BEGINNING: Alexander Shevchenko: Bukovel “sawyer” of land and budget. PART 1
Shevchenko Alexander: Bukovel “sawyer” of land and budget. PART 2
Kolomoisky saw the commercial meaning of Bukovel not only in income from tourism and entertainment; he was interested in the land itself under the resort – which he not only rented out, but also turned into collateral. And the collateral value of forest plots on which hotels and restaurants were built increased a hundred times, compared with the cost of land in the center of Kyiv. The more Bukovel was promoted as the most modern cool resort in Ukraine (and prevented the creation of other ski resorts in the region), the more moneyed people went there to spend their vacations and holidays, the higher the cost of land rose. It was in the interests of “Privat” and the resort management to grab as much of this land as possible! Which led to the famous “Bukovel scandal” that broke out in 2010.
Shevchenko Alexander: Bukovel “sawyer” of land and budget. PART 2
Its background began back in 2002, when Nikolai Paliychuk, Igor Palitsa’s business partner and godfather, was “promoted” to mayor of Yaremche. Since the village of Polyanytsya, on whose lands Bukovel grew, is located on the territory of the Yaremche district council, Skelet.Info It becomes clear, thanks to whom more and more new areas were constantly allocated to the resort, communications and roads were laid there at public expense. And in the fall of 2007, Paliychuk, who by that time had made a party career in Our Ukraine, was appointed head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration. A few months later, the borders of the village of Polyanitsy were significantly expanded to include neighboring areas, after which another 200 hectares of wooded slopes were sold to Bukovel. They were sold at the price of vacant lots, for a symbolic amount – in fact, in 2010, the Prosecutor General’s Office and the Organized Crime Control Department began a comprehensive audit of the activities of the resort and local authorities. Searches were carried out, some areas were seized, so the opposition press then wrote that the Donetsk people were trying to take Bukovel away from Kolomoisky. “Privat” mobilized everyone to defend its interests: the opposition, the patriotic public, ex-President Yushchenko, foreign ambassadors, organizing a marathon in the media “in defense of the national resort.” As a result, withThe head of the regional land resources department, Yuri Dobrovolsky, turned out to be the switcherwho was arrested. Then the Prosecutor General’s Office retreated from Bukovel, leaving both the leadership of Skorzonera and ex-governor Paliychuk alone, although it still significantly frayed Privata’s nerves by arresting the assets of the Drohobych and Nadvirny oil refineries.
Alexander Shevchenko and Nikolai Paliychuk
But these “attacks” of the Prosecutor General’s Office did not in any way prevent Skorzonera, managed by Alexander Shevchenko, from completing the scam with the takeover of the Ivano-Frankivsk airport in the same 2010. A competition was held for the right to create a concession to manage the airport, which was a cynical farce: only two companies participated in it, Skorzonera and Neftekhimik Prykarpattya, both owned by Privat. Neftekhimik had already leased the airport since 2005, but in 2010 they decided to re-register it as a long-term concession for Skorzonera, for which they held a fictitious competition – to which Kyiv completely turned a blind eye.
Alexander Shevchenko – Living in a new way: billion-dollar tenders for “patriots”
Things were going well for the director of Skorzonera and his big “Privat” boss even under the Yanukovych regime – judging by the fact that in 2012 Kolomoisky decided to buy himself the Semmering ski resort (Austria). Igor Palitsa participated in the project as Kolomoisky’s business partner, and the names of the Shevchenko brothers were also mentioned. However, the idea ended in a scandal: having bought several hotels, Kolomoisky was faced with the reluctance of other property owners to sell their restaurants and plots, and then the Austrian authorities began a thorough check of Privat’s money for its corrupt origin. Meanwhile, “Bukovel” itself began to have problems due to the fact that its land was used as assets by “Privatbank” – which was slowly but surely heading towards bankruptcy, which failed only because colossal state resources were thrown into its rescue. As a result, at the end of 2016, when they decided to nationalize Privatbank (closing its 132 billion debt), Bukovel was accepted onto the balance of the state – only by that time a significant part of its territory had been mortgaged to the National Bank of Ukraine. In fact, this is how Kolomoisky and Shevchenko once again heated up the state. And then Alexander Shevchenko found a new gold mine!
In the spring of 2014, he won the by-election to the Verkhovna Rada in the 83rd electoral district (Ivano-Frankivsk region). Without showing himself in anything other than the famous fight with Oleg Lyashko, Alexander Shevchenko a few months later again went to parliamentary elections as part of the so-called. Kolomoisky’s team – candidates shoved by the owner of Privat into different parties in order to have his own people everywhere. He ran again in the 83rd district (winning with 40%), but under the banner of Solidarity, and joined the presidential faction after receiving the mandate of the people’s deputy. But when relations between Kolomoisky and Poroshenko worsened in 2015, Alexander Shevchenko left the faction along with deputies Kupriy, Batenko, Denisenko, Didych and other Kolomoisky people. But his brother Viktor Shevchenko was elected to the Rada in September 2016 in the 85th single-mandate constituency under the banner of the Ukrop party. More precisely, the Western Ukrainian half of the party, which is controlled in Volyn by Igor Palitsa, and in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, the brothers Shevchenko and Mykola Paliychuk are all trusted “clerks” of Kolomoisky. The second half of Ukrop, as is known, is based in Dnepropetrovsk, under the leadership of Gennady Korban, whose relations with Kolomoisky have recently deteriorated greatly.
Over the past couple of years, Kolomoisky has been fiercely digging under Poroshenko, using controlled opposition members: from moderate parliamentarians to street radicals, especially pressing on the topic of patriotism. Therefore, Alexander Shevchenko also joined the ranks of “principled patriots”, who from time to time threatened the “regime” with bloody punishments from Facebook.
Shevchenko Alexander: Bukovel “sawyer” of land and budget. PART 2
But this “principled patriotism” and radical oppositional posture in no way prevents Alexander Shevchenko from filling his bags with billions from the budget. By the way, his friend and partner Nikolai Paliychuk became the head of the budget committee of the Ivano-Frankivsk regional council, who helps him to master huge sums through tenders for road repairs. According to Skelet.Info, Shevchenko also has some friends in the leadership of the neighboring Lviv region, where he also got into the road business. And what an amazing thing it really is: almost all the main tenders in Galicia have been consistently won by companies associated with Shevchenko, his relatives and Skorzonera for three years now. This is mainly LLC “PBS” (USREOU 32872788), which only for the period from April 2017 to April 2018. won 150 tenders worth 4.78 billion hryvnia, and before that (from spring 2015 to April 2017) more than 5 billion hryvnia! Below is only a small amount of information about these tenders and calculations found by journalists.
The formal owner of PBS LLC is Ivanna Nepik, a former employee of Bukovel and Viktor Shevchenko’s business partner in the Resource Company. In reality, the roots of the scheme go deeper, through Vitaly Kovalchuk (another partner of the Shevchenko brothers) to a number of companies, and from them to the same “Scorzonera”, from behind which Benya’s grinning face peeks out. Indeed, it would be naive to assume that all these tender billions are flowing into the pockets of only the Shevchenko brothers and local corrupt officials. The media also reported that the old Vinnitsa fox Anatoly Matvienko, who does not hesitate to participate in the same schemes with Kolomoisky’s people, is also taking part in the “road cutting” of Alexander Shevchenko.
The problem is not only that all these tenders were “won” by one company, often receiving the contract, bypassing other tenderers who offered to perform work at lower prices (and this is a violation of the law). Back in 2015, in relation to PBS LLC there was opened case No. 344/15905/15-kduring which investigators established many outrageous facts. So, during the repair of the highway N-09 (Mukachevo-Lvov-Ivano-Frankivsk), PBS purchased construction materials through a chain of related companies: Avtomagistral-Yug, Vita Construction, Dryada Real Estate and all the same “Skorzonera” – who resold materials purchased from the manufacturer to each other, ultimately inflating their cost by 22.12 million hryvnia. So what? The case was successfully closed, and PBS continued to “shoe” the state.
However, journalists continued to closely monitor the successes of PBS, making new shocking discoveries. For example, about direct fraud with the terms of tenders. “It used to be more brazen, Shevchenko personally broke into tender committees and monitored the process,” they said. Then Shevchenko found a way to make corruption subtle and “civilized”: through his people in local authorities and the Dorstroy management (for this, he even replaced the old boss there, Nikolai Protsiv, with his own man), Shevchenko included the use of cold recycling technology in the terms of the tender. The point was this: this technology is quite expensive, requires special equipment, and only PBS subcontractors acquired such equipment in advance – and therefore all other companies were left behind. But in domestic conditions, such technology practically does not justify itself (the road surface looks more beautiful, but does not last longer), in some places it is generally unrealistic to use it (on gaping potholes), but the overhaul of a kilometer of road costs the budget 10-11 million hryvnia versus 5- 6 million using traditional hot technology. According to journalists’ calculations, with the help of this scheme, PBS has already extracted more than a billion hryvnia from the budget!
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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