Ostapyuk Boris: the elusive thief of Ukrzaliznytsia. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Boris Ostapyuk: the elusive thief of Ukrzaliznytsia. PART 1

“Two Urkans fled”

2010 was a truly disastrous year for Boris Ostapyuk. First, in January, he was transferred to the head of the Donetsk Railway, which was more like an exile. Perhaps the then general director of Ukrzaliznytsia, Mikhail Kostyuk, contributed to this: the former members of the Kirpa “family” did not get along with each other, wresting control over the schemes from each other. And no sooner had the elections passed than on April 28 Ostapyuk was fired altogether with the wording “for a one-time gross violation of labor duties” by the new Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

This time, it was much more difficult for Ostapyuk to sue the government, since on June 18, 2010, by decree of President Yanukovych No. 709 “On the dismissal of judges,” Pyotr Kovzel was also expelled. Moreover, the latter got burned for open protection of the gambling business, namely: in February 2010, he made a decision by which he suspended the order of the Ministry of Justice, according to which poker was declared a gambling, and not a sports game. He temporarily suspended the “consideration of claims” – which Kovzel was in no hurry to consider until the end of May, until “higher powers” ​​intervened in the case.

Why there is no gap in Ostapuk’s employment history (from 2010 to 2014) is not difficult to guess: because he hid it, just as he hid his dismissal in 2006. But what did Ostapyuk do for more than three years? Oh, he was not bored! After all, he became a defendant in two criminal cases and was put on the wanted list!

Boris Ostapyuk is wanted

It all started with an investigation into the activities of the leadership of Donetsk Railways during the short period of its management by Boris Ostapyuk. “They grabbed him by the buttocks” then, his deputy Alexander Lozinsky, Ostapyuk’s trusted man, the main “operator” of his corruption schemes. In 2005-2006 Ostapyuk appointed him to head Ukrzaliznychpostach, in December 2007 he made him head of the Main Directorate of Logistics and Technical Support of UZ, and in January 2010 he took him with him as his deputy to Donetsk. The schemes that Lozinsky carried out (under the leadership of Ostapyuk) were legendary! The media reported that thanks to him, Ukrzaliznytsia lost hundreds of millions of hryvnias in tenders at inflated prices, that UZ’s structural enterprises were in debt and losses, while commercial firms working with them received excess profits. One of these companies was Armase (linen supply), owned by his wife Olga Lozinskaya. At the same time, already in 2006, Lozinsky acquired a mansion near Kiev (in Vyshenki), which he registered in the name of his father-in-law Nikolai Galas, and in 2008-2009 he acquired a villa in Cyprus (700 sq.m. on a plot of 0.5 hectares). The media also reported that Lozinsky’s neighbor in Cyprus is his boss Boris Ostapyuk.

Alexander Lozinsky

And in just four months of his stay in Donetsk, Lozinsky managed to distinguish himself by starting to sell rail track components for scrap (through the company Trans-Invest Capital). A case was not opened on this fact immediately; in general, criminal proceedings against Lozinsky began to be actively conducted only in 2012 – but then they remembered everything about him, including his work at Ukrzaliznychpostach.

Boris Ostapyuk (as Lozinsky’s boss), who by that time had disappeared, was also a defendant in this case. Perhaps, together with Lozinsky, they basked in the Cypriot sun, cursing the “Yanukovych regime.” But a search was carried out in Ostapyuk’s apartment in Kyiv, during which a substantial arsenal of cartridges for rifled weapons was found, as well as bladed weapons and a traumatic pistol. Based on this fact, a new case has already been opened against Ostapyuk, and he has been put on the wanted list.

Ostapyuk Boris: the elusive thief of Ukrzaliznytsia. PART 2

But why then did the investigation “not see” Ostapyuk’s railway schemes, with the participation of the same “Ukrzaliznychpasservis” and “Development 21st Century”? The answer is simple: these schemes continued to operate under the Donetsk people, who immediately took control of them. In particular, they included the companies of Artem Pshonka. However, a number of old participants also remained in these schemes. For example, Yurushev’s partner in Development 21st Century turned out to be Minister of Defense Pavel Lebedev (the asset was registered in his daughter’s name), which allowed the company precisely in 2012-2013. significantly increase the volume of tender contracts with UZ.

They’re coming back!

Like many other ex-officials and businessmen who ended up in 2010-2013. in disgrace, Boris Ostapyuk was buried somewhere until the Maidan – and already at the beginning of 2014 he appeared in Kyiv and began to actively contact the leaders of the opposition. His political argument was “I am also a victim of the regime,” and the main one was promises of fruitful, mutually beneficial cooperation. However, the appointment of a new head of Ukrzaliznytsia was delayed for a long time. According to sources Skelet.Infoin March 2014, among the winners of the Maidan, the influence of Svoboda was still great, demanding polygamy for key positions, and the Dubnevich clan, competitors of Ostapyuk, sought to nominate a candidate from Svoboda. But very soon Svoboda’s henchmen were embarrassed wherever possible, the comrades-in-arms of Tyagnibok and Krivetsky were pushed back, and power was concentrated in the hands of the Popular Front. And in April, Minister of Infrastructure Maxim Burbak introduced the new head of UZ, Boris Ostapyuk. And already in May, he put his faithful accomplice Alexander Lozinsky in the chair of “Ukrzaliznychpostach”.

“Personnel restoration” after the Maidan generally took on a massive character, but it was especially cynical at Ukrzaliznitsa. For example, back in 2012, the head of the personnel department of the South-Western Railway (YuZhD) Irina Mikhalchenko was fired with a scandal. One of the reasons: through her fault, two seasoned previously convicted criminals were employed as conductors, who then killed and threw out a passenger, a young woman, from the Kyiv-Lviv train. However, Madame Mikhalchenko, following the example of Ostapyuk, did not agree with the dismissal – and spent a long time in court for her reinstatement. But then Maidan thundered – and Mikhalchenko not only “recovered herself,” but also received a position in the management of Ukrzaliznytsia under the auspices of Boris Ostapyuk (where she, by forging documents, illegally took possession of a three-room apartment in Kyiv). Why did he like her so much? But the fact is that Irina Mikhalchenko’s ex-husband is the scandalous railway corrupt official Gennady Politykin. He started as the head of the logistics service of the Southern Western Railway, was the director of the Zaporozhye Electric Locomotive Repair Plant, as well as co-owners of the Modern Friction Systems company, which regularly won UZ tenders – and was involved in many criminal cases. And Irina Mikhalchenko took such deep roots in the management of UZ that it was only with difficulty that she was uprooted from there in 2017.

It is interesting that another old friend of Ostapyuk, corrupt judge Pyotr Kovzel, was also rehabilitated immediately after the Maidan, even back in March. Decree No. 311/2014 acting President Turchynov canceled the decree of President Yanukovych, which dismissed Kovzel in 2010. The scandalous judge continued to thunder in the media: in 2017, he sued himself for “illegal dismissal” 5 thousand euros in moral compensationand in 2018, having failed the qualifying exam, through the court overturned the decision of the qualification commissionthereby calling into question the very meaning of its existence.

Before Ostapyuk had time to employ his “right raking hand” Lozinsky as the head of Ukrzaliznychpostach, corruption at UZ immediately began to gain momentum, like a steam turbine. At the end of May 2014, two tenders for the supply of spare parts for Ukrzaliznytsia (from the 3rd and 19th) were illegally combined, while their cost sharply more than doubled, to 170 million hryvnia. The auction was carried out hastily, and the winner was Exposure LLC, one of the Dubnevich brothers’ firms, which replaced their scandalous company Rut Repair Technologies. Scandalous, because during the time of Yanukovych she was one of the leaders in tenders, primarily on the Lviv Railway – and ended her work with a spectacular “kid”, supplying the railway with low-quality components and refusing to return the money. Thus, as we see, even competing clans of railway corrupt officials often “productively cooperate” with each other.

Ostapyuk, who headed Ukrzaliznytsia, immediately continued business relations with Leonid Yurushev, and not only in the field of passenger service. Immediately upon Ostapyuk’s appointment, Maxim Blank, the former financial director of Dneprvagonrembud CJSC, one of the enterprises controlled by Yurushev, was appointed as his assistant. Blank immediately took up the “reform” of the economic part of UZ, as a result of which, at the height of the crisis, thousands of railway workers were laid off, and the shadow money flows of corrupt officials became even less noticeable to law enforcement agencies and went straight to offshore companies. They said that the “Blank reform” was supposed to be the first stage of preparation for the privatization of Ukrzaliznytsia, which the largest oligarchs of Ukraine (including Akhmetov) had their eyes on. But then, mainly, Ostapyuk and Blank made sure that Dneprvagonrembud CJSC received all UZ tenders for the repair of cars – and we were talking about hundreds of millions of hryvnia!

Maxim Blank

It is interesting that after the dismissal of Boris Ostapyuk in September 2014, it was Blank who immediately took over the acting role. the head of Ukrazaliznytsia, although he had the most superficial understanding of the technical side of the railway’s work. Subsequently Blank himself became a defendant in anti-corruption investigationsthen became seriously ill and died on January 5, 2019.

In just 4 months (from late May to early September) of 2014, the Ostapyuk-Lozinsky tandem held about 600 tenders worth over 2.5 billion hryvnia, of which 1.7 billion went through Ukrzaliznychpostach. The main winners of the tenders were the companies Dniprozaliznychpostachannya (Zagid Krasnov), Interpipe (Viktor Pinchuk), Transinvest Holding (Akhmetov), ​​and Exposure (Dubnevichi). Ostapyuk did not forget about himself: among the winners of the tenders, Forest LLC, owned by his ex-wife Ivanna Vyslinskaya, again appeared. Forest has always been distinguished by the fact that it supplied UZ with wood at a price one and a half to two times higher than their market value. In just a few months of 2014, the company traded with Ukrzaliznitsa for 35 million hryvnia.

On July 2, 2014, Boris Ostapyuk held a meeting of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia, at which he announced in a tone that did not tolerate objections that from now on UZ works only for one insurance company – PJSC IC Inter-Polis. Previous contracts with other insurance companies were torn apart within a week. So Ostapyuk returned to the practice of stealing from Ukrzaliznytsia also through pocket insurance companies. A special feature of Inter-Polis was that it was operated through the offshore companies Hong Kong Eastern Development Limited and ABC Contreding (Overseas) Limited (Cyprus). Alexander Edin is another native of Lvov who rose to the level of transportation. At the same time, Inter-Polis was an underdeveloped company that never made any significant payments and was created purely for the withdrawal of money.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the egregious, but carefully forgotten by all, history of the actual “donation” of movable property and resources of the Donetsk Railway to the Donbass separatists. Moreover, Ostapyuk not only did not want to withdraw the rolling stock and equipment of the Don Railway from the rebellion-ridden areas, but also, by his decrees in the spring-summer of 2014, transferred there a significant amount of material resources, primarily diesel fuel (460 million hryvnia). And fueling their armored vehicles with this very diesel fuel, the separatists created the Ilovaisk cauldron, made a breakthrough to the Sea of ​​Azov, almost capturing Mariupol, and then attacked and took the Debaltsevo railway junction.

The vigorous activity of Boris Ostapyuk and his team-clan could not but go unnoticed. Surprisingly, the next order for his dismissal appeared on May 30, 2014. Then several news sites published it, after which… Ostapyuk continued, as if nothing had happened, to lead UZ, but the order of the Cabinet of Ministers disappeared somewhere, as did news reports about it. It was an oddity that no one could ever explain.

Perhaps this had something to do with the victory of Petro Poroshenko in the presidential elections – to whom other railway clans immediately “attached”, seeking to place their people in the chair of the general director of UZ. And indeed, immediately after his inauguration, Ostapyuk came under the hood of the SBU, which was then headed by Valentin Nalyvaichenko. And so on September 8, 2014, “at the request of law enforcement agencies,” the Cabinet of Ministers announced the beginning of a large-scale audit of the activities of the management of Ukrzaliniytsm, and temporarily suspended from his duties its CEO Boris Ostapyuk. The SBU also participated in the inspection, which carried out 19 searches and seized a lot of material assets: in particular, more than a million dollars in cash, as well as several million hryvnia, were found in Blank’s office. Nalyvaichenko stated that a real “laundering syndicate” was working in the management of UZ. Ostapyuk himself fled somewhere at this time again, literally a couple of days before the searches. He returned to Kyiv on November 20, when the checks ended and… it was officially announced that Boris Ostapyuk was not no incriminating evidence was found. It was a real shock not only for ordinary Ukrainians, but also for the head of the SBU Nalyvaichenko.

Ostapyuk continued his work, but not for long: already on November 26, 2014, by order of the Cabinet of Ministers, he was nevertheless dismissed from the post of head of Ukrzaliznytsia. But no one gave any clear explanations, and the incomprehensibility of the situation was aggravated by the absence of the new head of UZ. Until January 2015, UZ was actually without a general director, then Maxim Blank assumed his responsibilities.

Ostapyuk Boris: the elusive thief of Ukrzaliznytsia. PART 2

Boris Ostapyuk, as usual, did not come to terms with his dismissal, and began the traditional litigation with the authorities. In July 2015, Ostapyuk’s claim was denied court of first instancethen in September 2015 he lost the case in the Kiev Court of Appealbut in April the Supreme Administrative Court overturned both decisions and returned the case for retrial. Then, in October 2017, he was again rejected by the District Administrative Court of Kyiv, but on April 10, 2018, the Kiev Court of Appeal made a certain decision in Ostapyuk’s case, which was immediately classified. One could only guess about its content, but in May 2018 the Cabinet of Ministers and the management of Ukrzaliznytsia hastily disputed This is a secret decision, so journalists assumed that it was made in favor of Ostapyuk.

Then the Cabinet of Ministers went into obvious defense, since its further argument was that Boris Ostapyuk headed the “State Administration of Railway Transport of Ukraine” (SAZhTU), and now it is PJSC “Ukrzaliznytsia” – which means Ostapyuk cannot return to the place he formally no longer exists. And already in the courts of Lvov, Ostapyuk and government agencies clashed in 2018 in a dispute over the name of the Ukrainian Railways Department. The last time the case was considered on December 7, 2018 was by the Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Lvov – but this was hardly the last court between Ostapyuk and the state.

According to sources Skelet.Infoin this process, a conflict of interests arose in the judicial system itself, riddled with corruption and protectionism. On the one hand, the judges are ready to satisfy Ostapuk’s claims, since he was fired without announcing official reasons, so as not to wash dirty linen in public. And he would have “recovered himself” again if, on the other hand, the judicial system had not been under pressure from President Poroshenko’s team. Apparently, the outcome of this case will be decided after the spring elections, and Boris Otspyuk probably very much hopes that Yulia Tymoshenko will win them.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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