Oleksandr Turchynov. Skeletons in the Closet of Ukraine’s “Bloody Pastor”

There are undoubtedly many controversial or mysterious personalities in Ukrainian politics. Some of them are more suspicious than others. In the biographies of almost all of them, there are facts that incriminate them in one or another fraud or even crime. The current Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, the first and only acting President of Ukraine, former Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine and people’s deputy of the III-VIII convocations Oleksandr Turchynov is no exception. During his career, he went through many departments and political positions, pulled off a bunch of cunning machinations and schemes, but was never caught red-handed. He was called the “Bloody Pastor”, but he continued to do his “great work”. What secrets are hidden in the past of Oleksandr Valentynovych?

“Student, Komsomol member, athlete and just…”

Oleksandr Turchynov was born in 1964 in Dnepropetrovsk. His father, Valentin Ivanovich, was a USSR Master of Sports in volleyball and had been involved in sports all his life. Oleksandr Valentinovich was a talented child, like his father, he played volleyball (led the school team), and studied diligently (he got straight A’s). After school, Turchynov studied at the Dnepropetrovsk Technological University. During his studies, he actively wrote scientific papers, and was even predicted to have a career as a great scientist. However, he surprised everyone – immediately after university, he went to work at the Krivorozhstal plant. Even in his student years, Oleksandr Valentinovich tested his strength in the political sphere – he was an active member of communist construction brigades. For these services, he was even awarded a trip to India, inaccessible to ordinary residents of the Union.

Having felt that participation in the Komsomol and political life of the country gives many privileges, in parallel with his work at the plant, he began his own career as part of one of the district Dnepropetrovsk Komsomols. For his persistence and hard work, Turchynov was eventually appointed to the position of head of the agitation and propaganda department of the Dnepropetrovsk regional committee of the All-Union Leninist Communist Youth Union (VLKSM). Incidentally, in those years it was headed by Sergey Tigipko, the future oligarch, Minister of Social Policy and Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine under the government of Mykola Azarov.

With the collapse of the USSR, Turchynov withdrew from politics and began to master the field of journalism. Up until 1991, he was the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian division of the UNA-press APN news agency. Incidentally, it was on his initiative that this division of the foreign publication was opened. Then, he returned to scientific work, creating and heading the Institute of International Relations, Economics, Politics and Law. He wrote about a hundred scientific papers on the shadow economy and totalitarian systems of governance, at least that is what is written in his official biography. This is very strange, because journalists have not been able to find them. What does exist are small brochures in which Oleksandr Valentynovych is a co-author, but not a single one of his “epochal” works has been found.

Coming into “big politics”

Over time, Turchynov decided to return to politics. In 1992, after Pavlo Lazorenko became the head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration, Oleksandr Valentynovych was appointed head of the committee for demonopolization and privatization of production. This appointment became his starting point for a great political career, because immediately after that he was appointed as Leonid Kuchma’s advisor on macroeconomics (and unofficially – a business partner), and also joined the leadership of the Ukrainian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. At the same time, together with Pavlo Lazarenko, he was engaged in the creation of the All-Ukrainian Union “Gromada”, of which he was appointed chairman.

Pavel Lazarenko

After Leonid Kuchma resigned as Prime Minister, Turchynov withdrew from politics and returned to scientific work, taking the post of general director of the Institute of Economic Reforms. In 1997, he defended his doctoral dissertation. The topic of his research was the same “Shadow Economy”.

Turchynov first became a people’s deputy in 1998 on the lists of the “Hromada” party, headed at the time by Lazarenko, and his future comrade-in-arms Yulia Tymoshenko held the post of deputy chairperson of the council of the same party. Rumor has it that Turchynov and Tymoshenko began “close friendships” back in 1989 (and they could even have children together), when Yulia Volodymyrivna was just starting her entrepreneurial activity. After all, it was under the patronage of the Dnipropetrovsk regional committee of the LKSMU (in which Turchynov worked) that Tymoshenko was engaged in the creation of the youth center “Terminal”.

After Pavlo Lazarenko fled Ukraine and was prosecuted for “financial abuses”, Oleksandr Valentynovych and Yulia Volodymyrivna left the Hromada party and created Batkivshchyna. Turchynov was given the role of deputy head of the party, and Tymoshenko became its leader.

Turchynov became a people’s deputy for the second time as part of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc party, dealing with issues related to the state budget in the Verkhovna Rada. In 2003, the Prosecutor General’s Office charged Turchynov and his BYuT colleague Stepan Khmara under three articles of the Criminal Code at once. According to the investigation, the people’s deputies entered the Lukyanivske pretrial detention center at the end of June 2003, where they “began to insult and beat law enforcement officers” (at that time, Viktor Shokin, who held the post of deputy head of the GPU, insisted on this version; strangely, when he came to the post of Prosecutor General, he suddenly forgot about this, without making any statements).

Orange Revolution activist, SBU officer, BYuT member

During the “Orange Revolution” he did not sit idly by either – he supervised Viktor Yushchenko’s election headquarters in Donetsk, Luhansk, Sumy and Kirovograd regions. In addition, at the last stage of the elections he was the so-called “financial controller”, with the right to sign financial documents.” His efforts were not in vain – after Yushchenko was appointed president, he became the head of the SBU (by the way, he was the first civilian to be awarded such an honor).

After his arrival at the “office”, the main operatives immediately quit, taking with them “flash drives” with various data. It was the information from these “flash drives” that became a headache for the Yushchenko regime, since it turned out that Yushchenko and all his close associates were not “white and fluffy” at all, but on the contrary – the main corruption schemes and criminality under Kuchma were controlled by “Yushchenko’s new team”, and they did not go anywhere, but on the contrary – they were built into the new system, but already under the leadership and cover of Turchynov.

He served in this position for seven months, resigning after Yulia Tymoshenko left the post of Prime Minister. How is this connected, you ask? It’s very simple: while serving as head of the SBU, Turchynov ordered the destruction of documents from the agency’s archives, according to which Yulia Tymoshenko was closely connected with the well-known crime boss Semyon Mogilevich. This became known after the publication on Wikileaks of correspondence between then-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko and the US Ambassador. In it, he reported that Prosecutor General Oleksandr Medvedko ordered the arrest of Turchynov for the destruction of documents incriminating Tymoshenko in illegal activities. During Oleksandr Turchynov’s chairmanship of the SBU, the SBU investigative team investigating the death of Georgy Gongadze was effectively destroyed (the operatives supervising the investigation of the “Tarashcha body” resigned immediately after Turchynov’s arrival, and the rest of the “small fry” – after the arrival of “Ken” Khoroshkovsky). On the personal instructions of Oleksandr Valentynovych, this group simply stopped receiving any information on this case (there was no one to receive it from). At the same time, the Prosecutor General’s Office accused this group of disrupting the operation to extradite the main suspect in the case, General Oleksiy Pukach. Having fulfilled his mission in the SBU, Turchynov went on to conquer other peaks.

During the parliamentary elections in 2006 and 2007, Oleksandr Valentynovych headed the election headquarters of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. As a people’s deputy of the 5th convocation, he held the post of leader of the BYuT faction. And after Yulia Volodymyrivna was appointed prime minister, he became her right hand, occupying the post of first vice-premier. He held this position until Yulia Tymoshenko’s defeat in the presidential elections in 2010 and Viktor Yanukovych’s ascension to the post of President of Ukraine. After Yulia Volodymyrivna’s arrest in 2011, he headed the opposition forces that united on the basis of the Batkivshchyna party. In the party, he was always responsible for intelligence activities and the so-called “black cash box”. Having entered the Verkhovna Rada once again, he was actively engaged in criticizing the current government, not particularly standing out from the opposition crowd.

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During the Euromaidan, he was wounded by a fragment of a flashbang grenade thrown by Berkut officers during one of the regular assaults. After the “overthrow” of Yanukovych, he was appointed speaker of parliament and temporarily elected acting prime minister and president of Ukraine. He performed these duties until the end of the presidential elections. Incidentally, being the “acting” president of Ukraine, he “paid his debt” to the oligarchs who supported the Euromaidan by appointing them to the post of governor of the Donetsk region (Serhiy Taruta – ISD) and the Dnipropetrovsk region (Igor Kolomoisky – Privat).

After a loud quarrel in the Batkivshchyna party, together with Arsen Avakov (Read more about him in the article Arsen Avakov: the criminal past of the Minister of Internal Affairs), Arseniy Yatsenyuk and several other like-minded people left the party. He went to the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of the VIII convocation together with the “People’s Front” party, which took first place on the party lists.

In mid-December 2014, by decree of Petro Poroshenko, he was appointed head of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine. At the same time, amendments were made to the legislation, according to which the powers of the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council were significantly expanded, and this position, with the arrival of Turchynov, in terms of authority became virtually comparable to the positions of the president or prime minister.

Is business a woman’s business?

Like most of the Ukrainian ruling elite, Turchynov’s business is officially registered not in his name, but in the name of his family members. The assets of Oleksandr Valentynovych are owned by the female part of his family – his wife Anna Turchynova, Valentyn Turchynov’s mother and mother-in-law Tamara Beliba. Oddly enough, most of the business is registered in his mother-in-law’s name (it is obvious that he respects her very much). They own the Institute of Economics and Law, which is engaged in research and constantly receives financial influence from unknown investors. The Turchynov couple also owns the company Imkotel, which is engaged in wireless communications and the Internet (its main shareholder is the aforementioned Institute of Economics and Law), the company Kinotur, which is engaged in film mastering (owner Tamara Beliba), and the enterprise Ekonomiks Institutas, which is engaged in the construction of data centers abroad (in particular, in Lithuania).

Alexander Valentinovich himself says that compared to other citizens of Ukraine, he is a fairly wealthy person (although according to his declaration, he lives only on the salary of a people’s deputy). If we recall the topic of his doctoral dissertation (“Shadow Economy”), it is not at all surprising that he is directly or indirectly involved in the creation of the companies “Europa-X”, “Pharmacor”, “ZET”, “VV”, “SVV”, the newspaper “Evening News”, as well as the real estate agency “Yanus”.

According to information from the weekly “Business”

The Real “Pastor”

Oleksandr Turchynov is a pastor of a Baptist parish and one of the heads of the branch of the “Church of Christ” in Ukraine. It is noteworthy that when he took the post of head of the SBU in 2005, one of his first orders was to stop all investigations related to the activities of the “Church of Christ”. This is very strange, because such organizations in most cases are excellent places for laundering huge financial resources. This church uses the charitable foundation “Hope throughout the world” for such operations. By the way, Turchynov’s girlfriend Tymoshenko is also called one of the church members, although for some reason she hides such facts. Ukrainian and Russian conspiracy theorists connect the activities of this church with US intelligence activities, in particular, attributing to it cooperation with the CIA.

An incredible amount of materials have been written about Oleksandr Turchynov, according to various versions he is called: an American agent, a homosexual, a thief, a swindler, Tymoshenko’s lover, a “gray cardinal”, a “bloody Pastor”, and many other pleasant or not so pleasant words. Yes, many of these words are speculations that have no official confirmation, but no one can deny that there were many “dirty deeds” in his life. And until his criminal activity is officially proven, he will continue to do whatever he wants behind the backs of Ukrainian politicians, or whatever his patrons whisper in his ear, be it American intelligence agencies, Freemasons, the world government or other forces hidden from the eyes of ordinary Ukrainians.

And finally, a very important question: did Turchynov abandon his “creator” and “patron” Pavlo Ivanovych Lazarenko, who had become very quiet after the Euromaidan? After all, the main witnesses in the case of Pavlo Ivanovych were Borys Filatov and Gennady Korban’s close associates. Now Filatov has become the head of Dnipropetrovsk region. And Mr. Kolomoisky said 6 years ago: “Sort it out yourselves, I have no claims against Pavlo Ivanovych.” And not so long ago, Filatov and Korban “squeezed” the Astoria-Lux and European Hotels in Dnipropetrovsk from Lazarenko. And Pavlo Ivanovych’s mother-in-law Tamara Tsikova decided the issues for him. She turned to Maksym Lavrinovich, the son of the Minister of Justice at that time, for legal services. To Alexander Lavrinovich.Who had an office on Leo Tolstoy Street in Kyiv. Only on those same days Gennady Korban personally visited Lavrinovich’s office… And a few days later, Vyacheslav Braginsky, who was connected with Korban and the head of the company “Ukraine-Canada”, died from a strange explosion of a gas pipeline in Dnepropetrovsk. The “squeezed” assets of Lazarenko were registered to this company. Only a couple of days before the explosion, the shares and stakes of Braginsky’s main structures were transferred to other legal entities controlled by Korban and, they say, Lavrinovich.

…And Turchynov was in power. And he knew that Tsikova had even met with Yulia Tymoshenko asking for help.

Yes, it is difficult to assume that Turchynov was not aware of these “showdowns”. Couldn’t Turchynov resolve Lazarenko’s problems while holding such a position? Or did he not want competition? And why has the topic of Lazarenko’s return to his homeland become so quiet now?

After Euromaidan, when Turchynov became the acting President of Ukraine, the famous raider Oleksandr Dubovyi was called his “wallet”. Read more about him in the article Oleksandr Dubovoy. Turchynov’s associate and professional raider.

Dmitry Samofalov, for SKELET-info