Pavlyuk Ilya: Customs Mafia “Servant of the People”. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Ilya Pavlyuk: Customs Mafia of the “Servant of the People”. PART 1

Operation “Servant of the People” Ilya Pavlyuk

The strange abduction of Ilya Pavlyuk, which remains unfinished, has attracted the attention of more than just journalists. In 2012, Chernivtsi Regional Council deputy Mykola Salagor publicly called him “the de facto owner of all contraband in the region.” However, it should be noted that Salagor himself had been working at customs since the late 1980s, and after the second Maidan he was appointed head of Chernivtsi customs, and soon became one of the biggest corrupt officials in the region. That is, in this case, Salagor’s accusations against Pavlyuk were a squabble between representatives of two groups of influence fighting for control over customs. Who of them was more corrupt, who had more criminal activity behind them, and who had a higher “roof” in Kyiv, one can only guess. But this conflict had a continuation: when in 2019 the power in Kyiv changed and Pavlyuk, as a member of Zelensky’s headquarters, celebrated his victory, Salagor was immediately “asked to leave.” He began to desperately cling to his seat, going on vacation, then on sick leave.

Around the same time, Gennady Moskal, who sat in parliament in the Front of Change faction, sent an open letter to President Yanukovych regarding the new bill “decriminalizing smuggling.” He named Ilya Pavlyuk as one of its unofficial authors. The involvement of the “provincial smuggler” Pavlyuk in such a level of influence was explained simply: he was called a close friend and even godfather of the odious Igor Kaletnik, who headed the State Customs Service of Ukraine from March 2010 to December 2012. And when Kaletnik was previously a people’s deputy of the 7th convocation (on the Communist Party list), he took Pavlyuk as his assistant.

Igor Kaletnik

Grigory Kaletnik

But when and how did Ilya Pavlyuk meet Igor Kaletnik? According to information Skeleton.Info This happened in the period 2000-2007, when Igor Kaletnik headed several regional customs offices in turn, and then headed the Administration and Department for Combating Smuggling and Violations of the State Customs Service. This hardened corrupt official, instead of fighting smugglers, took them under his wing – that’s how the Chernivtsi swindler Ilya Pavlyuk approached him. Who, we repeat, had been associated with local organized crime groups since the 90s and was engaged in shadow business with their help – including smuggling. Pavlyuk became a sort of manager for “solving issues” at the Chernivtsi customs office under Kaletnik. And, according to sources, Skeleton.InfoPavlyuk could solve them at customs in neighboring regions. True, there were their own “fixers” and “overseers”, but, as they say, “colleagues” helped each other on the principle of “you help me – I help you”. This became Pavlyuk’s main “business”.

The scale of Pavlyuk’s activities was eloquently demonstrated by the scandal surrounding the Chernivtsi firms Bukpromservis and Visby (registered at the same address), which was raised in December 2011 by Gennady Moskal. According to him, these firms associated with Pavlyuk, were involved in large-scale smuggling and in 2011 alone they caused damage to the state in the amount of about a billion hryvnia! And Pavlyuk had his percentage from this billion.

Of course, he also has legal enterprises: Tarasovskaya Poultry Farm LLC (EDRPOU 32171745), which he owns together with his brother Vasily, the transport company Kalina Trans (30352650), together with his son Nikolay, the gardening cooperative Sadovnik Agro Prom (35325401), the livestock enterprise Svizhenka-Milk (36752260), the above-mentioned Bukovyna-Sportservis, and his daughter Sofia owns the Bukovyna Hotel in Chernivtsi. By the way, according to reviews from local residents, Pavlyuk constantly delayed salaries to workers at his agricultural enterprises for several months, so the locals quit there long ago. But although these enterprises bring Pavlyuk a good income, which 99.9% of Ukrainians can only dream of, it is still much less than his fees as a “customs fixer”. In addition, Pavlyuk has his own smuggling schemes. For example, his poultry farm employs only 17 people – including an accountant, a guard and a driver! Obviously, this is a very modest enterprise, which actually produces a small amount of products, but according to reports, it works like the Nasha Ryaba plant. It’s all very simple: Pavlyuk uses his poultry farm to register “left” products of unknown origin, possibly smuggling them in. This is where “rotten chicken” appears in Ukrainian stores…

How did Ilya Pavlyuk end up in the “Ze-team”? This is the most pressing question that still has no answer. Having attracted new interest from journalists in 2019, Pavlyuk turned out to be such a secretive person that he even refused to talk on the phone. One can only guess what secrets this “conspirator” is hiding! In the meantime, we can only be content with guesses put forward during journalistic investigations. There are two of them now, very close in essence.

The first guess: Pavlyuk, as a proven “fixer”, was “delegated” to Zelensky’s team by some influential people directly connected with customs and smuggling. But what unites these corrupt officials and shadow businessmen living in different regions of Ukraine? Igor Kaletnik? Of course, but Kaletnik’s corrupt connections were much broader, they covered almost the entire country.

The second guess: they say that Ilya Pavlyuk is a long-time fan of “95th Quarter” and once even invested a certain amount of money in it. That is why both Zelensky and the Shefir brothers (co-owners of “Kvartal”) knew Pavlyuk long before the elections. When Zelensky decided to run for president in 2018 and began to assemble his team, Pavlyuk showed up on their doorstep – having decided to bet on a new political force. Pavlyuk suggested that Zelensky involve all his connections to support him – and they were quite extensive, but specific, “customs”. Zelensky knew very well what kind of swindler and corrupt official they were dealing with, but they agreed – although they publicly denied that Pavlyuk was a member of their team. He became a “shadow” member of Zelensky’s headquarters, but he was given a big role, entrusted with organizing and financing first the presidential and then the parliamentary campaign from several regions at once: Chernivtsi, Ternopil, Mykolaiv, Odesa, Rivne and Zhytomyr. Moreover, Pavlyuk paid for the parliamentary elections in Chernivtsi and Ternopil to a large extent out of his own pocket (having invested about 20 million dollars there), having received the right to nominate a number of candidates at his own discretion. Thus, he brought a group of especially trusted fellow countrymen to the Rada:

Maxim Palyuk

• Maksym Pavlyuk is the young nephew of Ilya Pavlyuk (born in 1992), the son of his brother Vasyl, who previously worked as the acting military prosecutor of the Luhansk garrison and deputy military prosecutor of the Darnitsa garrison. He was elected on the Servant of the People list (No. 102). According to journalists, Maksym Pavlyuk is directly connected with the former Military Prosecutor of Ukraine, Anatoly Matios. And Matios’ wife, Irina Barakh, owns the law firm Avellum Legas together with the son of Vitaliy Bulyuk, the former head of the Kherson customs office and a trusted person of Igor Kaletnik.
• Elena Lis is formally a modest teacher at Chernivtsi Gymnasium No. 2, but in reality she is the wife of Igor Lis, Pavlyuk’s business partner (through Nepentis LTD). She was elected in the majoritarian district No. 201; in order for her to win, Oksana Prodan was removed from the elections by agreement with Valeriy Chinush (Sofia Pavlyuk’s business partner).
• Olga Grinchuk – elected on the list of “Servants of the People” (No. 67), is an employee of the company of Valery Chinush and Sofia Pavlyuk.
• Georgy Mazurashu is a former sports journalist in Chernivtsi, was the head of the physical education and sports department of the Chernivtsi Regional State Administration, a member of the executive committee of the Chernivtsi branch of the Olympic Committee of Ukraine, and the director of the Chernivtsi regional center for physical health. He is associated with Pavlyuk from the times of the “sports mafia”, and possibly represents the interests of Klim-Zagursky. He was elected in the 203rd majoritarian district.
• Oleg Marusyak is a little-known businessman from Kalush. According to sources Skeleton.Infohas been an acquaintance and business partner of Pavlyuk since the 90s. Number 52 on the Servant of the People list (bought with his own money). He is connected to Russian-Lithuanian businessman Boris Baum, and through him to Alexander Babakov, a member of the Moscow organized crime group Luzhnikovskie.
• Vladimir Kozak is the son of the chairman of the Sokiryansky district council in the Cherkasy region, Vasily Kozak, and the brother of the daughter-in-law of Gennady Kernes, No. 68 in the “Servant of the People”.
• Maksym Zaremsky – previously worked in the Civil Defense Department of the Chernivtsi Regional State Administration, a friend of Oleg Lyashko and a supporter of the LGBT movement. He is considered a very loyal person to Pavlyuk (or highly dependent on him).

Together with the “Chernivtsi” people, the “servants of the people” from the Nikolaev region closely cooperate: Artem Chernomorov, Igor Kopytin, Alexander Gaidu, Maksym Dyrdyn, Alexander Pasechny and Igor Negulevsky. It was reported that Pavlyuk personally participated in their selection. And the third “subgroup” in Pavlyuk’s group consists of people’s deputies controlled by the scandalous Sergey Trygubenko, who at one time also worked at customs (headed the Kharkov one). Their interests are so closely intertwined that after the scandalous “secret supper” that took place on October 3 in the “Ukraine” hotel, they began to be called the Pavlyuk-Trygubenko group.

Pavlyuk’s fatal mistake was lobbying for outside interests to the detriment of the Servant of the People policy, which led to a major scandal. But at first, things were going just fine for Pavlyuk. As a member of Zelensky’s headquarters, albeit a “shadow” one, he became the curator of a large group of “servants of the people” numbering about 40 deputies, officially headed by Rivne businessman Dmitry Solomchuk – which included “Vinnytsia”, a number of deputies from the Odessa, Zhitomir and Kharkiv regions. It was called the second largest after the so-called “Soros group”, it surpassed the “Privat” group. Apparently, this turned Pavlyuk’s head: he decided to clutch the “golden share” of the faction in his hand and blackmail it.

Dmitry Solomchuk

The reasons that pushed Pavlyuk to take this step remain unknown. Some say that Akhmetov simply paid Trigubenko and Pavlyuk a substantial sum of money (part of which was distributed to the MPs of the group) for the failure of the bills on the electricity market (No. 2233) and increasing the rent on ore (No. 1210). Others say that this was a systematic blackmail strategy, the purpose of which was to appoint Pavlyuk’s people to key positions in the Customs Service. However, Zelensky assessed this as a game in Akhmetov’s favor, which infuriated the president. Despite all the compliance of the current head of state “to both yours and ours”, he is not going to meet Akhmetov halfway. Therefore, on December 3, Solomchuk was removed from the post of deputy head of the parliamentary faction “Servant of the People”, and the group of MPs headed by him was dissolved. In addition, it was reported that Pavlyuk was called to Zelensky on the carpet for an explanation …

However, media news and politicians’ statements do not always correspond to reality. Although the group of deputies previously headed by Solomchuk was officially dissolved, the Pavlyuk-Trygubenko group remained in the Rada. You can disband them or reprimand them every day, but these two dozen people’s deputies depend on their patrons and will follow their instructions, and not the orders of Razumkov, Arakhamia or even Zelensky himself. And the president understands this, so they did not rule out emergency measures in the form of a criminal case against Pavlyuk and Trygubenko – according to sources Skeleton.Info with Bankova, there are plenty of materials needed to initiate them! Then what is the hitch? Either they are trying to negotiate with Pavlyuk in a good way, and now he is bargaining fiercely, not wanting to be satisfied with just a “pardon”, or Pavlyuk is just an intermediary, behind whom there are people who are inaccessible even to Zelensky. In short, this could become another story about Pavlyuk, which will have no end…

But already now we can draw a sad conclusion from it: promoted as a fundamentally new and crystal clear political force, the “green team” turned out to be the same gathering of corrupt officials and intriguers as all previous parties in power.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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