Nikolai Banchuk: family clan of Chernivtsi prosecutors. PART 2

BEGINNING: Nikolai and Yaroslav Banchuk: family clan of Chernivtsi prosecutors. PART 1

Nikolay Banchuk – Hypocrite and schemer

And now the second Maidan took place! On February 24, 2014, instead of the escaped Pshonka, Oleg Makhnitsky became the new prosecutor general, who immediately began actively trading in positions. And it seems that Makhnitsky’s first client was Nikolai Banchuk. The very next day he was appointed one of his deputies and a member of the colleague Office of the Prosecutor General. In the new conditions, Banchuk immediately tried to get used to the role of a “patriot”.

“Nikolai Vasilyevich is a patriot and statesman who was an eyesore for the corrupt authorities of Poroshenko,” with such feigned pomp about Banchuk in June 2019 wrote the publication “Resonance”when he was appointed advisor to the new head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov.

It is unknown how much Banchuk “brought” into the editorial office of this publication, which seems to claim to cover corruption, bribes and power. But it very diligently, simply crawling out of its skin and beyond all limits of decency, sang an ode of praise to him! True, there was nothing to praise Banchuk for, so I had to improvise on the fly.

Resonance tried very hard not to notice the loud scandal that Nikolai Banchuk got into already in May 2014. And this is what happened: Banchuk was on the first lustration list of the Prosecutor General’s Office as one of Pshonka’s henchmen. He was simply hanging by a thread, and therefore immediately grabbed at “patriotism” as a saving straw. In the spring of 2014, Banchuk traveled to the regions, called for a merciless fight against the separatists, and said that the main task of the Prosecutor General’s Office should be the fight against calls to violate the territorial integrity of the state and against “anti-Ukrainian propaganda.” That is, he wanted to make himself an image of a patriot and sovereign in the easiest way – in political affairs.

However, even in this, Banchuk lied and was a hypocrite! After the events of May 2, 2014, he personally prohibited the transfer of arrested pro-Russian activists from Odessa to Kyiv. Then, on the command of the same Nikolai Banchuk, they were generally released – which caused furious reaction Head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov and Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Pashinsky. Banchuk was then not kicked out by the Prosecutor General’s Office only by some miracle – and many sources Skelet.Info claimed that this “miracle” was the money paid to Makhnitsky for the position. The “product” came with a certain “guarantee”, so Makhnitsky was able to get Banchuk off his back. In addition, his old friend Anatoly Matios, who was then working under the head of the SBU Nalyvaichenko and was preparing to head the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office, stood up for him.

How to understand this duplicity? Perhaps, under the guise of a false patriot, Banchuk was carrying out an assignment from the FSB? It’s possible! However, there are also completely obvious facts, namely: among the arrested pro-Russian activists in Odessa were members of the “Orthodox Cossacks” (they formed the backbone of the “Odessa squad”), headed by Anatoly Kolomiytsev, then a “Cossack general,” and an old friend of Yaroslav Banchuk. There is no doubt that Kolomiytsev asked Yaroslav Banchuk for help, and he involved his brother.

Odessa “Orthodox Cossack” Anatoly Kolomiytsev is a friend of the Banchuks

And then, not without Banchuk’s participation, the previously arrested person was released with a clear conscience and only a suspended sentence Alexander Kharitonovknown as the leader of the Lugansk Guard. He left to then return to Lugansk and join… the Cossack militants of Kozitsyn! As you can see, this is no longer a coincidence, this is a clearly visible connection between the Banchuk and the pro-Russian “Cossacks” – moreover, these mummers took up arms and opposed Ukraine.

The editors of Resonance, of course, did not remember this, but they attributed to Nikolai Banch the idea of ​​​​creating the so-called in 2014. “Prosecutor’s battalion” It’s like she forgot that scandalthat thundered around this pseudo-battalion, and was diligently extinguished by the Prosecutor General’s Office. Let us recall: in the fall of 2014, then Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema announced creation of a battalion from among the employees of the prosecutor’s office who approached him with a request to send them to the ATO as volunteers. But then it turned out that there was no “prosecutor’s battalion”, just as there were not six hundred volunteers, all this was just Yarema’s lies, behind which there was an attempt to give his department a patriotic-heroic gloss, and also a scam with obtaining the status of an ATO participant in order to avoid lustration. Specifically: about fifty ranks of the prosecutor’s office (General, military and regional) formalized their “mobilization” to the Donbass, where they spent time in the rear, in Kramatorsk, engaging in “nightmare” of local entrepreneurs as part of the “fight against the financing of terrorism.”

Was it really Banchuk, and not Yarema, who came up with the idea of ​​the “prosecutor’s battalion” scam? In any case, if he so wants to take responsibility for her, then let him write sincerely! But it is worth noting that Banchuk then had two reasons to use the ATO for his own selfish purposes. The first is the desire to avoid lustration, to hide behind the screen of fake “patriotism”. Which turned out extremely badly for him, because it is difficult to pretend to be a “patriot and strongman” while simultaneously releasing pro-Russian militants. But the second reason was more interesting: Banchuk quickly realized that the “fight against the financing of terrorism” would allow him to lay his paw on the business and flows of Donbass. And he got excited about this back in the early summer of 2014, rushing to get there before the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the SBU.

The “patriot” mask did not help him: immediately after Makhnitsky’s departure, in July 2014, Banchuk was demoted to senior assistant to the Prosecutor General for special assignments, and in October he was still lustrated, along with others “people of Pshonka”. The offended Banchuk claimed for several years that he was “illegally fired by Yarema during a quasi-lustration,” and these words were later repeated in a commissioned article by Resonance journalists, trying to launder his dirty reputation. But the money paid for it was simply thrown away! After all, the truth about the odious Banchuk family constantly leaked out during the next scandals involving them.

Expelled from the Prosecutor General’s Office, Nikolai Banchuk did not return to his native village, but took up private law practice in Kyiv. But what is a lawyer who has previously worked for many years as a high prosecutor? He saves his clients from the harsh hand of the law by calling and visiting his numerous acquaintances in investigative agencies, the prosecutor’s office, the courts, etc., agreeing with them on retraining or closing the case – of course, without thanks. One of these cases was opened against the President of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine (AMNU) Andrey Serdyuk, an old friend of Nikolai Banchuk from the time when the latter headed the Department of Personnel Policy and Science of the Ministry of Health. This venerable patriarch (born in 1938) in Soviet times worked as an official in the health department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, in the 90s he was the head of the Ministry of Health, and in 2011 the “Donetsk” made him president of the Academy of Medical Sciences and “stirred up” extensive tender procurement schemes. Serdyuk was accused of involvement in the “cutting” of 5 billion hryvnia; the case could have been high-profile, but Nikolai Banchuk successfully ruined it with the help of his old connections in the authorities.

Nikolai Banchuk: family clan of Chernivtsi prosecutors. PART 2

These old connections helped Nikolai Banchuk become an adviser to the new head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov. And Anatoly Matios, who headed the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office from the summer of 2014 to the fall of 2019, placed him there. If you look at the biography of Matios, you will see that he tried in every way to remain in office under any government, while making connections everywhere and placing his people, and creating extensive corruption schemes. So he didn’t just help his former boss and fellow countryman, he integrated him into one of his schemes – as well as another fellow countryman, Alexandra Karpenkowho became Bakanov’s deputy. Details of one such scheme, in which Nikolai Banchuk directly appears, were published in the media:

In addition to cigarettes, cars, alcohol, nuts, “rags” and household appliances are smuggled through Chernivtsi customs. According to journalists, Nikolai Banchuk, having gained control over these flows, receives good payoffs from them, and together with him, the scheme is “covered” on the spot by the deputy head of the State Department of the DFS in the Chernivtsi region, Ivan Matios (a relative of Anatoly Matios).

Stanislav Yaroslavovich and Bogdan Nikolaevich Banchuks: rich majors

On July 3, 1980, in the same Sokiryany, the eldest son of Yaroslav Banchuk, Stanislav, was born, whom his father identified as the successor of the family prosecutorial dynasty. He did not waste time on compulsory military service, like his father and uncle, but entered Chernivtsi University, upon graduation from which in 2002 he was immediately appointed assistant prosecutor of Chernivtsi – a good start to the career of a young graduate! But this turned out to be not enough for him, and six months later Stanislav Banchuk went to Kyiv, to his dad, who assigned him to assistant prosecutor of the Pechersky district. If we remember the degree of corruption of the Pechersky District Court, then we can only guess what was going on in the prosecutor’s office there – so Stanislav Banchuk was involved in great corruption already in the first year of his work. However, he did not stay there for long, and in 2003 he became a prosecutor in the Department for Supervision of Legality of the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office, worked there until 2006, and then transferred to the main office of the Prosecutor General’s Office. And in December 2013, at the height of the second Maidan, he was transferred out of harm’s way back to Chernivtsi – as deputy regional prosecutor.

Stanislav Banchuk

But before Stanislav Banchuk had time to get used to his new position, he got into a big scandalwhich broke out around the story of local journalist Ivan Goncharuk about “Sokiryansk Mezhyhirya”. It told how in the Sokiryansky district, on the picturesque bank of the Dniester, on the territory of a “privatized” former pioneer camp, as well as illegally alienated protected lands, a private tourist complex “Uslada” was built.

Nikolai Banchuk: family clan of Chernivtsi prosecutors. PART 2

The local residents, who from time immemorial had rested there, fished on the river, and went into the forest to pick mushrooms and berries, were now driven away by stern security. And this complex is owned by the ex-head of the Sokiryansk Regional State Administration Vasily Kozak, who is Mikhail Papiev’s matchmaker – he has his own estate built adjacent to this complex. Skelet.Info I found out that both the then governor Papiev and Vasily Kozak participated in the illegal seizure of land, and the local district and regional prosecutor’s office covered them up. The Banchuks also had a hand in this: first Nikolai Banchuk, and then his son Bogdan Banchuk, who was appointed deputy head of the Regional State Administration in 2014, and his nephew Stanislav Banchuk, the deputy prosecutor of the region.

Shortly after the release of the story, journalist Ivan Goncharuk and editor Yulia Saftenko were fired from the local TV channel TVA, and the press service of the regional prosecutor’s office hastened to speak with an attempt to refute the material, protecting the bright name of the Banchuk family. Then Stanislav Banchuk demanded a refutation from the TV channel and filed a lawsuit against the journalist for “protection of honor and dignity” – but unexpectedly lost court hearing. Their further war was interrupted by the dismissal of Stanislav Banchuk – perhaps the hand of lustration reached out to him as well. Already in 2015, he was spotted in Kyiv, where, like Uncle Kolya, he began private law practice (but each had his own law firm).

Unfortunately, Ivan Goncharuk did not dig deeper, but meanwhile Stanislav Banchuk had a closet full of all kinds of skeletons! For example, he is a co-owner of a number of successful enterprises: Legal Company Standard LLC (USREOU 39692079), Gaztekhkom LLC (22192141), New Energy Systems LLC (41189176), Trading House P.E.G.O. .” (40741485), VOGA Resources LLC (40589759) and SpetsOil LLC (39852066). It is interesting that most of these LLCs are engaged in gas and fuel trading, and Stanislav Banchuk’s partners in them were Lyubov Banchuk and Elena Petrosova-Banchuk (mother, wife?), as well as Victoria Lesnichaya (Deputy Minister of Culture in 2010-2011, vice -President of the European Economic Chamber), Igor Igorevich Nasalik (son of the Minister of Energy in the Groysman government) and Daniil Petrovich Moskal – son of Pyotr Moskal, brother of Marina Kalinovskaya, wife of Dmitry Firtash. These companies fed very well at state tenders: Gaztekhkom alone extracted 230 million hryvnia from Ukrtransgaz over several years!

There used to be more prosecutors and lawyers in the Banchuk family. In 1986, Vladislav Yaroslavovich Banchuk, the younger brother of Stanislav Banchuk, was born in Murmansk. He was his father’s favorite: Yaroslav Banchuk first sent him to the Kiev Military Lyceum. Bogun (former Suvorov School), then got him into the law faculty of Kyiv National University, brought him into the “Cossacks” (and awarded him several “orders”), and in 2009 made him a senior assistant prosecutor of the Desnyansky district of Kyiv. Alas, in November of the same year, 23-year-old Vladislav Banchuk died: his father decided not to disclose the circumstances of his death, but for the press it was said that he “died saving others,” and he was posthumously given the star of “Hero of the Cossacks” (from his father has the same one) …

The only one from the family who did not become a prosecutor was Bogdan Nikolaevich Banchuk. He was born in 1986 in the city of Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk region. After the first year of university, for some reason he went to serve in the army, and then continued his studies at the Kiev National University (formerly KSU), where he received a diploma in international law and translator from French. Dad, to celebrate, immediately gave his son an apartment in Kyiv with an area of ​​140 square meters. meters. He worked as an attaché at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for two years, and in 2012 he became a specialist in the European Integration Department of the Cabinet Secretariat.

Bogdan Banchuk

This position, in theory, guaranteed him a great future in post-Maidan Ukraine, but in 2014 he came to the homeland of his ancestors and was appointed deputy head of the Sokiryansk Regional State Administration. Since there was no acting head of the district administration at that time, Bogdan Banchuk performed his duties and ruled the district omnipotently for more than a year – until he got into a number of scandals, including with the aforementioned Uslada tourist complex. It was necessary to somehow “break the claws,” and Bogdan Banchuk did what many cunning “patriots” did: he formalized his mobilization and left for the troops, later even receiving the status of an ATO participant. But Bogdan did not sit in the trench and did not bring heavy shells to the guns – he was listed in a position somewhere deep in the rear (not in the “prosecutor’s battalion”?), seeing the front line only in television news. Then he also formalized his demobilization and went back to Kyiv, where for about a year he was officially listed as an “analyst in a public organization.” After which, in 2017, he suddenly jumped into the chair of the deputy head of the Contracts Department of SVTF Progress, a subsidiary of Ukrspetsexport, this cesspool of the most rabid corruption! In two years, Bogdan Banchuk purchased another apartment in the capital (135 sq.m.), built a house (350 sq.m.), and bought two expensive cars for himself and his wife.

After Ukrspetsexport became the epicenter of a major scandal in 2019, Bohdan Banchuk hastily transferred from there to PJSC Agrarian Fund, deputy head of the International Business Department. Why exactly there? Perhaps because the then director of the Agrarian Fund, Andrei Radchenko, created a lot of corruption schemes that brought multi-billion dollar damage to the state. One of them was created in collusion with Dmitry Firtash – the matter concerned the purchase and storage of mineral fertilizers, but in 2017 alone this scheme brought Ukraine 243 million hryvnia of net loss! Well, from Firtash, as we now know, through his wife’s relatives there is a chain of connections with the Banchuks.

At the end of 2019, Radchenko was persecuted because theft at the Agrarian Fund crossed all acceptable limits. “Despite the stated balance of the enterprise at 7.4 billion hryvnia, an audit showed that the actual balance was 2.9 billion. On paper, the profit for the year is millions, but in reality it is minus 1.5 billion. This is pure corruption,” said the then Minister of Economic Development and Agriculture Timofey Milovanov.

First acting the scandalous Ivan Baryshev was appointed head of the Agrarian Fund – whose coming was called raider takeover. But he was Milovanov’s man, and the latter was determined to completely liquidate the Agrarian Fund. Only then a government crisis occurred, and Milovanov himself was “liquidated.” And after a long fuss over the fate of the Agrarian Fund, they decided to preserve it, appointing Bogdan Banchuk to lead it. According to sources, two reasons contributed to the choice of candidacy: firstly, the money was brought in to whomever the money belongs, and secondly, Banchuk proved himself to be a reliable person, without saying a word about the corruption affairs of Ukrspetsexport, so Dmitry Firtash instructed him to clean up the “ Agrarian Fund” traces of corruption and theft from the time of Radchenko. Well, at the same time, start building new schemes, since now, under the pretext of either the coronavirus crisis or natural disasters, through the “Agrarian Fund” there is a prospect of “cutting up” many more budget billions!

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

Subscribe to our channels at Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And YandexZen – Only dossiers, biographies and incriminating evidence on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!