Against the background of the rabble that the presidential party brought to Parliament, society somehow stopped noticing the old fighters brought to the Rada by the same old politicians. But sometimes their actions are so absurd that the names of these heroes break through onto the pages of the media.
Not later than a week ago, in this way, an old and proven fighter of an equally old and proven politician, who heads the Batkivshchyna party, reminded himself of himself. We are talking about Oleg Leonidovich Meydich, People’s Deputy of Ukraine from the VO “Batkivshchyna”, the first deputy head of the parliamentary committee on agrarian policy and land relations.
He got into a scandal by accident – Oleg Leonidovich’s correspondence with, presumably, his daughter, who buys a handbag for herself, was leaked to the network:
In fact, nothing like this would have happened – everyone knows that Oleg Meidich lives by no means on a deputy’s salary, being the owner of the Kalinovsky Butter and Cheese Plant and several other enterprises:
In addition, in the declaration, he writes quite solid figures of personal income:
Moreover, these incomes from Meidich, unlike most of his colleagues, were high even before being elected to the Rada. So why are journalists so excited then? Against the background of ten million earned by the Meidich family in 2020 (there is no declaration for the last, 2021 yet), the amount of 8,500 euros is not as prohibitive as it seems to a poor Ukrainian.
But the fact is that with millions in income, a person who is a people’s deputy of Ukraine and buys handbags for a quarter of a million hryvnias does not hesitate to take compensation from a poor country for “service” housing in the capital …
He spends, according to his own reports on rented housing, 20,000 hryvnia per month for this same rent. And he regularly submits the relevant documents to the financial department of BP, not disdaining to receive these miserable (on its scale, of course) pennies with his millions. No one argues – it’s all legal. But against the background of the declaration and the purchase of a handbag worth hundreds of thousands of hryvnias, it is somewhat dissonant with the image of the public defender, which he, his party, and the leader of this very party exposes himself to be.
If we are already talking about the declaration, then let’s briefly touch on what the People’s Deputy of Ukraine Oleg Leonidovich Meydich declared.
He has three land plots with a total area of 4,100 meters in the Vinnitsa region, two houses (100 and 413.1 meters) in Vinnitsa, a non-residential premises of 1,390 square meters in the same place and an apartment of 61.3 meters in the same city.
The financial assets of the Meidich family do not disappoint either: $111,884, EUR 72,013 and 22,351,140 hryvnias. All of this is in cash.
The deputy also owns a stunning collection of jewelry and watches. There are eleven titles in total:
We will not analyze the entire declaration, the curious can see here.
But, you must admit that a person with such income, who buys handbags supposedly for his daughter for 8,500 euros, could well refuse 20,000 hryvnias in compensation for housing. Especially considering the constant speeches of his party colleagues, who love to cry about the fate of the poor and unfortunate “peresichny krayintsya.”
In addition, the wife of Oleg Leonidovich also rents an apartment in Kiev. Why she does not let the people’s deputy go there during parliamentary sessions is not clear, but let this be their internal family affair.
However, that’s not all. Because against the background of the rest of the biography of Oleg Meydich, the miserable 20,000 hryvnias from the country’s budget are mere trifles.
Because, as it turned out, Oleg Meidich is not quite Meidich. Before marriage, he bore the surname Pogorelsky, but was better known in Vinnitsa under the nickname “Mongol”. An indirect confirmation of this information is that, according to the electronic declaration, Oleg Leonidovich Meidich is registered in the Vinnitsa region in a house owned by Leonid Iosifovich Pogorelsky.
And Meidich belonged, then a Mongol, as you yourself understand, to those people who become heroes of the police chronicle:
“Mongol was detained for possession of weapons and for several other crimes. But the judge decided to release him. I would like to ask the judge to help us look for him now. And this is not an isolated case when the fact of legality follows from other criteria” – this is a commentary by the then head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Vinnitsa region Vasily Dremlyuga to the Gorod newspaper No. 30 of July 20, 2005.
As you can see, the biography of Pogorelsky-Meidich-Mongol is very interesting.
True, he could have remained Pogorelsky-Mongol, but he was lucky:
Instead of Mongol, his guard was killed.
It was at this time that Pogorelsky-Meidich decided to enter politics. Back in 2002, he ran for the Vinnitsa Regional Council as an independent candidate, but unsuccessfully. In 2010, he tried again – now from the Socialist Party of Ukraine, but again did not get into the regional council.
Subsequently, Meidich began cooperation with the VO “Batkivshchyna” and worked as an assistant to the people’s deputy from this party, Petro Gasyuk. In 2015, he ran for the Vinnitsa Regional Council from the “Fatherland” and finally became a deputy. In the regional council, he headed the Batkivshchyna faction, was a member of the standing commission on the regulation of communal property and privatization.
In 2019, in the presidential elections, Meidich was a confidant of candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, and in the parliamentary elections he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation in constituency No. 18 (Vinnytsia region) from the VO “Batkivshchyna”.
As you can see, the turbulent past in no way prevented either Alexander Moroz in his time or Yulia Timoshenko in the present from accepting such a colorful person into their ranks.
As for the last parliamentary elections, they say that Meidich was the creature of the MHM owner Yuri Kosyuk, who competently placed his people in different political forces and actively invested materially in their election campaigns. But with Meidich there was an interesting incident. More precisely, the incident happened with chicken, which Kosyuk allocated to his nominee to stimulate, let’s say, the voter.
Vinnitsa media it was reported that during the election campaign, Meidich did not deliver the chicken given out by Kosyuk to the voter in full:
As it turned out, Oleg Leonidovich instead of the prescribed 7 kilograms of chicken, allocated by Kosyuk for each voter, gave out only two. Where the rest went – you can guess.
So the story of compensation for the apartment is by no means the only one. And, on the other hand, knowing about 20 thousand hryvnias that Meidich does not hesitate to rip off from the state for housing that is completely unnecessary to him – remember that his wife, with whom Oleg Leonidovich has a joint business, rents an apartment in Kiev – information about chicken sold to the left, stolen from Kosyuk and not given to the voter.
The very morality of such “rations” is also very doubtful, but the morality of the person who rips these rations is no longer in doubt. Especially if you remember his declaration and tens of millions of hryvnias and dollars in cash.
Of course, against the background of “servants”, among which there are simply fantastic specimens, Oleg Meidich from “Batkivshchyna” is lost. But this is by no means because it differs from them for the better. It’s just that “servants” suppress “Batkivshchyna” quantitatively.
Marina Vorona
