Victor Shokin
Recently, during a special operation under the personal leadership of Deputy Prosecutor General David Sakvarelidze and Chairman of the Security Service of Ukraine Vasyl Gritsak, two high-ranking employees of the prosecutor’s office were detained with the use of special forces – First Deputy of the Investigative Department of the GPU Vladimir Shapakin and Deputy Prosecutor of the Kyiv region Alexander Korniets. We will not list all the money, diamonds and other valuables that were confiscated from these officials – enough has been written about this. What caught the eye was the fact that they were arrested during the absence of their main boss, Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who just happened to be on vacation. So, it turns out that he did not know about the corruption of his subordinates?
The only one who modestly and not very convincingly stated about Shokin’s connection with the detainees was the people’s deputy Mustafa Nayem. True, he did not state this in a deputy’s inquiry or in another form that the law gives him as a representative of the authorities. He modestly wrote about it on his page on the social network Facebook. All the other journalist-deputies, including Nayem’s colleague, the former journalist-truth-teller Serhiy Leshchenko, modestly kept silent about this fact. So, maybe the Prosecutor General really did not know anything about his subordinates-bribe-takers, or about what was going on in the GPU? In order to answer these questions, we should delve a little deeper into the biography of the head of Ukraine’s supervisory agency.
So, Viktor Nikolaevich Shokin.
If we omit his studies at the Agricultural Academy, his work as a technician at the Botanical Garden and his military service, we can say that he began his career in the field of justice in 1980, as an investigator at the Moscow District Prosecutor’s Office in Kiev. And then he made a career as an “investigator” – senior investigator, head of department, investigator for especially important cases, and so on. But this is the visible part of his career.
First of all, Viktor Nikolaevich’s family connections are of interest. First of all, he is the godfather of the current President Petro Poroshenko. And the latter “pulled” Shokin even before he became the head of state. They say that back in 2004, it was Petro Oleksiyovych, being a “best friend” and godfather of Viktor Yushchenko, who lobbied for Viktor Shokin’s appointment to the post of deputy of the then Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun. The family of the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office is also of interest. It seems that everyone in their family is a prosecutor.
His adopted daughter, Tatyana Gornostaeva, is the deputy prosecutor of the Odessa region. Incidentally, she got involved in a scandal with the newly appointed governor of the Odessa region, Mikhail Saakashvili, a long time ago. Read more: Is Saakashvili helping Shokin take revenge on his ex-wife? Or is he punishing Shokin?
Her husband’s father, Alexey Gornostayev, also works in the Southern Palmyra. He is the deputy prosecutor of the Kyiv district of Odessa. And Viktor Nikolayevich’s father-in-law, Nikolay Gornostayev, works in the Dnipropetrovsk region. He is the deputy prosecutor of this region. And if this is not protectionism, then what is protectionism?
But let’s judge the prosecutor by his “cases”. The first “case” in which Viktor Shokin, as they say, “came into the spotlight” was the case of the “White Brotherhood” and Maria Devi Khristos. They say that it was he, then a relatively young senior investigator for especially important cases of the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, who started rumors that “the KGB or the GRU of the General Staff of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) could not have done without it, and the leader of the brotherhood, Yuri Krivonogov, is actually an officer of the Russian special services.” In addition, they “threw” into the press that the leaders of the “White Brotherhood” were taking away apartments, property and money from their followers. However, there is not a word about this in the sentences of the leaders of the “White Brotherhood”. They were convicted under the articles of the then Criminal Code: 187-5 (Seizure of state or public buildings or structures), 209 (Encroachment on the health of citizens under the guise of performing religious rites), 101 part 1 (Intentional bodily harm), but the young investigator really did “come to light” in a high-profile case. And since then his career has been on the rise.
The most resonant of the “cases” of the future head of the GPU is, perhaps, the “case Boris Kolesnikov” model of 2004. At that time, the media wrote that this case was initiated by Petro Poroshenko, while he was the chairman of the National Security and Defense Council. Allegedly, the plan was as follows: to arrest Kolesnikov and Renat Akhmetov’s brother Igor and receive two million dollars for closing the case. With this
He made the proposal to the then Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun. Apparently, initially it was planned to open a case under the article “Separatism”. But then, obviously, something went wrong. For some reason, Piskun did not personally take up the case, and cases of such crimes on a national scale are always under the personal control of the Prosecutor General. Then Viktor Nikolaevich opened the case. And this was a case under Part 4 of Article 189 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine “Extortion on an especially large scale”. That is, a criminal offense that is entirely within the competence of the deputy head of the GPU. Kolesnikov spent some time in a pretrial detention center. And after some time, what a coincidence, the case was closed. It is difficult to say what part of this money Shokin received, and whether he received it at all. But the fact is that the case was destroyed, and the suspect was released, and later completely acquitted, is a fact.
In general, Viktor Shokin is connected with many serious, high-profile cases. These include the “Yushchenko poisoning case”, the “Yevgeny Kushnarev case”, and the “Gongadze case”. Let’s talk about the latter.
As is known, the main figure in this case, the link between the perpetrators and the customers, was the infamous General Alexey Pukach. In 2005, the latter was in Ashdod, Israel. Three SBU officers headed there, led by the then Deputy Chairman of the Service, Andrey Kozhemyakin. They managed to obtain sanction from an Israeli court to detain the alleged killer of Gongadze. Pukach was placed under surveillance, and an operation to capture him was already prepared. But literally the day before the arrest, Israeli intelligence services demanded additional documents from the SBU officers, and they had to notify the Prosecutor General’s Office. The very next day, a Ukrainian newspaper reported that SBU officers in Israel were preparing to detain Pukach. The operation was thwarted, and the Israeli prosecutor’s office, having learned about the article in the newspaper, refused to give sanction. Later, the journalists admitted that Shokin personally “leaked” this information to them. Considering the status and importance of the defendants in the “Gongadze case,” whom Pukach later named, one can imagine the level of preferences that Viktor Nikolaevich received for a short conversation with journalists.
And these are not all the cases that the current Prosecutor General has had a hand in. Of course, he has been working in the prosecutor’s office for a very long time, and has lived a long time in this world. They say that it was he who “covered up” his godfather from the case of the scandalous construction in Mariinsky Park. Be that as it may, Petro Oleksiyovych definitely finds it convenient to work with such a head of the GPU. However, there is one “but” – Viktor Shokin is a protégé and even to some extent an adherent of the system that Poroshenko promised to “break his head” when he received the mandate of trust of the Ukrainian people. And not a single high-profile case: neither the “Heavenly Hundred Case”, nor the “Yanukovych Family Case”, nor other high-profile and completely obvious cases for society related to the Maidan, the Prosecutor General has brought to court in the six months that he has been in charge of his department.
And one more interesting fact before we leave. Shokin’s colleagues consider him a workaholic. They say that he often stays up late. You can come to him at eleven at night and talk about business; he generally likes to be in the know about all the affairs. And this inveterate “workaholic” suddenly, at such an important moment for the prosecutor’s office as the arrest of its top officials, turns out to be on vacation. As they say in such cases: “A coincidence? I don’t think so.” Rather, according to the logic of the current government, the president’s godfather should be above suspicion.
Denis Ivanov for SKELET-info