Tatyana Bakhteeva: “healed”! Yanukovych’s nurse

Strange as it may seem, three years after Euromaidan, some “Donetsk” people from Akhmetov’s closest circle not only retained part of their power in Kyiv, but also continue to use it for profit, squeezing the last juice out of the state’s depleted budget. Tatyana Bakhteeva, who has held Ukrainian medicine in her hands for more than ten years, still has enough influence on it to create problems in the drug market or help her friends win tender purchases. This “doctor of all Ukraine,” who sometimes overshadowed the oligarchs with her luxury, sometimes is not fed up with money…

Simple Soviet therapist

The future “golden doctor” of Ukraine Tatyana Dmitrievna Bakhteeva was born on November 27, 1953 in Donetsk. True, then Donetsk was called Stalino (until 1961), and Tatyana herself bore her parents’ surname – which, for some reason, she carefully hides from everyone. This is quite strange, and one can only guess about those skeletons in the long-covered closets of her youth, which forced her to simply cut off the better half of her biography: childhood, adolescence and youth. About those years of Tatyana Bakhteeva, you can only learn something fragmentarily from her own words. At school, she easily fit into the company of boys – this trait of her character would later become decisive in Bakhteeva’s career. She was also distinguished by her social activity and was always in good standing with the “boss,” so in high school Tatyana was the chairman of the council of the pioneer squad, and at the institute she became a member of the Komsomol committee.

In 1970, she entered the Donetsk Medical Institute: she says that she dreamed of being a doctor since childhood, when she tried to treat stray cats and sick pigeons. But Tatiana dreamed even more about gold. According to her, she spent her first money in her life (a student scholarship) on earrings – ordinary Soviet ones, with rubies. Later, the number and cost of “trinkets” on Bakhteeva’s body constantly grew, and already in the Verkhovna Rada she flaunted “pendants”, the price of which was calculated in five figures (and not in hryvnias). But that comes later. But in the 70s, a simple Soviet medical worker received exactly what was enough for him to live a modest life without “surpluses” in the form of jewelry and cars. To improve your standard of living, you had to somehow get around, and Tatyana realized this while still a student.

In the 3rd or 4th year (the exact date is also hidden) she married Alimzhan Idyatovich Bakhteev – whose last name she now bears, hiding her maiden name. This was not just a marriage, but the beginning of a turn in the life of Tatyana Bakhteeva, who from that moment was closely connected with representatives of the “Tatar diaspora” of Donetsk (even her daughter married a Tatar Timur Valitov). However, Bakhteeva’s new acquaintances rather resembled an ethnic organized crime group.

But first there was the birth of my daughter Irina (now Irina Valitova) in 1975, and maternity leave made Tatyana’s internship much easier. And in 1977, she received her first position as a general practitioner at the 2nd Yasinovataya Hospital (Donetsk region). Judging by this distribution, Bakhteeva did not have close acquaintances in the leadership of the medical institute, and only in 1980 did she move to Donetsk, as a local therapist at hospital No. 3. The work is also not very rewarding, and yet local therapists wrote out sick leave, for which some patients thanked them: after all, in the USSR, going on sick leave with a “cold” was an excellent way to get 3-5 days of “extraordinary leave.”

And in 1986, Bakhteeva received her first real “thieves” position – deputy chief physician for medical and labor examination. It was this examination that determined whether to give a person a disability, and to what group. And since disability automatically meant benefits and a pension (and access to a special store for rations), and also exempted the Soviet citizen from the article for “parasitism,” then huge queues of all kinds of “sick people” lined up to get 2-3 groups, among whom there were real disabled people a third at most. The queues are so huge that restrictions on the number of disabled groups were established in the USSR (except for cripples of the 1st group), which created even larger queues, bypassing which they accepted (for donations) close acquaintances or “on recommendation”. Among these patients were “thieves” in the most literal sense of the word – crime bosses and criminals with extensive experience who needed the disability group as a cover. Skelet.Info I learned that it was then that Tatyana Bakhteeva became close to Alik the Greek (Akhatem Bragin), providing services to people from his circle. However, there is other information: that at that time Bakhteeva met such characters in the “shadow life” of Donetsk, from whom Alik the Greek could only run for boiling water for the chifir. However, she did not have much commercial benefit from these acquaintances at that time, and much more important for her were connections in the management of the Health Department.

In 1991, independent Ukraine was gripped by business fever, but Tatyana Bakhteeva received the lucrative position of chairman of the Donetsk regional medical commission for the examination of Chernobyl victims. Considering that “liquidationism” in the 90s became a new type of disability (benefits, pensions), which immediately attracted thousands of thirsty people (including officials who checked into Chernobyl for a couple of days), then it was just a bonanza. The number of “disabled Chernobyl survivors” grew exponentially, and for years the real liquidators of the accident could not get a group behind the crowds of swindlers. In 1992, Bakhteeva’s capabilities expanded: she became the head of the program for the rehabilitation of Chernobyl children in Cuba. And it so happened that under this program, many children of officials and aspiring businessmen went to the sunny island. And since May 1994, Tatyana Bakhteeva was appointed head physician of the Donetsk regional medical and health center for Chernobyl survivors.

Donetsk Bayram

A major role in the further development of Tatyana Bakhteeva’s career was played by her acquaintance with her colleague Raisa Saitovna Taktasheva. They said that they knew each other back in the 80s, as doctors, and their acquaintance was greatly strengthened when Bakhteeva took positions on medical commissions. The intrigue here is that Raisa Saitovna’s husband was a very famous man in Donetsk (since the 80s) Zhigan Khamitovich Taktashev (1959-2006), who later was baptized into Evgeniy Nikolaevich Taktashov – and under that name became the vice-president of FC “ Miner”.

This was one of Alik the Greek’s (Bragin) closest assistants, who introduced him to his distant relative Igor Akhmetov, and then to his younger brother Rinat. This is how Tatyana Bakhteeva’s second entry into the “Tatar diaspora” of Donetsk happened. Later, for some reason, she said that she was either a relative of Akhmetov, or almost the sister of Alik the Greek, but this was a fiction of unknown purpose – perhaps, in this way, Bakhteeva was trying to explain her long-standing close relationship with Akhmetov and his company.

Through the Taktashev family, the Bakhteevs met Timur Irshadovich Valitov (born 1972), another Donetsk businessman of Tatar origin and the future husband of Irina Bakhteeva. The hospital also brought them all together: Emir Valitov, Timur Valitov’s older brother, worked as a nurse in the same medical institution as Raisa Taktasheva.

Timur Valitov’s legal business began in 1997 with the creation of Vales LLC, which owned a chain of pharmacies in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. At the same time, Raisa Taktasheva became a co-owner of Vales – perhaps this was payment for the “roof” on the part of her husband. However, after a few years, Timur Valitov became Taktashev’s main business partner in many projects. Moreover, in 2003, he became one of the main shareholders of UTN-Vostok, which owned almost two hundred gas stations of the Formula network (selling TNK-Ukraine fuel), and after the death of Zhigan Taktashev, he actually ruled this business of the Donetsk group – until until in 2010-11 “UTN-Vostok” did not go under pressure from the Levochkin-Firtash group (Read more about them in Levochkin’s articles. “Gray Cardinal” and his sister and DMITRY FIRTASH. HISTORY OF TERNOPIL BILLIONAIRE) on the one hand, and Kolomoisky on the other. Nevertheless, Valitov continued to develop his own business – for example, he invested in the herbal medicine business, which was very promising several years ago, and opened Lekpharma Adonis LLC, which produces Doctor Plus herbal teas. Valitov also became close to the presidential son Viktor Yanukovych Jr. through his Patriot automobile club. Thus, Bakhteeva’s son-in-law is by no means a poor man, and was one of the key figures in the Donetsk clan.

In the 90s, Tatyana Bakhteeva’s husband also went into business, who, however, did not achieve significant personal success, but began working for Vladislav Dreger, a Donetsk raider and businessman in the field of road transportation, co-owner of the Donbass Transport Union, Auto-Express, “Magistral”, LLC “Bus Stations of Donbass” and LLC “Donetsk Stations”, known for its raider takeovers. Among Dreger’s subsidiaries there is Dopas OJSC (bus transportation), where Alimzhan Bakhteev found a job. The modest achievements of her husband satisfied Tatyana Bakhteeva less and less, and, in the end, they moved away from each other and broke up.

Meanwhile, Tatyana Bakhteeva “grew above herself”: in 1997, she became a deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council and received the post of General Director of the Donetsk Regional Medical Association, and in 1999 she also became its chief physician, thus heading all regional medicine. From that moment on, the money itself came into her hands. By the way, it should be noted that her friend (Raisa Taktasheva) and future son-in-law (Timur Valitov) opened their own pharmacy business immediately after Bakhteeva received a leadership position. All Ukrainians knew that the vast majority of pharmacies at that time worked under the chief doctors of cities and regions.

“Madame Tramadol”

In 2002, Tatyana Bakhteeva was nominated for parliamentary elections as a candidate for people’s deputy from the bloc “For a United Ukraine” (popularly nicknamed “For EdU”) in electoral district No. 42 of Donetsk. Since all administrative resources worked for the victory of the candidate from the party in power, Bakhteeva easily gained 51% of the votes already in the first round. She had to leave her high-income position as the chief physician of the Donetsk region, and “as a keepsake” she received a diploma in economics from the Donetsk Economic University and the Order of Princess Olga, III degree. But from that moment on, she firmly established herself within the walls of the Verkhovna Rada, having at her disposal the Committee on Health Affairs (from 2002 to 2014). And with her arrival within the walls of parliament, a long-term war began between Bakhteeva and her bitter rival Raisa Bogatyreva (Read more about her in the article by Raisa Bogatyreva. About how the favorite of a gangster family profited), another “golden doctor” from Donbass, who settled in Kyiv back in the early 90s.

When in 2003-2004 Bagatyreva was “glued” to Viktor Yanukovych, and she began to court the “Donetsk people,” Bakhteeva quite reasonably became jealous. It was not a matter of closeness to the “body”: connected with “Donetsk” family ties and long-term friendly relations, Bakhteeva was invincible in this. However, two doctors on one team is too much when it comes to the desire of two greedy women to “earn” as much money as possible from medicine. In pursuit of this, they even pushed each other away in 2005, sucking up to the new president with bouquets of roses. As you know, Bogatyreva did it better: two years later, Yushchenko appointed her secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, and in this capacity she worked until 2012. But Tatyana Bakhteeva found an approach to the first lady, and in 2006 she received the position of deputy chairman of the board of trustees of the Children’s Hospital of the Future program, under which Katerina Chumachenko-Yushchenko created the Ukraine-3000 fund. In the same year, an all-Ukrainian charity marathon was organized, which raised 262 million hryvnia for the construction of the hospital.

However, the hospital was never built: the money, which was also managed by Tatyana Bakhteeva, was partly spent on the “current expenses” of the fund, and partly it simply disappeared somewhere. As a result, a scandal broke out, but it did not prevent Bakhteeva from receiving the Order of Princess Olga, First Class, from the “orange authorities” in 2008. It is interesting that when in 2011-2012 some regional members proposed creating a commission of inquiry into the “Hospital of the Future” scam, Bakhteeva spoke out categorically against it.

In 2006, the next scandal involving Bakhteeva broke out, which lasted, intermittently, for several years: it was the tramadol case. A potent painkiller, extremely necessary for cancer patients and people who have suffered severe injuries, something like the domestic analogue of Vikadin, has attracted the attention of drug addicts. And now they have already begun to buy it in pharmacies in packs in order to swallow the tablets in zhmeny or “cook shirk”. The reaction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to this was traditional: the police came up with a demand to include another medicine in the category of drugs and prohibit its circulation (the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs does not want to listen to the fact that there are no non-narcotic analogues of opiates). Subsequently, this was done: Ukraine and Belarus became two countries where “tramadol” and its analogues were declared drugs and prohibited from free sale.

However, Tatyana Bakhteeva and Raisa Bogatyreva sharply opposed the initiative of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and for several years they defended “tramadol”, assuring that it is harmless – at least for normal people who do not use it for a “high”. This was almost the only time they were so unanimous! However, not for long: soon, Bogatyreva announced that only “tramadol” produced by the Biolik plant (which is owned by her son Alexander Bogatyrev) is safe, certified and distributed according to the law. Regarding other manufacturers of “tramadol” (including Stirol LLC, of ​​which Bakhteeva is a shareholder), Bogatyreva hinted that they could produce and sell “tramadol” bypassing the law and even underground. Indeed, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 2008 alone, “above the plan”, 75 million tramadol tablets were produced and sold through shadow schemes (possibly including through a network of pharmacies controlled by Bakhteeva or her son-in-law Valitov). At black market prices at the time, the proceeds could have been more than $190 million!

War of the Ministry of Health

With the victory of Donetsk in 2010, Tatyana Bakhteeva entered the phase of her greatest power. The Health Committee, which she chaired for many years and had complete control over, began to be called the “shadow Ministry of Health” – more powerful than the official one. Thus, Bakhteeva began to resolve issues regarding tender procurement, while taking more than 20 companies under her wing, among them: PJSC Ukrmedtekhnika, LLC Medgarant, LLC Medicalgroup-Ukraine, LLC Goral, LLC Brizanta, Ilatanmed LLC, Medical Trading Company LLC, Radmir, Alliance Pharm LLC – many of which are associated with the Fistal family, which is close to Bakhteeva. The volume of tenders they won in 2011 amounted to 1.5 billion hryvnia, in 2012 1.8 billion. According to sources, the firms’ profits amounted to 35-50% of the tender amount, and in some cases (purchase of ultrasound, X-ray, ventilation devices) reached 350-510%!

The amounts of kickbacks were also appropriate. Tatyana Bakhteeva’s well-being grew rapidly: the watch on her wrist alone cost 95 thousand euros, and these were the most expensive “boilers” in the Verkhovna Rada. The vehicle also matched them: a Lexus RX350 (about 100 thousand dollars).

Financial opportunities allowed Tatyana Bakhteeva to conduct her own election campaign in Donetsk (single-mandate district No. 42) in 2012. It was held in the best traditions of the Party of Regions: with blue tents at every intersection, distribution of souvenirs, a stage and hired student extras.

But, returning once again to the Rada and taking her usual place, Bakhteeva in 2012 encountered an old competitor: Raisa Bogatyreva headed the Ministry of Health. And between them, a war immediately began between two Ministries of Health, the “shadow” and the official, which brought Ukraine many problems. Bakhteeva’s first step was to “attack” the company of Bogatyreva’s son “Biolik”. The reason was the story that happened back in 2011 with the vaccine produced by Biolik, the use of which led to the illness of dozens of children. After Bogatyreva came to the Ministry of Health, she began to lobby for mass vaccination of Ukrainians using budget funds (primarily children). Bakhteeva, wanting to ruin her rival’s business, first tried to raise and inflate last year’s scandal, and when this did not work, on December 4, 2012, she showed up drunk at a meeting of her parliamentary committee and made a speech about how vaccination (in particular against hepatitis B) is not needed at all .

Then the rivals unleashed heavy artillery on each other: Bogatyreva, as head of the Ministry of Health, controlled the registration of medicines, and Bakhteeva controlled the State Drug Service, for which she achieved an almost duplicate function of licensing medicines. They created obstacles to the sale and use in Ukraine of drugs produced or imported by “enemy” companies, and as a result, serious problems with drugs began in Ukraine. In pharmacies, sellers shrugged their shoulders: popular drugs needed by sick Ukrainians have not been certified or licensed (some still are!). It got to the point where the country ran out of high-quality insulin, which put the lives of thousands of diabetics at risk.

Nothing has changed

Like the vast majority of members of the Party of Regions, Tatyana Bakhteeva, as sources said Skelet.Infomet the events of February 2014 extremely negatively, but did not panic or try to escape. Of Akhmetov’s entire team, she took this the most calmly. And then she spoke quite positively about the loss of Crimea, saying that it “left on its own.” Either she considered the annexation a temporary phenomenon (they say, until the “junta” is overthrown), or she really didn’t mind giving Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) a peninsula – take it, they say, it’s not a pity! This question can be addressed not only to Bakhteeva, but also to many other deputies of her faction.

Uncertainty in politics did not prevent Bakhteeva from being elected to parliament in the fall of 2014, for the fifth time in a row, now on the list of the Opposition Bloc. Her native Donetsk was no longer available for majoritarian elections, although Bakhteeva continued to visit it until mid-2015, almost on official visits (formally she brought humanitarian aid to children) and even insisted on a personal meeting with Zakharchenko. But since they included Bakhteeva among the “enemies of the republic,” this meeting did not take place – and then her visits to Donetsk stopped. There is information that Bakhteeva’s “benevolence” towards Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and the separatists is due to the fact that she still has some non-residential real estate in Crimea, and in Donetsk (Kuibyshevsky district, Vareikisa Street) on a plot of 40 acres (four plots of 10 acres each) she built her own “ Mezhygorye.” Of course, she wouldn’t want it to be looted or “nationalized.”

And here’s what’s interesting: neither Bakhteeva’s opinion about the Maidan, nor her position on Crimea, nor her trips to Donetsk at all quarreled her with her fellow deputies, who declare themselves mega-patriots of Ukraine. As journalists have repeatedly noted, Bakhteeva often has cheerful and relaxed conversations with her political opponents. Which is not surprising: they are not her business competitors, like Bogatyreva!

And although in 2014 Bakhteeva gave up her position as head of the Health Committee to BPP member Olga Bogomolets, she still retained some leverage over Ukrainian medicine. Her acquaintances in the State Drug Service are still extensive, and she is playing some new game on the pharmaceutical market of Ukraine – as a result of which medicines are again disappearing from pharmacies. Not without Bakhteeva’s participation, a catastrophic situation with vaccines and vaccinations has developed in the country over the past three years. And having lost the opportunity to control tenders in Kyiv, she organizes them at the regional level. Thus, at the end of 2014, Bakhteeva was again accused of several “sham” tenders for the purchase of equipment, which were won by Fistal companies. And judging by the fact that in the current 2016 in Zaporozhye for the ambulance station, 9 special vehicles were purchased at budget expense from the company Avtospetsprom LLC, 50% of the shares of which belong to Vladimir Fistal, then nothing has changed in this regard: Bakhteeva continues to “earn » at tender transactions today, albeit not in such volumes as before.

At the same time, Tatyana Bakhteeva suddenly became seriously “impoverished” – at least in her last declaration she indicated very modest property and savings. Instead of the old Lexus RX350 – a much more modest Toyota Camry, a Tabbah watch for “only” 14 thousand euros, only four jewelry, one fur coat (simply poverty), as well as 719 thousand hryvnia, 32 thousand dollars, 27 thousand euros in cash. But the “Classigue Grande Complication” watch alone, which she wore a couple of years ago, cost more than all this junk! And absolutely no mention of our own business, which Bakhteeva hides as carefully as her maiden name.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

Subscribe to our channels at Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And YandexZen – Only dossiers, biographies and incriminating evidence on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!