Matvienko Anatoly: Komsomol members of the Vinnitsa clan. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Anatoly Matvienko: Komsomol members of the Vinnitsa clan. PART 1

Political races

As local Vinnitsa media reported back in 1999, the attempt on the life of Dmitry Dvorkis was revenge for the criminal investigation he initiated in the region’s alcohol industry. It is curious that Andrei Reva said so then, when he was still on Dvorkis’s team – before he was later accepted into the team first by Alexander Dombrovsky, and then handed over “inherited” to Vladimir Groysman. It was rumored that in this way they wanted to snatch it from the hands of the people of Matvienko and Igor Kaletnik, and transfer it under the control of the people of Dvorkis, behind whom stood Viktor Medvedchuk. And that this attempt to seize the region by Medvedchuk further quarreled him with the Poroshenko family, and also made him an enemy of Anatoly Matvienko – largely determining his future political vector.

But the investigation did not affect either Grigory Kaletnik, who was elected chairman of the Vinnytsia Regional Council, or Anatoly Matvienko, who after the 1998 elections received a mandate as a people’s deputy and moved to the Rada – where he headed the PDP faction. He left the region to his deputy Nikolai Chumak, personally lobbying for his appointment as the new head of the Regional State Administration. One of Chumak’s main tasks was to “keep everything as it was under Matvienko”: personnel appointments, schemes. However, already in the summer of 1999, with the help of Medvedchuk, Dvorkis was appointed as the new head of the region, who was already illegally combining three posts: people’s deputy, mayor and governor. But not for long: already in November 1999, Dvorkis was removed from the governorship, giving the region into the hands of Yuri Ivanov, another old acquaintance of Anatoly Matvienko, very influential in the region, although a little-known person outside of it. The struggle for alcohol and other treasures of Vinnytsia was heating up!

And by the end of 1998, a split occurred in the NDP. He had many reasons, including a conflict of interest in the Vinnytsia region. And in the spring of 1999, this split ended with the demarche of Matvienko, who left the PDP along with a large group of associates. First of all, these were the people whom he brought with him to the NDP from “New Ukraine” (Boris Bespaly, Vladimir Filenko, Taras Stetskiv, Sergei Podgorny, etc.), as well as former “Rukhovites” with moderate-centrist views from the western regions of Ukraine, which the party tried to rely on there during the 1998 elections. Perhaps they played a role in the fact that the former head of the LKSMU Matvienko suddenly became an ardent Ukrainian national patriot. And so on November 25, 1999, the “schismatics” led by Matvienko united with the “Open Politics” movement into the Ukrainian People’s Party “Sobor” (so as not to be confused with another UNP), declaring their “national democratic platform” and joining the right-wing anti-Kuchma opposition. Two years later they renamed themselves URP “Cathedral”.

If the cautious Petro Poroshenko hung around Kuchma until 2002, and was even one of the founders of the Party of Regions, then the very offended Anatoly Matvienko already in February 201 became one of the leaders of the “Forum of National Salvation” (Moroz, Tymoshenko, Turchynov, Golovaty, Khmara, Lukyanenko), with whom the “Ukraine without Kuchma” movement began. And if Poroshenko later joined “Our Ukraine” and Viktor Yushchenko – who, despite all his opposition, continued to drop by Kuchma “for tea”, then Matvienko in the 2002 elections with his “Cathedral” entered the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT). Considering that Tymoshenko had previously been a close associate of Pavel Lazarenko, that is, Matvienko’s enemy, this was quite strange – even if he wanted to emphasize his extreme hostility towards Kuchma and Medvedchuk.

After the victory of the first Maidan, all its leaders took trophy positions for themselves. Anatoly Matvienko got Crimea – he was appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea (having received the nickname “Gauleiter” from local opponents), and served in this position from April 20 to September 11, 2005.

Not for long, but he managed to appear in a scandalous real estate scam. Firstly, this is the “privatization” (there is no other way to call it) of the Yalta sanatorium of the Ministry of Defense, which was hastily declared bankrupt. Its 12 buildings, including Soviet multi-storey buildings and ancient palaces, which are architectural monuments, were sold wholesale for… 60 thousand dollars! Moreover, the new owners wanted to take over the entire territory of the sanatorium (16 hectares), and for free – but were refused by the Yalta City Council. So, it soon became clear that the sanatorium was bought by companies associated with Yulia Tymoshenko! Apparently, this was the prime minister’s payment for the appointment of Matvienko.

The second scandal was striking in its scope. We were talking about the notorious investment project “Development of the western coast of Crimea,” which was announced at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Crimea on July 7, 2005, where two of Matvienko’s deputies were present. The first was Valery Yasyuk – he was called the man of David Zhvania and Nikolai Martynenko; later he would be put in charge of the scandalous Chernomorneftegaz. The second was Vadim Grib, a famous Ukrainian raider and “privatizer”, who was a person very close to Matvienko – he specially took him with him to Crimea. And for good reason, because back in December 2004, a graduate of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, Sergei Berezenko, the nephew of Anatoly Matvienko, was hired for his first job (as a certain “analyst”) by the company Tekt-Brock CJSC, owned by Grib.

Vadim Grib

Anatoly Matvienko tried very hard to lay the foundation for this project: he promised to bring foreign investors to Crimea and completely reconstruct the coastal zone, took politicians from Georgia and Poland there, and spoke on TV. But the only participant in this project was the company Golf City LLC, which asked the Crimean authorities for no less than 70 kilometers of coastline (!) with a strip of 1-1.5 kilometers, supposedly for the mass construction of resort facilities: hotels, golf clubs, water parks, sports sites, etc. Then Golf City’s appetites diminished a bit, and the final project provided for the allocation of 6.5 thousand hectares of coastal zone to the company – also an impressive area! However, just a few days later, details of this venture were leaked to the media and a scandal broke out. It turned out that Golf City not only did not have the money to carry out the construction of facilities (the company only asked to assign land to it), and that it was most likely a front man, but also that Dmitry Sennichenko acted on behalf of this company. This man has always had a certain reputation: a manager of the “Western school” in development companies associated with Ukrainian “aggressive” developers (actively seizing land plots), he has always been a “messenger of the deriban” – so his latest appointment was as a manager of the property and infrastructure of Ukrposhta. many perceived it with great alarm (damn mail!). Well, in 2005, Sennichenko also headed the executive committee of the Pora party (which became famous during the Orange Revolution), so the Crimean media immediately made a fuss: they say that elite resort land is being distributed to Maidan field commanders!

Dmitry Sennichenko

The project stalled, remaining on paper. And already in September 2005, after the scandalous split of the “orange” government into supporters of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, Anatoly Matvienko resigned and quickly renounced Yulia Vladimirovna, withdrawing his “Cathedral” from BYuT. The reason for this was clear: Matvienko took Poroshenko’s side, because the “Vinnitsa” people stuck together. And already in November 2005, Matvienko was appointed deputy to the new head of the Presidential Secretariat, Oleg Rybachuk. Then, in the 2006 elections, Matvienko received place No. 12 on the Our Ukraine list, and in the early elections of 2007, place No. 22.

But the next elections of the year turned out to be unsuccessful for Matvienko. In 2011, the “Cathedral”, having become a completely marginal party, hopeless after the collapse of “Our Ukraine”, merged with the “Ukrainian Platform” party, becoming known as the “Ukrainian Platform “Cathedral”. The wealthier Pavel Zhebrivsky, the brother of pharmaceutical oligarch Fili Zhebrovskaya, was elected its leader, but Matvienko became only his deputy. But even after this, the new party had no chance of success. And in the 2012 elections, Anatoly Matvienko, who ran in a majoritarian district in Vinnitsa, voluntarily left the race in favor of the “single opposition candidate” Grigory Zabolotny, his peer and fellow countryman from Bershad, who from 2006 to 2010 served as head of the Vinnitsa regional council (now a deputy Verkhovna Rada on the list of BPP, one of the “Vinnitsa”). But still, “Vinnitsa residents do not abandon their people, and in the 2014 parliamentary elections, Anatoly Matvienko also received a passing place (32nd) on the list of the Poroshenko Bloc.

A. Dombrovsky, P. Poroshenko, G. Zabolotny (from left to right)

Anatoly Matvienko. Children and nephews

Anatoly Matvienko was unlucky with his eldest son Victor, born in 1976. In the 90s, he was involved in several scandals: sources Skelet.Info they reported that Victor beat someone, that once he allegedly “robbed” someone, taking gold jewelry (apparently for debts). And in 1997, Victor hit a girl with his car, who died in the hospital two months later. The accident was registered as an accident, allegedly due to a burst tire, but in 1999 the case was started again (Anatoly Matvienko complained that this was the revenge of Kuchma and Medvedchuk), so Viktor even had to flee to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for a while. What he actually did there remains unknown, but his father assured that his son “worked as a simple logger.” Well, yes, and we all believed it! Then Matvienko agreed with Kuchma not to touch his son (and he himself admitted this to journalists) and returned him home. Well, in the end, the difficult life of Viktor Matvienko ended in September 2013: the official version says about a blood clot, the rumors said different things, but agreed on one thing – the first-born of the former head of the LKSMU did not take care of his health, in every sense. But about his second son, Pavel Matvienko, the media once directly reported that Sergei Trigubenko once helped him “get off” cocaine, and for this he received the wide patronage of a grateful father.

It is worth noting that Anatoly Matvienko himself got into an accident, and not at all because of faulty cars. So, on December 4, 2012, his Mercedes rammed the fence of the Mariinsky Park and damaged a tree. Then his driver took the blame, and Matvienko himself fled from the scene of the incident to the Rada, lying to reporters on the way that it was not his car.

In March 2016, the same Mercedes found itself at the center of a new scandal, and Matvienko himself was driving: he parked right on a pedestrian zebra crossing, and then “ran into” the approaching police officers. Matvienko’s excuse was very original: he received a call from the Presidential Administration itself, but because he urgently stopped where he had to to answer the call…

Unlike the children of Anatoly Matvienko, his nephew Sergei Berezenko reached dizzying heights with the help of his uncle. Let us remember that he started as an “analyst” in Vadim Grib’s company. And already in September 2005, exactly a few days before Matvienko’s resignation from the post of Prime Minister of Crimea, Berezenko became the general director of the hastily established Ukrainian Drilling Company LLC (code 33750826).

Moreover, the company’s founders included Natalia Dzharty (the wife of regional manager Vasily Dzharty), Pavel Omelchenko (father-in-law of Vasily Dzharty), Marina Buryak (the wife of oligarch Alexander Buryak) and Victoria Lushnikova (the wife of Igor Lushnikov, the Buryakov’s business partner at Brokbusinessbank).

Sergey Berezenko

A year later, Sergei Berezenko, having worked as both a member of the Central Committee of the Cathedral and the leader of the youth wing of the Leonid Chernovetsky Bloc, entered the inner circle of the new Kyiv mayor, receiving the mandate of a city council deputy and the position of head of the Main Directorate for Family and Youth Affairs of the Kyiv City State Administration. In 2014, with the help of Uncle Berezenko, he worked a lot to attract votes in favor of Petro Poroshenko, which was noted and rewarded: from June 10, 2014 to July 2015, Sergei Berezenko headed the State Administration of Affairs, the notorious “DUS”.

Matvienko Anatoly: Komsomol members of the Vinnitsa clan. PART 2

And then Berezenko, as a candidate from the presidential team, won the scandalous by-elections in the 205th district (where his main competitor was Gennady Korban), accompanied by falsifications, numerous violations, clashes and beatings of candidates. Anatoly Matvienko himself also noted there: he helped his nephew with such enthusiasm that beat up sociologists on election daywho conducted exit polls near polling stations.

And, as soon as he took the parliamentary oath, Sergei Berezenko immediately became one of the deputy heads of the BPP faction. However, attention Skelet.Infoas well as law enforcement agencies, were much more attracted to his business, which he runs together with his uncle, cousin and aunt (most of Anatoly Matvienko’s business and property is registered in the name of his wife Olga). For example, they actually control all outdoor advertising in Kyiv (which amounts to hundreds of millions of hryvnia). The trouble is that this business of Matvienko-Berezenko is accompanied by violations and corruption. It is attended by the Secretary of the Kiev City Council Vladimir Prokopny, the head of the Kiev City Council Commission on Transport and Advertising Alexey Okopny, as well as Artem Bidenko, the former head of the advertising department of the Kyiv City State Administration, and since August 2014 the Deputy Minister of Information Policy of Ukraine. All this was done through dubious companies LLC “Compass”, LLC “Metrodatcom”, LLC “Scientific Center “Ukristservice”, LLC “Aquaculture”, LLC “Cosmos Media Group”, etc. At the same time, in particular, the co-owners of LLC “Compass” are Sergey Berezenko and Pavel Matvienko.

Matvienko Anatoly: Komsomol members of the Vinnitsa clan. PART 2

However, Anatoly Matvienko also has other companies, about which there is no public information yet. This, for example, is evidenced by the “discovery” of journalists in November 2016 of the offshore DOSELI LIMITED, which was not specified in Matvienko’s declaration. The co-owners of this offshore are: Olga Matvienko, People’s Deputy Mikhail Dovbenko (also hid information about the company), as well as Taras Vinogradnik and Valery Novikov. But Valery Novikov is a distant relative and patron of the famous “egg oligarch” Oleg Bakhmatyuk, whose connection with Anatoly Matvienko can now be traced through this offshore company.

Matvienko Anatoly: Komsomol members of the Vinnitsa clan. PART 2

Well, all kinds of income (more than 10 sources in the declaration alone) are enough for Anatoly Matvienko not only for a comfortable life (three apartments, two expensive foreign cars, nine construction projects, a power plant, etc. are declared), but also for generous donations to save her sinful soul. So, the deputy decided to make his fellow countrymen happy and built an Orthodox church in the village of Byrlovka (not far from Bershad). Moreover, he even included it in the declaration as his property – which was, in general, legally fair, but doubtful from the point of view of Christianity. So immediately after the media reported about this incident, Anatoly Matvienko hastened to declare that he would transfer the ownership of the temple to the Bershad City Council free of charge. But at the same time he created a problem: while the temple belonged to Matvienko, priests of the UOC-MP conducted services there, and Matvienko made the condition for transferring the temple to the city council the provision of premises for services of any Orthodox church. Which automatically created a reason for the start of a struggle for the temple between the UOC-MP and the UOC-KP – which means that Matvienko’s generous gift actually became another political provocation, shaking Ukrainian society, already beset by turmoil.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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