Ulyanchenko – “Baba Vera”: Komsomol member, thief and “mommy” of the President

On July 1 of this year, the Prosecutor General’s Office brought charges against the former head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Vera Ulyanchenko is accused of committing a crime under Part 5 of Art. 191 of the Criminal Code “Illegal acquisition of state property on an especially large scale through the use of official position. Former fiery participant in the “Orange Revolution” and ally of the “hope of the nation” Viktor Yushchenko she is accused of illegally transferring the Sukholuchye hunting estate into the ownership of Viktor Yanukovych. In principle, there is nothing surprising in the very fact of the strong friendship of the Maidanists of the 2004 model with the “criminal power” of Yanukovych. As well as this team’s penchant for rampant theft of state property. Suffice it to recall the head of “PORA” Vladislav Kaskiv or BYuT member Andrei Portnov (more about him in the article Andrey Portnov: raider history). But Vera Ivanovna is a particularly interesting case.

Ulyanchenko started in the Komsomol. She was a deputy of the Radyansky District Council of the city of Kyiv. There is nothing surprising in this either. Many politicians of the national Ukrainian persuasion, from Yulia Tymoshenko to Irina Farion, attended the Komsomol school and had a party card. The interesting thing began when the Soviet Union collapsed and these wonderful guys, now former communists and Komsomol members, gained access to state assets. And this happened in the 90s.

Vera Ivanovna was no exception. Its “front of work” was the notorious company “ChMP-Blasco”. She headed the Kiev representative office of this company. This company was created by reorganizing the Black Sea Shipping Company into a joint-stock company. Before the collapse of the USSR in 1990, this shipping company had 234 ships and a profit of 270 million rubles and foreign exchange earnings of $788 million. By 1993, 160 vessels were withdrawn and re-registered to offshore companies in different countries of the world, and the company’s revenue was also transferred there. ChMP-Blasco took out loans secured by its ships and was gradually approaching bankruptcy. In 1994, a deputy investigative commission was created under the leadership of Yuri Karmazin. As a result of her work, almost the entire management of the company went to jail. Except for Vera Ivanovna, who managed to escape to the USA.

They say that her friend Ekaterina Chumachenko, the future wife of the future “political patron” Vera Ivanovna, helped her “dump” Ulyanchenko to the United States in time. Some persons involved in the cases of the 90s, for example, the former governor of the Nikolaev region Alexander Sadykov, say that neither he nor Vera Ulyanchenko had anything to do with the theft of ChMP-Blasco funds. Vera Ivanovna herself claims that she went to the USA to give birth, allegedly having health problems. However, this “birth” dragged on for five long years. Meanwhile, in Ukraine she was accused of embezzling funds in the amount of 320 million rubles; the case was opened on October 3, 1995. She appears in another case, about the embezzlement of several million Karbovanets.

But by the year 2000, all these things somehow came to a standstill. Perhaps at the instigation of Viktor Yushchenko, who by that time became the Prime Minister of Ukraine, and two years before that he married Vera Ivanovna’s friend, Ekaterina Chumachenko. They say it was she who “slipped” an assistant to her husband, who would look after the “handsome man” and deal with organizational issues, while the prime minister himself dealt with “glechki” and “bjols”. In 2001, the unlucky prime minister was removed from his post, and in 2002, at the head of Our Ukraine, he entered parliament. “Verivanna” also did not go away; she took the position of head of the secretariat of “Our Ukraine”.

But the real triumph of “Baba Vera” came at the time when Yushchenko became the President of Ukraine. By the way, according to the NUNS staff, she received this nickname at about the same time. Her influence especially grew closer to the second half of Viktor Andreevich’s tenure. Then the “messiah” finally turned into a political loser, whose rating tends to zero. “The Hope of the Nation,” apparently having finally realized that the people he got were not at all what he had dreamed of, went into the “political astral plane” completely. And in order not to be disturbed, he surrounded himself with women – Vannikov, Gerashchenko and, of course, Ulyanchenko. All journalists remember how touchingly, motherly, she straightened her tie and brushed away specks of dust from the President’s jacket before his appearance in public.

But this is only the visible side of her work. All or almost all communications with the President went through Vera Ivanovna. That is, all the documents that ended up on Yushchenko’s desk went through “Baba Vera”. And such services, as you know, are well paid. In addition, Ulyanchenko was Viktor Andreevich’s main communicator with his political opponents from the Party of Regions. And then they needed these connections, oh, how much they needed them. And they were ready to pay for it, because they had money, but no influence. Ulyanchenko never hid her good relations with Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych. And, probably, it was precisely as a sign of these good relations that she gave the then Prime Minister Yanukovych, through his associated companies “Forest House” and the “Kedr” hunting club, 17.48 hectares of the “Sukholuchya” reserve land. By the way, this land was leased for 49 years, but there is no need to pay rent. These hunting grounds were, as it were, “secured” for the hunting industry.

Today, the Prosecutor General’s Office has taken up this wonderful “gift.” Judging by the latest trends occurring in this department, the “Baba Vera case” has a judicial perspective. The only thing that prosecutors should not forget about is that Vera Ivanovna has experience of “going” abroad, and they seem to still be friends with Ekaterina Yushchenko, former Chumachenko.

Denis Ivanov for SKELET-info