ukrposhta” began to work for the Yatsenyuk-Burbaka team, and at public expense. Thus, during the parliamentary election campaign of 2014, “Ukrposhta” provided the “People’s Front” with a discount of 900 thousand hryvnia for sending out campaign leaflets. And in the spring of 2015, when the hryvnia was rapidly falling, Ukrposhta sold 6 million of its own dollars at a reduced rate to Avant Bank, which is connected to Petro Poroshenko’s inner circle (Read more about him in the article Petro Poroshenko: biography and the whole truth about the “chocolate king” of Ukraine).
At the same time, another personnel scandal was developing: at the demand of the “Euromaidan” activists, Maksym Burbaka fired the general director of the Boryspil airport, Oleksiy Kachanov, a protégé of businessmen Boris Kaufman and Oleksandr Granovsky, who had been “milking” the airport since the summer of 2013 (Read more about them in the article Kaufman-Granovsky and their business interests: airports, vodka, cigarettes, banks, hotels). He fired him and appointed his deputy, Sergei Gombolevsky, another of Granovsky’s men, to this position. They wrote that Burbak not only knew who Gombolevsky was, but also put him in charge of Boryspil at the request of Yatsenyuk, to whom Kaufman and Granovsky generously “paid off” the party coffers of the “People’s Front”.
Maksym Burbak gave another sponsor of the party, oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, the Ukrainian sky. First, he appointed Denis Antoniuk, a former top manager of the airline International Aviation of Ukraine (IAU), owned by Kolomoisky, as the head of the State Aviation Service of Ukraine. And then he arranged a redistribution of air routes in Ukraine in favor of IAU, effectively squeezing all its competitors out of the market – which caused indignation among air carriers, who demanded a personal meeting with the prime minister and the president.
Maxim Burbak is rushing to help
.After the early parliamentary elections in the fall of 2014, Maksym Burbak moved back to parliament, heading the “People’s Front” faction and focusing on saving his friend Senya in every sense of the word – thanks to which the second Yatsenyuk government lasted until the beginning of 2016. And yet, the inevitability of his government’s resignation was obvious even then, so the “Chernivtsi people” wisely chose parliamentary mandates and parliamentary immunity. However, having acquired a taste for the luxurious life at public expense, they did not give up their acquired habits. Thus, in August of this year, Maksym Burbak arrived in his native Chernivtsi by helicopter. And practically on the same (if not the same) one that President Yanukovych, whose extravagance has become the talk of the town, once used to fly. But if the “golden toilet” and the no less “golden” helicopter of Yanukovych were widely discussed in all media then, the luxurious means of transportation of the head of the “People’s Front” faction is now carefully hidden from public view. And who knows how much his own “golden toilet” costs!
Maxim Burbak’s helicopter
Yanukovych’s helicopter
Meanwhile, officially Maksym Burbak lives exclusively on his deputy salary: his declaration for 2015 only indicated 76 thousand hryvnia of annual income, an old VAZ-2108. But this time he entered his wife’s income (1.25 million hryvnia) and her capital (1.3 million deposits and 4 million authorized capital) into the declaration. But as for his beloved bookworm father, who owns half of the Dobrobut market with multi-million annual income, Maksym Burbak decided to remain silent about him.
Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info
