Valery Khoroshkovsky: what is the Ukrainian oligarch general hiding in his closets?
How could a simple boy from Pechersk become a billionaire? How could a billionaire be appointed head of the SBU, and even awarded general’s shoulder straps? And how can one be considered the owner of a company for years that was actually owned by someone else? The biography of this man is like a living embodiment of the thoroughly corrupt Ukrainian government, business and politics, which neither reforms nor revolutions can change. But even against their background, Valery Khoroshkovsky has his own special skeletons in his closet, which he prefers to carefully hide from prying eyes.
Valery Khoroshkovsky. Marriage of a vacuum cleaner
Valery Ivanovich Khoroshkovsky was born on January 2, 1969 in Kyiv. The parents of the future general-minister were not ordinary proletarians, but they were not some big shots either. My father, a civil engineer, started as a site foreman and foreman, and later supervised the construction of the Salut Hotel (on Glory Square). His mother Olga Nazarovna Khoroshkovskaya worked as a teacher in those years, and later became a university professor and received a Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences degree. She also wrote several school textbooks, including the scandalous, super-expensive primers published in 2011-2012. and “glorified” Khoroshkovsky’s mother throughout Ukraine.

Olga Nazarovna Khoroshkovskaya
The plans of high school student Valera Khoroshevsky were to enroll either in the Moscow General Military School or in the Faculty of Philosophy of the Kyiv University. Shevchenko. But in the end, things didn’t even come to the point of filing an application – as Khoroshkovsky later assured, he was allegedly “cut off.” No, not because of the entry in the application form, but because the number of places in these educational institutions was limited, and many were eliminated even before the competition.
In 1986, Valery Khoroshkovsky graduated from high school, enrolled in the DOSAAF driving school and went to work as a turner apprentice at the Arsenal plant. But he didn’t like standing at the machine for a shift, so as soon as Khoroshkovsky received his driver’s license, he immediately went to work as a truck driver at the Kiev zoo. He never told journalists about the details of that work, but his friends said that young Khoroshkovsky transported elephant stuff, sorry, shit, in the back of an old GAZ-53 – that is, one might say, he worked as a sewer truck. They also say that it was from then on that Valery Ivanovich became a passionate admirer of deodorants, which he generously doused himself with for the rest of his life.
Anecdote on the topic:
Two friends meet. One of them works as a sewer cleaner.
– Listen, you smell like someone took a shit! What kind of cologne would you use?
He accepted the criticism and the sewer man bought a bottle of Lesnoy cologne. with the smell of pine. I poured the entire bottle on myself.
They meet again.
– Well, how now?
Sniffs. – It’s like someone pooped under the tree!
In May 1987, Valery Khoroshkovsky left for military service in the SA, in the Odessa Military District. With his driver’s credentials, Khoroshkovsky already had a direct path to the autobat, but he ends up in a training unit in Kerch, where he spent the first six months of service, and after that he served near Odessa.
Immediately after demobilization, in 1989, Khoroshkovsky entered the Kiev University. Shevchenko, however, not to the Faculty of Philology, but to the Faculty of Law. And I immediately became interested in “cooperation”, which was developing rapidly at the then stage of “perestroika”: first I printed calendars, then I tried to assemble furniture and sew hats. However, Valera Khoroshkovsky did not want to work with his own hands from dawn to dusk, knocking down sofas or cutting trousers. He wanted big money, that is, commerce, but this required connections and some kind of start-up capital – which a simple Kyiv student did not yet have. But after Khoroshkovsky’s marriage in 1990, everything suddenly changed: the modest “cooperator” turned into a serious businessman.
His wife Elena Khoroshkovskaya (born in 1966) is the most mysterious person of the Ukrainian elite. First of all, because almost no one has seen the face of this “first guild” businesswoman, who was included in the list of the 100 richest women in Ukraine. It is impossible to find even random photographs of her in open sources; she has never appeared in public next to her husband – and yet Valery Khoroshkovsky himself loves to pose in front of the cameras. Moreover, when in 2008-2012 Elena replaced her husband as director of UA Inter Media Group Limited, then no one, with the exception of a small group of close associates, was lucky enough to catch even a glimpse of the new boss. There was even a joke (not far from the truth) that Elena Khoroshkovskaya was only listed as the director, but in fact Valery hides her in a closet at home, along with his other secrets.

On the far right is K.K. Prodan, next to him is V.V. Shcherbitsky
This strange secrecy surrounding Elena Khoroshkovskaya is explained, among other things, by her origin: Skelet.Info There is information that she is a close relative of Konstantin Prodan, the former manager of the affairs of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (1984-91), in whose hands in the early 90s there was not only the “gold of the party”, but also the fund for liquidating the consequences of the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. According to some bloggers, Elena is his own youngest daughter, but this fact is carefully hidden. And so much so that in all public documents and general mentions in the media, Elena Khoroshkovskaya did not have a middle name until 2009, until her husband entered her in the list of family members on his income declaration as “E.V.” After which, with someone’s help, the media began to call her Elena Vladimirovna.
How did a poor freshman manage to win the heart of a relative (or especially a daughter) of one of the most influential people in Kyiv? People who knew Valery Khoroshkovsky from their student days let slip that it was very reminiscent of the romance between Svirid Petrovich and Pronya Prokopovna from the comedy “Chasing Two Hares.” In which Valery was greatly helped by his always ironed, combed and sleek appearance, for which he later received the nickname “Ken”. The romance, apparently, was very passionate, because a few months after the wedding, the Khoroshkovskys had their eldest son, Denis (1991).
Valery Khoroshkovsky. Student Business
Since 1991, the business of married student Valery Khoroshkovsky has taken off. Firstly, his former hopeless venture with a furniture workshop turned into a serious company, Merck, co-owned by Vadim Grigoriev. Initially, she focused on two areas: “red assembly” of computers (from imported and domestic components) and furniture production. Already in 1994, Merckx appeared as a supplier of furniture (not handicraft, but factory furniture) for the Administration of the President of Ukraine, and then for various government departments and commercial companies. Well, it’s quite logical if we remember that Khoroshkovsky’s probable father-in-law, until 1991, held the position now known as the head of the “Sovereign Management of the Right” (DUS or “Dusya”), dealing with just such issues! By 1995, Merckx’s scope of activities expanded: its subsidiaries began producing alcohol and food products, and also created a service network at Boryspil airport. Gradually, “Merks” became a business group that owns the enterprises of CJSC “Zhitomirmebel Merks”, DP “Merks-furniture”, “Merks-International”, OJSC “Merks-Technology”, Brovary woodworking plant, CJSC “MebelSAM”, as well as subsidiaries , engaged in trading in raw materials and soda (Crimean Soda Plant).
Secondly, in 1992-93. Valery Khoroshkovsky and several fellow students did (apparently in their free time from studying) something that even plant directors and ministry officials could not do: organizing payments and offsets between enterprises of the former USSR. According to Khoroshkovsky, this was his student part-time job for a scholarship. But considering that to carry out such operations, a very authoritative “roof” in government or large business was required, which would provide guarantees for these payments and offsets, and international banking structures for their transfer, then Khoroshkovsky is very “modest”.
The third business of student Khoroshkovsky was metal trading. In 1992, he organized a joint business with Vadim Gurzhos, who headed the office of the Swiss-Italian metal trader Sitco. In this partner duo, a simple third-year Kiev student Khoroshkovsky “obtained” bank loans and controlled the transfer of payments, and Gurzhos looked for sellers and buyers of products. This business brought him the biggest profit: several million dollars from just one transaction! A few weeks later, Khoroshkovsky created his own company, BOVI, which was engaged in sales of products from the Dneprodzerzhinsk Metallurgical Plant to the countries of Southeast Asia. And in 1993, Khoroshkovsky went to the Kerch Metallurgical Plant, whose director Yakov Apter introduced him to Alexander Abramov, who became his close business partner. At that time, Abramov was the owner of the Ferrotrade company, and later became a co-owner of the Evraz Group holding and one of the largest Russian oligarchs.

Russian oligarchs Alexander Abramov (left) and Roman Abramovich (right)
Khoroshkovsky’s fourth business in 1991-93. was an intricate scheme of barter transactions: exported metal was exchanged for consumer goods and components that were supplied to Russian VAZ and GAZ, and the cars received in exchange were sold on the market for cash. “This was our main source of cache,” Khoroshkovsky himself later recalled.
With such a busy schedule, the young businessman had absolutely no time left for studying. However, money works wonders, and in 1994 Valery Khoroshkovsky successfully received a law degree – which will be very useful to him in the future, when he holds high government positions. Moreover, according to his official biography, Khoroshkovsky remains a graduate student at the Department of Economics at KSU, and three years later receives a Ph.D. True, during these three years no one at the university ever saw him.
Well, Khoroshkovsky made his first attempt to come into power in December 1995: he ran in the by-elections to the Rada in the Irpen electoral district No. 211, but lost the election in the second round to the chairman of Brokbusinessbank, Sergei Buryak. The reason for the loss was completely banal: Khoroshkovsky entrusted his election campaign to political strategist Sergei Teleshun, who simply “dumped” him.
Crimean company
It would seem that the young businessman had everything that any Ukrainian could dream of at that time. But Valery Khoroshkovsky, with sports passion, thirsted for more. In 1995, he became close to Vyacheslav Pustovoitenko, through whom he contacted his father Valery Pustovoitenko, who at that time was already holding the post of Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Under him, Valery Khoroshkovsky received the title of adviser to the prime minister on economic issues, and in 1996 his large Crimean business trip began.
Valery Pustovoitenko brought him together with the chairman of the Krasnoperekopsk City Council Sergei Kunitsin. And first of all, Khoroshkovsky, with his help, creates the first free economic zone (FEZ) in Ukraine, “Sivash” (1996-2001), whose administration was headed by Kunitsin. This triumvirate of Pustovoitenko-Khoroshkovsky-Kunitsin completely ruled the Sivash zone for three years, deciding which enterprises registered in it should be given the required benefits. Until 1998, it was the only operating SEZ in the country, and its subjects were such enterprises as the Crimean Soda Plant, SJSC Titan, and OJSC Brom.
But Khoroshkovsky did not forget his old friends: in 1997, his company Merckx, in partnership with Ferrotrade of Alexander Abramov, began the acquisition of Ukrsotsbank, one of the largest in Ukraine. Having taken possession of it, they began to buy up the assets of servicing enterprises in metallurgy, chemistry and energy: they kept some for themselves, resold others for a profit. Among them was the Crimean Soda Plant, which since November 1999 was transferred to the management of Uksotsbank, effectively becoming part of the Merckx business group. At the same time, Abramov was interested in buying up metallurgical enterprises, but Khoroshkovsky “fell in love” with Ukrsotsbank, and by 2001 he had bought part of its shares from Abramov.
Meanwhile, Kunitsyn and Khoroshkovsky were connected not only by business: they were engaged in the merger of the Union of Entrepreneurs of Crimea with the Party of Democratic Revival of Ukraine, as a result of which the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) emerged, whose leader would be Prime Minister Pustovoitenko. In 1998, both went for a “promotion”: Sergei Kunitsin became the chairman of the Crimean government, and Khoroshkovsky became a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. In the 1998 parliamentary elections, Khoroshkovsky put his eggs in two baskets: he received No. 27 on the NDP electoral list and ran in the Krasnoperekopsky constituency No. 9 – where he won with a result of 53%. In this he was helped by a criminal tragedy that took place a year before the elections: on December 23, 1996, the head of the Razdolnensky district administration, Leonid Grigoryevich Ryabika, a very authoritative and popular Crimean politician who was considered a confident winner of future elections in the same 9th district, was killed. At the same time, another potential candidate, director of the Poseidon company Yuri Tolovirko, was accused of murdering Ryabinka. He was suspected and arrested on the secret order of Sergei Kunitsin, who gave the command to law enforcement agencies, and then, on his own command, he was acquitted and released three months before the elections – in which Tolovirko was no longer able to take part. And although neither then nor subsequently were any facts of Valery Khoroshkovsky’s involvement in this deadly combination discovered, the murdered Ryabika began to be considered the first ghost (or skeleton) in his closet. Because this was only the first of many strange deaths of people who in one way or another intersected with Khoroshkovsky in business, politics or in personal relationships.
Having become deputy chairman of the budget committee of the Verkhovna Rada, and in 1999 also a member of the supervisory board of Oschadbank, Khoroshkovsky continued to expand his business, in the process becoming close to British businessman Robert Shetler-Jones. He was called the “manager for Eastern Europe” of large Western financial communities, in particular the Rothschild family, as well as an agent of the British MI6. In Ukraine, he gained fame as Dmitry Firtash’s man (Read more about him in the article DMITRY FIRTASH. HISTORY OF TERNOPIL BILLIONAIRE) and one of the founders of the RosUkrEnergo company. Subsequent “deals of the century” between Valery Khoroshkovsky and Dmitry Firtash were often concluded through the mediation of Shetler-Johnson: for example, the company RSJ Erste Beteilingungsgesellschaft GmbH, registered by him in Hamburg, became the buyer of the Crimean Soda Plant and CJSC Crimean Titan, which became part of the Group DF” by Dmitry Firtash.
Pustovoitenko’s resignation did not affect Khoroshkovsky’s career in any way – he harmoniously fit into the new government team, and was even considered as a candidate for the post of head of the National Bank, but only on October 11, 2000 he became just a member of its board. But he actively participated in the privatization of Ukrainian energy facilities: on March 26, 2001, his Ukrsotsbank acquired the property of Luganskoblenergo, which had been brought to bankruptcy, for 115 million hryvnia ($23 million). The deal caused a scandal; they tried to declare it illegal, but already in April of the same year, the Starokievsky District Court of the capital stopped considering the claims. And a year later, Khoroshkovsky sold Luganskoblenergo to the specially created LLC Lugansk Energy Association of Konstantin Grigorishin (Read more about him in the article by Konstantin Grigorishin. Honored oligarch of Ukraine and Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)).
Valery Khoroshkovsky: “Bloody Ken” is on his way to a billion
2002 was the year of the first big sale for Valery Khoroshkovsky. The main reason for this was the failure of his political project “Winter Generation Team” in the parliamentary elections: having spent tens of millions of dollars on round-the-clock television advertising and leading Russian political strategists, the party gained only 2.02% of the votes (the political strategists and ideologists of this project simply did not agree with each other – Alexander Yakovlevich Korotenko worked as an ideologist, who once brought Irina Khakamada to the power Olympus. But his ideas were not accepted by political strategists. In principle, they later formed the basis of Yushchenko’s project “TAK!” for organizing the Maidan in 2004).
We had to return money to those who invested in the project, buying places on the list for themselves or their people. Among these was the influential son-in-law of President Kuchma, oligarch Viktor Pinchuk (Read more about him in the article Victor Pinchuk: the richest son-in-law in Ukraine) – Khoroshkovsky first gave him a share of his shares in Ukrsotsbank, and then sold the rest for $250 million. Three years later, Pinchuk resold Ukrsotsbank to the Italian UniCredit for $2.2 billion. Among other enterprises sold by Khoroshkovsky that year were the Galakton dairy concern, a 20% stake in Ferrotrade CJSC, the aforementioned Crimean Soda, Titan and Luganskoblenergo.
However, that year Khoroshkovsky not only sold, but also actively acquired his hands – during which the collection of his skeletons increased significantly. At first these were the “authorities” of the Crimean organized crime groups, in particular the so-called. “Bashmakov”, who at one time founded and long controlled the well-known company “Soyuz-Victan”. But “big people” also had their share in it, including Sergei Kunitsin and Valery Khoroshkovsky, who from the late 90s began to increase their share by “squeezing out” the weakening and executed “authorities.” The struggle was accompanied by arson, attacks, kidnappings and murders. In 2002, in particular, “authorities” Sergei Kolesnik and Grigory Posunko, who were hired by someone to carry out sabotage (arson and pogroms of the company’s company stores), went missing. The director of Soyuz-Viktan, Andrei Okhlopkov, and his deputy, Viktor Udovenko (“VIKTAN” is a derivative of “VIKTOR” and “ANDREY”) were accused of organizing their kidnapping and murder. They were arrested and even sentenced to 15 years, but after they agreed to give their share of Soyuz-Victan shares to Khoroshkovsky and other “big people,” suddenly prosecution witnesses announced that they had incriminated them. At the same time, Udovenko, who was released from the pre-trial detention center, went to Moscow to live with certain people who, according to Khoroshkovsky’s promise, were supposed to “place” him. And they really built it, but only in the cemetery.
And on July 27, 2002, unknown persons killed a certain Alexander Kreuter, who, according to Skelet.Infowas an intermediary who forced witnesses to give and then withdraw evidence against Okhlopkov and Udovenko. And a little earlier, on the night of July 20, the crime boss Vakha Musotov, who was also a shareholder of Soyuz-Victan, who shortly before allegedly demanded the dividends due from Khoroshkovsky, was killed in Crimea. How many Soyuz-Victan shares Valery Khoroshkovsky concentrated in his hands remains another secret of his: when in 2006 he sold them to Fabien Pictet & Partners, the details of the transaction were declared a trade secret. However, before the sale of shares, Valery Khoroshkovsky was called the “vodka king” – and not only of Ukraine, because Soyuz-Victan was one of the three largest vodka companies in the world. And after this transaction, Korrespondent magazine estimated Khoroshkovsky’s capital at $930 million.

Khoroshkovsky’s assets in 2005
But let’s go back to 2002, when Khoroshkovsky was just walking towards his billion over the bodies of suddenly dying competitors and partners. At the end of October, in the Belarusian forests, the police found the body of Mikhail Kolomiets, a famous Kyiv journalist, editor and co-owner of the Ukrainian News agency, who had gone missing shortly before. The police confirmed suicide, Kolomiets’ colleagues (in particular, Yegor Sobolev) conducted a journalistic investigation and came to the conclusion that he could have been driven to this. But who? At that time, only one name was named – Khoroshkovsky, whose “Agency for Humanitarian Technologies” (director Vladimir Granovsky) had been the owner of 50% of the shares of “Ukrainian News” since 2000. The reason for the suicide was the large debts that Kolomiets got into, and he took out his last loan of 20 thousand dollars from Ukrsotsbank on the security of his shares of Ukrainian News.
This was not the last victim of “bloody Ken”. In April 2005, people’s deputy Igor Pluzhnikov, who was the owner of the Inter TV channel, signed an agreement to sell most of the assets to the oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin. But in June, Pluzhnikov suddenly fell ill and was taken to a German clinic, where he suddenly died of toxic hepatitis. According to doctors, this could be the result of deliberate poisoning. And suddenly unexpected news: Valery Khoroshkovsky became the owner of 61% of Inter shares! Who immediately brought Vladimir Granovsky into his leadership, and soon hurried to transfer shares to five offshore companies associated with the Russian oligarch Alexander Abramov: Prime Legal Services Limited, Quabdrus Consulting Limited, Quimica Overseas Limited, Shiraka Limited and “Apuane Overseas Limited”. Why? They said that, having not found the necessary funds to buy Inter, Khoroshkovsky borrowed them from Abramov – and he returned his money with shares of the TV channel. However, Khoroshkovsky continued to be considered the formal owner of Inter, since Ukrainian legislation prohibited the sale of the country’s central television channels to foreigners. And the whole country pretended that nothing like that had happened.
Further – more interesting. By the end of 2006, Inter shares became the property of another offshore company, UA Inter Media Group Limited, which was considered the property of Valery Khoroshkovsky – since he was its director.
Moreover, when he was appointed head of the Customs Service, his place as head of UA Inter Media Group Limited was taken by his mysterious wife Elena, whom no one had ever seen. But UA Inter Media Group Limited itself belongs to another company – KH Media Limited, and it, in turn, through another company belongs to KH Management Limited, at least 50% of the shares of which belonged to Firtash. A very complicated offshore scheme, in which the true owner is hiding somewhere!
And what was the point of Abramov giving Inter shares back to Khoroshkovsky? And why at the end of 2006 did the TV channels K-1, K-2 and Megasport, which belonged to Firtash, become the property of UA Inter Media Group Limited? There is an opinion that in fact “KH Media Limited” initially belonged not to Khoroshkovsky, but to Firtash – who in February 2013 bought “UA Inter Media Group Limited” from himself! And the 2.5 billion that Firtash allegedly paid Khoroshkovsky for Inter simply transferred from the account of one of his companies to the account of another. Moreover, there is an opinion that Firtash in this complicated scheme plays the role of either an intermediary or an “asset manager”, and the real owner of Inter remains the Russian oligarch Alexander Abramov (Read more about the TV channel in the articles by Anna Bezlyudnaya. Or the rise and fall of the Inter TV channel and the Kremlin gang on Inter. Stolyarova, Deserted, Nikitin).
Valery Khoroshkovsky. Gas general SBU
In November 2002, Valery Khoroshkovsky became Minister of Economy and European Integration in the coalition government of Viktor Yanukovych. And the next year brought him a doctorate in economics, the receipt of which raised many questions: they said that he simply bought it, like his candidate’s degree (and his diploma before it). But the joy was overshadowed by a serious quarrel between Khoroshkovsky and the “Donetsk”: Mykola Azarov especially disliked him (Read more about him in the article Mykola Azarov. Survivor). According to one version, he was irritated by the appearance of Khoroshkovsky, who came to Cabinet meetings in jeans and an untucked shirt. According to another, Nikolai Yanovich was angry about Khoroshkovsky’s passion for Scientology. According to the third, the pro-Russian “Donetsk” quarreled with Khoroshkovsky because of his fundamental disagreement with Ukraine’s entry into the SES. Well, what is most likely is that Khoroshkovsky and the “Donetsk” belonged to different and competing oligarchic groups, so they simply could not find a common language.
On December 28, 2003, Khoroshkovsky resigned, and in 2004 he left for Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), where he worked as executive director of the Evraz Group holding of his old business partner Abramov. A very surprising step for someone who just a few months ago was making incendiary speeches against the economic integration of Ukraine and Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)! Even more surprising was his return to Kyiv in 2005, where the new government welcomed him with open arms.

Valery Khoroshkovsky
Since December 2006, having become the First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Khoroshkovsky returned to the civil service, and in December 2007 he became head of the Customs Service. When a person whose fortune was estimated at almost a billion dollars was appointed to this post, they said: but he won’t steal! But it seems they were very mistaken. Corruption in customs under Khoroshkovsky has not decreased at all, on the contrary, but he himself came up with an original proposal to instruct the Customs Service to organize auctions of confiscated items. Through this system, controlled by Khoroshkovsky, it would be possible not only to make money by selling the confiscated goods of “black smugglers” (who do not pay bribes), but also to create a channel for duty-free import of goods: trucks travel to the border, their cargo is seized, then they sell it to their front companies and those , without paying the duties, they transport it further to its destination. But Khoroshkovsky did not have time to implement his idea: after a serious quarrel with Prime Minister Tymoshenko, in January 2009 he was transferred to deputy head of the SBU.

Viktor Yushchenko and Valery Khoroshkovsky
It was an outright shock: of course, Yushchenko appointed outright eccentrics with American registration like Nalyvaichenko at the head of the SBU, but at least they were career security officials. Khoroshkovsky had only two years of service as a driver in a bus service and an academic degree of Doctor of Economic Sciences. As if in mockery, in March 2009, Yushchenko also appointed Khoroshkovsky as the head of the Anti-Terror Center. However, in his new post, Khoroshkovsky showed himself to be a better security official than Valentin Nalyvaichenko, who was involved in photo exhibitions of the Holodomor (Read more about him in the article by Valentin Nalyvaichenko. Spy, diplomat and corrupt official). And he appeased his employees with the construction of a new five-entrance apartment building for them.
True, his activity was aimed at protecting the interests not of the state, but of his companion Dmitry Firtash. On March 2, 2009, the investigative department of the SBU, on the personal instructions of Khoroshkovsky, opened a criminal case into the fact of “theft by officials of Naftogaz of Ukraine and the Cabinet of Ministers of gas belonging to the RosUkrEnergo company (from Firtash’s personal reserves), located in underground gas storage facilities. The Naftogaz office was seized by masked special forces soldiers, and documents were seized, including contracts signed by Prime Minister Tymoshenko.
After the 2010 presidential elections, Khoroshkovsky became one of two representatives of the former government who not only were not dismissed, but even received a promotion. On March 11, Khoroshkovsky was appointed head of the SBU, and in June his close friend Viktor Pshonka, who worked as Deputy Prosecutor General from 2006 to 2010, sat in the chair of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine (read more about him in the article Viktor Pshonka: the rise and fall of prosecutor Caesar). And again, Khoroshkovsky first of all took up the issue of Firtash’s “stolen” gas: in the summer of 2010, he began inviting his former comrades in the “orange” government for interrogation. Well, in addition to the search for those responsible for the “theft” of gas, compromising evidence was collected on the activities of Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko – which was already useful in 2011 for initiating a criminal case against her. At the same time, he actively collaborated with Viktor Pshonka, and it so happened that the former “orange” in the service of the “Donetsk” enthusiastically pursued people from Yushchenko’s team.
In 2010, Nalyvaichenko “put pressure” on the head of the Main Directorate for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of Kyiv, Ruslan Kukharenko, who refused to sign a permit for the demolition of a historical outbuilding on Poshtovaya Square in order to make way for the construction of a residential building for the company OJSC Dniprobudmashina, which is owned by his old partner in “ student business” Vadim Grigoriev. Then Khoroshkovsky used his usual method: Kukharenko was accused of embezzlement and put in a pre-trial detention center, the outbuilding was demolished, after which Kukharenko was released. At the same time, the people of Kiev for some reason chalked up this fact of outright “lawlessness” to the Donetsk people.
But many oligarchs could envy the official income of the head of the SBU. Thus, in 2010, Valery Khoroshkovsky’s total income amounted to 5 million 154 thousand hryvnia (4.9 million hryvnia in dividends and 235.37 thousand hryvnia in salary). His family received more than 41 million hryvnia (33 million dividends, 1 million 595 thousand hryvnia in the form of gifts, 1 million 369 thousand wages). 48.8 million hryvnia were declared in Valery Ivanovich’s bank accounts, and 310 million hryvnia in his family’s accounts. The Khoroshkovsky family also turned out to be large landowners: they owned several plots with a total area of 126 hectares, on which 4,708 square meters of housing were built! They also owned several apartments with a total area of 1265 square meters, and an impressive fleet of cars: five Mercedes, a Maybach 62-S, a Bentley Continental and a Porsche Cayenne. In 2010, Korrespondent magazine estimated Khoroshkovsky’s capital at $804 million.
This income seemed not enough to them, and in 2011-2012, Khoroshkovsky’s name was heard in connection with the scandal surrounding the school textbooks of his mother Olga Nazarovna. The fact is that their cost for the budget turned out to be prohibitive even for that time of unscrupulous “cutting”: 647 and 497 hryvnia for each. They tried to explain this by their small circulation; the Minister of Education and Science Dmitry Tabachnik personally stood up for Khoroshkovskaya (Read more about him in the article by Dmitry and Mikhail Tabachnik. Brother for brother).
On August 12, 2011, by decree of President Yanukovych, Valery Khoroshkovsky was awarded the rank of army general. This was an unprecedented case: having jumped from privates directly to field marshals, Khoroshkovsky left even Valery Geletey far behind him (Read more about him in the article by Valery Geletey. I’m not happy to serve, but I need to be served), whom Yushchenko promoted from colonel to colonel general within a year. But this was followed by a fall: six months later, on January 18, 2012, Khoroshkovsky was transferred to the post of Minister of Finance, and on February 22 he was promoted to First Deputy Prime Minister. This was a strange move, considering that Khoroshkovsky and Azarov could not work well together. After the parliamentary elections in October 2012, both of them were waiting for the decision of the President and the coalition: which of them would be proposed as prime minister? Khoroshkovsky’s chances, even supported by Firtash and Pinchuk, were slim. On December 14, 2002, after a personal conversation with Yanukovych, he submitted his resignation, then organized the transfer of assets of UA Inter Media Group Limited (real or fictitious) to Firtash, and left Ukraine again. By that time, according to Focus magazine, Valery Khoroshkovsky’s fortune had decreased to $430.1 million, but he acquired real estate in London and Monaco, where he spent the next year and a half excitingly. According to the Ukrainian Border Service, from December 28, 2012 to September 21, 2014, Khoroshkovsky did not even appear in his homeland.
Do they sometimes come back?
Khoroshkovsky was going to return to Ukraine as usual after the Maidan, in the hope of settling in under the new government. He had certain chances of this. Firstly, he had old friends in UDAR and Poroshenko’s Solidarity, including the new Kiev mayor Vitaliy Klitschko (Read more about him in the article Vitali Klitschko. The dark past of “looking to tomorrow”). Moreover, Khoroshkovsky and Klitschko are co-owners of the elite metropolitan club “Senator Beach Club”, and they are united not only by common shares. In 2013, an accident occurred at the club: its employee Andrei Nechiporenko died, allegedly falling over the side of a boat and being chopped up by propellers. However, other employees said in private conversations that Nechiporenko died after a fight with Artur Palatny, a people’s deputy and deputy leader of UDAR. After which Klitschko and Khoroshkovsky tried very hard to hush up this matter.
Secondly, Khoroshkovsky counted on the support of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, whom he helped get a job in the Crimean government in 2001, recommending him to Valery Gorbatov and Sergei Kunitsin. Therefore, he had some chance to at least buy himself a place on the lists of UDAR or the Popular Front. However, both there and there Khoroshkovsky was refused – he was too much of an odious figure from the past, and parties running for elections preferred to include in their lists not Yanukovych’s disguised generals, but ATO battalion commanders. And then Khoroshkovsky managed to come to an agreement with Sergei Tigipko (Read more about him in the article Sergei Tigipko: Komsomol oligarch covers his tracks) on registration as a candidate on the list of his party “Strong Ukraine”. He even managed to take part in several election TV shows.
However, the idea was thwarted by journalists (in particular, Sergei Leshchenko), who accused Khoroshkovsky of falsifying his autobiography. So, at first he wrote that he had been unemployed since December 2012, but then he corrected this point, claiming that from December 2012 to March 2014 he allegedly worked as chairman in the firm of his lawyer Porokhnyak, “Kiev Legal Company,” and was allegedly sent to this company on a business trip abroad. The reason for this manipulation is that candidates must have lived in Ukraine for the last five years, and Khoroshkovsky spent more than a year and a half in England and in tropical resorts.
As a result, candidate Khoroshkovsky was expelled from Strong Ukraine, and the police took over his falsification. However, for him this does not threaten anything for now: he has again gone abroad, where he will wait in complete safety and comfort until the government changes again in Ukraine. Well, or until Ukrainians forget about his past, with closets filled with skeletons and ghosts…
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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