Sergei Trigubenko: Figaro of Ukrainian corruption

Those who robbed the state and entrepreneurs during the time of Yanukovych continue to do so under Poroshenko, and even on a much larger scale. One of these virtuosos is ex-people’s deputy of the BPP faction Sergei Trigubenko, who has no time to pore over laws in the session hall – after all, he has a lot of important matters in different regions of Ukraine. Therefore, he is rarely seen in parliament, but he often becomes the “hero” of corruption scandals and investigations. Which, however, does not cause him any inconvenience.

Somehow it has already happened that school physical education and labor teachers, or as they call “physical instructors” and “trudoviks,” often become only heroes of jokes and obscene stories. However, some of them still managed to make a brilliant career, and even learned to govern the state – with the mandate of people’s deputies or the portfolio of deputy minister. Skelet.Info has already published a fascinating life story of a simple Odessa “physical instructor” Anton Kisse (read more about him in the article Anton Kisse: how a physical education teacher became a Bulgarian baron of Bessarabia), who became a prominent businessman, president of the Association of Bulgarians of Ukraine and support of President Poroshenko in the Our Land party. And now you will find out how the former “Trudovik” Sergei Trigubenko became another supporter of the current president, but in the coal industry.

The missing link between the “trudovik” and the deputy minister

Finding out all the details of this rapid career rise is not easy, since Trigubenko’s biography is one of those “half-erased”; it contains practically no information about his turbulent youth. It is only known that Sergei Nikolaevich Trigubenko was born on March 6, 1972 in the urban village of Kegichevka, Kharkov region, in the family of Zoya Ivanovna and Nikolai Fedorovich Trigubenko, and he also has a younger brother Vitaly (born 1981), now working as a prosecutor of the Kherson region .

Vitaly Trigubenko

In 1994, Sergei Trigubenko graduated from the Slavic Pedagogical Institute with a degree in labor and career guidance. With all due respect to this educational institution and with an understanding of the importance of this specialty (which is dying out in pedagogical institutes of Ukraine), it is worth noting that at that time it was the choice of the least prestigious university and the least prestigious profession. Simply put, the lowest level of higher education available to untalented graduates of a provincial high school.

After working for a year in his specialty, Trigubenko came to the conclusion that his chosen profession had no prospects: it was the 90s, teachers were paid in food packages, and schoolchildren were thinking not about work, but about commerce and racketeering. But their teacher, apparently, also did not have the talents of a businessman or a bandit, and therefore Sergei Trigubenko decided to get an economic education. And in 1995, he went to a place where everyone was accepted, as long as they paid: to the “International Institute of Management, Business and Law” – opened in Slavyansk in the premises of a former aviation school by Fyodor Poddubny, who promised to make a “Ukrainian Harvard” out of his private university. . True, it later turned out that “academician” Poddubny himself did not have a higher education, and his university did not have a license, and that his diplomas could only be hung on the walls in the toilet. In 1996, Poddubny fled to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), then was arrested, extradited, spent two years in a pre-trial detention center, then released under an amnesty – but during this time, Slavic law enforcement officers simply stole his savings and property (totalling about a million hryvnia).

In general, Sergei Trigubenko somehow did not succeed with his second higher education. However, despite the obvious fakeness of the “Ukrainian Harvard” diploma, in 1997 Trigubenko returned to his homeland and got a job in the Tax Police. Where he worked for the next eight years and made his first successful career. It should be noted that his career was very rapid: already in 2000, Trigubenko entered the Kharkov Law Institute in absentia (now the National Academy of Law named after Yaroslav the Wise), a year later receiving his third and most important higher education in the specialty “legislation”. And with him his first leadership positions in the Tax Police of the Kharkov region. Moreover, at the same time, he pulled his younger brother Vitaly, who also graduated from Kharkov Law School, onto this path.

Sergey Trigubenko

Who caused such a sharp turn in the fate of Sergei Trigubenko (as well as his brother) is not reported anywhere. Perhaps Trigubenko’s secret patron was his father-in-law Alexey Romanovich Kulichkovsky (born 1951), the father of Larisa Kulichkovskaya (Trigubenko), whom he married upon returning to his native Kegichevka. However, information about who Alexey Romanovich worked and what he did in the 90s is not publicly available. Even now, he appears only as a “simple” Ukrainian pensioner, although he owns an elite five-room apartment with an area of ​​322 sq.m. in Kyiv. in a house on Peredslavinskaya-30, the approximate cost of which is estimated at 850-950 thousand dollars. But it is known that in 2009-2012. Alexey Kulichkovsky was one of the founders of the Atlant Service housing construction cooperative, which participated in land acquisition schemes in Kharkov and the Kharkov region – thus he had very good connections in the city and regional authorities. Moreover, Kulichkovsky left the founders of the cooperative, which then liquidated itself, exactly a few months before the initiation of a large criminal case on the facts of land fraud – that is, he had good connections in law enforcement agencies. However, by that time his son-in-law was no longer the last person.

Sergey Trigubenko: Circuit Master

Unexpectedly, in the summer of 2005, Kharkov tax specialist Sergei Trigubenko moved to Kyiv, to the position of deputy chairman of the board of the National Joint Stock Company (NAC) “Nedra Ukrayiny” (“Nadra Ukrayiny”). Thus began the second stage of his rapid career. This time, the connecting link was his immediate superior – the new chairman of the board of NJSC “Nedra Ukrayiny” Igor Ivanovich Romanenko, a man of many talents and a stormy biography. In the 90s, a former military man (radio engineer) got into business: from 1998 to 2002 he worked as director of Neftegazinvest CJSC in the city of Dergachi, Kharkov region, where he could get along with Tax Police employee Trigubenko.

Igor Romanenko

Subsequently, in 2008-2010 Igor Romanenko worked as the head of the Kharkov regional branch of the State Enterprise “Center of State Land Cadastre”, and at exactly the same time Alexey Kulichkovsky (Trigubenko’s father-in-law) will create his own construction cooperative. In 2006-2010 being a deputy of the Kharkov City Council from the Party of Regions, in the spring of 2013 Romanenko joined the ranks of the UDAR party, becoming the chairman of the Kharkov regional organization. Since 2014, he has been an adviser to the chairman of the regional state administration on work with law enforcement agencies (perhaps that is why the case of land fraud in the region ended in nothing). Since 2015, Romanenko has been a member of the Solidarity party and a deputy of the Kharkov City Council, where he oversees construction and land relations. According to available Skelet.Info According to information, it was Romanenko who attracted Trigubenko to the presidential party.

But then, in the “2000s,” Romanenko did not stay long in the chair of the chairman of the board of NJSC “Nedra Ukrayiny”: already in March 2006 he “fell ill” in order to avoid scandalous accusations of corruptly distributing licenses for gas and oil production to private companies, and in April he was removed from office. But Trigubenko stayed for another year – after which he was expelled, but also avoided charges and even received the position of… deputy head of the Kiev Metro. Apparently, there was nothing to profit from there, so a year later Trigubenko returned from underground back to the post of Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection Georgy Filipchuk – the same one who was convicted in 2012 under Article 365-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in the case of the development of the Black Sea shelf by Vanco International ltd. According to available information, then Trigubenko again returned to the old practice of selling licenses (more precisely, permits from the Ministry of Ecology), which he did back at NJSC Nedra Ukrainy.

A year later, Sergei Trigubenko makes a new leap: now to the chair of Deputy Minister of Agrarian Policy and Food: first Yuri Melnik, and then Nikolai Prisyazhnyuk. Such a universal leader emerged from a simple provincial “trudovik”: Figaro here, Figaro there! But this appointment already, as they say, reeked of corruption: it was reported that Yuri Ivanyushchenko (Yura Enakievsky) himself lobbied him for this position, and allegedly they even had an interview, during which Trigubenko was explained the range of his responsibilities in the interests of the “family.” In particular, the main task was to collect “black taxes”, that is, levies from exporters of agricultural products: from 17-20 dollars per ton in 2010 to 25-35 dollars in 2011, which then went to the “family” cash desk.

Then something didn’t work out between Trigubenko and Prisyazhnyuk: according to one information, one of them began to take the excess into his own pocket, without sharing it with his “partner”; according to another, Trigubenko began to bait Prisyazhnyuk – in general, things came to a fight between them . But the most likely cause of the conflict was the so-called. “sugar business” It was about fraud with government purchases of raw sugar for the Agrarian Fund, as well as taking out loans secured by allegedly purchased sugar. They included the companies Prodinvest and Agromarketinvest, owned by the brothers Valery and Yuri Kelestin, and Olga LLC, owned by Igor Ignatov. They all met each other for a profitable business with the help of Sergei Trigubenko, and with his help they won the sugar tender in 2011. However, the scams, which caused damage to the state worth several hundred million hryvnia, were too impudent – and Prisyazhnyuk did not want to clean up everything himself.

And then, in November 2011, again, not without the patronage of Yuri Ivanyushchenko, Sergei Trigubenko was put in charge of the State Inspectorate of Agriculture of Ukraine. Where he, as reported, made good money by issuing certificates, and this time under a legal scheme: documents were officially issued through a number of private firms (including Etalon-B), whose services were not cheap.

Sergey Trigubenko

Sergey Trigubenko – Coal “looker”

After the “sugar business” Sergei Trigubenko disappeared somewhere for a long time, two years in his biography was a complete blank, there were even rumors that he fled abroad. But his brother Vitaly Trigubenko at that time found himself a new patronage: the former assistant district prosecutor was invited to Kyiv, where in 2013 he became the head of the department for ensuring legal requirements of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Not a great position, but Vitaly Nikolayevich began to acquire numerous connections in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – the traditional fiefdom of national patriots, “democratic forces” and other politicians of the former “orange” camp. So immediately after the second Maidan his career began to grow. Under the Prosecutor General Vitaly Yareme Vitaly Trigubenko was first appointed Deputy Head of the Department for the Protection of the Rights of Citizens and Interests of Ukraine in the Temporarily Occupied Crimea, and then Deputy Head of the Department for Supervision of Compliance with the Law in Combating Crime and Corruption of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Finally, under Prosecutor General Lutsenko, he was appointed prosecutor of the Kherson region, where he remains now, preparing for new promotions.

Well, in the meantime, Sergei Trigubenko materialized in the autumn 2014 elections to the Verkhovna Rada, where the former member of the government Azarova was elected on the list of the Poroshenko Bloc at No. 46. For what merits was he given an almost guaranteed passage? It was reported that Trigubenko was helped in this by his old friend and business partner Igor Romanenko, with whom the two of them ensured the Poroshenko Bloc’s results in the Kharkov region. Moreover, Romanenko even almost refused a place on the list in favor of Trigubenko, preferring to stay in Kharkov. This is how Sergei Trigubenko actively grew into the new system of power, so much so that he began to increasingly attract the attention of journalists, who even filmed a short documentary about him. It was in it that Sergei Trigubenko was named “overseeing” the coal industry of Ukraine, now from the “family” of the current president, and he worked directly for Igor Kononenko.

We were talking about the Krasnolimanskaya mine. This is the largest of the Ukrainian mines remaining in state ownership, around which successive proteges of “families” have been stirring up schemes since the 90s. In particular, the Krasnolimanskaya LLC of the same name was created at the mine, which then leased its coal seams (!), effectively depriving the mine of the status of a state enterprise. And then the second Maidan happened, the conflict in Donbass began – and fighters of the Donbass battalion, led by Yuri Bereza, arrived at the mine in jeeps with machine guns, ostensibly to return it to the state. But in the end, the mine only became available to other swindlers. Since 2015, Krasnolimanskaya, together with the last large state enterprise, Centrenergo, has become a component of the corruption scheme of the presidential “family”, placed under the control of the “oversight” Sergei Trigubenko.

It was Trigubenko who lobbied for the appointment as director of the mine, first Vitaly Zyusko, and then ex-regional Alexander Dubovik, who even in Azarov’s government was “reproached” for “using state property as his own.” These appointments provoked a conflict with the collective of miners who supported the former director Konstantin Kisilev (arrested during this confrontation). The miners were outraged that Zyusko, who had been director for a short time, tried to purchase two diesel locomotives (not new) for the mine at a price of 20 million each – despite the fact that the market price of such machines barely exceeded a million hryvnia!

Having appointed his own people to the management of the mine, and also invited his business partner, a scandalous businessman, to the scheme Igor Salowho is called the “supervisor” of the Centernergo company, Trigubenko launched one of the largest scams in post-Maidan Ukraine. Trading House Resurs LLC appeared at the mine, the director of which was Igor Tupikov, Trigubenko’s former deputy assistant. By the way, Trigubenko publicly denied this, but the official certificate from the Verkhovna Rada’s Office eloquently testified that the people’s deputy was simply a liar. And Trigubenko (with the help of Igor Salo) appointed another of his former assistants, Igor Balabanov, as director of Centrenergo.

So, TD Resurs, as well as another Trigubenkovsky company, Dantrade LTD LLC, entered into a number of agreements with the Krasnolimanskaya mine, transferring to them the right to subcontract and lease seams, and allowing them to buy coal at a very low price. Moreover, it has been reported that this coal contains an excessive amount of rock – and it is there intentionally. And then in September 2015, these companies entered into an agreement with Centrenergo to sell coal to the enterprise in the amount of 520 million hryvnia. There is one point here that the journalists missed: when talking about the contract, they cited only one document, an agreement for the sale of 100 thousand tons of coal, and it seems that there are simply no others. That is, it turns out that Trigubenko’s companies sold coal to Centrenergo at a price of 5,200 hryvnia per ton! So that you understand the scale and impudence of this scam, let us compare the cost of coal in Rinat Akhmetov’s schemes: he receives coal from his mines and diggings at a cost of 500-700 hryvnia per ton, and sells it to power plants at a price of 2500-2700 hryvnia per ton, and this is considered very expensive, and Akhmetov is called a fraudster for this. But the scheme of the “supervisor” of the presidential “family” sold coal to the state enterprise “Centrenergo” for twice the price! And don’t forget that coal mixed with rock has a cost even lower than sludge from Akhmetov’s “digs.”

This seemed unthinkable: everyone in the country curses Akhmetov’s “Rotterdam formula”, but no one notices a much more vile fraud. But the story did not develop further than an ordinary scandal with an intermediary company that bypassed the tender; apparently no one paid attention to the cost of coal obtained after studying the documents. However, having hushed up the public scandal, the authorities nevertheless decided to slap their overly presumptuous “supervisor” on the wrist: in the fall of 2016, NABU conducted searches in the Kyiv offices of Trading House Resurs LLC and Dantrade LTD LLC (on the 20th floor of the capital’s Parus “). There were even rumors that Trigubenko had lost Kononenko’s favor and was even removed from the post of coal “supervisor”, giving this place to the blunt oligarch Vitaly Kropachev, the creator of the scandalous Tornado battalion and protégé of Anton Gerashchenko. But Trigubenko was allegedly transferred to “supervise” grain exports – after all, he has relevant experience. However, this did not affect his position in any way. For example, after the searches, NABU no longer remembered Trigubenko.

The “trudovik” lives well in the world!

The Krasnolimanskaya mine was not the only source of income for Sergei Trigubenko, who rose to new heights of corruption scams after the second Maidan. Moreover, he even continues business relations with fugitive representatives of the overthrown regime. In this case, we are talking about the enterprise Tarkom Service LLC (Obukhov), which is engaged in the disposal of hydrocarbon waste (oils). And it doesn’t so much destroy (burn) them as it takes money from the treasury for the supposed disposal of even non-existent waste. However, this is not the worst option: it’s good that they are simply not poured into the nearest river. But this was almost done by another company related to Trigubenko – Ukrainian Waste Management Center LLC, which burned counterfeit products in the open air, filling the sky with acrid fumes.

Both of these enterprises, as well as two others (Ecocenter and Ecosvit), belong to the Cypriot company Kostinia Traiding Ltd. And it, in turn, belongs to two owners: the Belizean company Eco Business Directions Inc and the Cypriot Grotelisa Holdings Ltd. The first is the company of Yanukovych’s “family”, but the co-owners of the second (through shell companies) are Sergei Trigubenko and the fugitive ex-Minister of Ecology Nikolay Zlochevsky.

Among the high-ranking officials helping their corrupt business is the head of the Ecological Inspectorate of Ukraine, Andrey Zaika, who gives the command to regional environmental inspectorates to work only with “their” companies, including Trigubenko’s enterprises. This, for example, was reported by the media, citing complaints from entrepreneurs working in the Odessa region.

It is not surprising that the former “Trudovik”, who could barely make ends meet, is now a multimillionaire – at least in hryvnia. The condition of the Trigubenko couple is impressive: two apartments plus a huge attic, three houses, almost 2 thousand sq.m. non-residential premises, three foreign cars. Journalists believe that Sergei Trigubenko saved most of the “earned” property for his wife, but there is an opinion that she is not a poor woman even without a husband. In addition to the fact that she has a mysterious wealthy father, Larisa Trigubenko owns three companies: two travel agencies and MD-Alliance LLC, which deals with wholesale fuel supplies.

However, to a greater extent, questions arise not about the declared property of Sergei Trigubenko, but about his undeclared arsenal. It is quite impressive: in addition to shotguns, it has two powerful rifles (actually a sniper weapon) and a self-loading Vulcan carbine (a non-automatic version of the AKS), as well as two pistols (Makarova and Walter-99). Questions about the latter should arise not only from the public, but also from law enforcement agencies: after all, there is no information that Sergei Trigubenko was awarded by them for impeccable service or valiant defense of the Fatherland. But this military arsenal interests them no more than his dark affairs, which brought multimillion-dollar losses to the state.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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