"Drug raids in the center of Kyiv, presidential offshore and the Russian branch of a Ukrainian criminal: the best stories of "Sledovstva.info" in 2021
"Drug Trafficking in Kyiv City Center, President's Offshore and Russian Representative Office of Ukrainian Law Enforcement Agents: Findings of "Investstva.info" in 2021
Lyubomira Remazhevska
January 4, 2022, 09:00
See the source for videos and links.
In 2021 we released 2 films, 3 special reports and 40 blogs, as well as wrote dozens of articles and news. We also launched a new project "History of Success." Turning the best of all of this is impossible, so we tried. This goody-goody is the most comprehensive and most resonant of our investigations. And bonus - additionally our materials to each of the reverse themes.
The mysterious life of Ukrainian property owners.
At the beginning of January we published a investigative film "Offshore 95". Screening of this film, which was scheduled for January 3 at the Kyiv Maly Opera Theater, tried to disrupt, but in the end it finally happened.
The film tells how during the transition of the studio "Kvartal 95" to the TV channel of Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, in 2012, successful showman Volodymyr Zelensky and his closest circle created a measure of offshore companies, which owns an elite property in London worth millions of U.S. dollars. We were also able to confirm that in 2012 the companies affiliated with Ihor Kolomoisky transferred close to 40 million dollars to the companies of the "95th Quarter".
But expensive apartments in London and $40 million from Kolomoisky is not the only thing that was disclosed in the film. Journalists revealed the "heart" of Volodymyr Zelensky's offshore network, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands. It was equally owned by the current president and his wife, brothers Serhiy and Boris Shefiri and the already mentioned Andriy Yakovlev. Three months before the first round of the presidential election, Zelensky gave his 25% stake in this "key" offshore company to his first deputy Shefir, free of charge.
The film had a great resonance, and it was viewed about 2 million times on YouTube "Slidstva.info", and the material was quoted by all the key Ukrainian media.
The documents that formed the basis of the film are part of the great international project Pandora Papers. Some 600 journalists from 117 countries surveyed 11.9 million confidences throughout the year, making it the largest volume of these files in history. Slidstvo.info" has been informed about the work of Ukraine. In total, the Ukrainian part of the Pandora Papers covers 1,500 public figures, businessmen and politicians. We wrote about some of them. In particular, about undeclared offshore companies, which belonged to the deputy Oleksandr Gereza, and which were related to the network of construction supermarkets in the occupied Crimea.
According to the materials we have published, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption has started an inspection of the declarations of President Volodymyr Zelensky and deputy Oleksandr Gerega. They did not find any violations in Zelensky.
Later we had two more updates on the film. Blog "Hello, we are with the Security Service" where our Dmytro Replyanchuk found the Security Service agent who could have tried to disrupt the showing of "Quarterly 95", and the blog "Money for Laughter", where we analyzed how much money the companies of the "Quarterly" paid to the budget for the period of their work with Igor Kolomoysky channel.
"Rooting" between Balkan drug clans in the center of Kiev and the role of the Ukrainian police in them
The story we showed in the summer of 2021 reminds me of the films of Quentin Tarantino. It has foreign drug clans, police officers, a murder plot, and brutal reprisals against competitors.
As we have learned, one of the leaders of the Balkan drug clan "Kavach" Radoje Zvitser came to Kiev together with his family in 2019. In early 2020 he was shot up on the capital's Pechersk, but the man survived.
We were able to make a detailed picture of the events with the names of the key players in this crime and find out that three active Ukrainian police officers, one of whom is close to the head of the National Police of Ukraine, helped the suspected killers.
According to the journalists, the deputy head of the Kiev police, Eugene Deidey, enlisted two acquaintances, metropolitan policemen Rostislav Chernobrovy and Semyon Gordyonok, to transport a group of Balkans accused of trying to kill a drug trafficker.
Together with our investigative colleagues from the Serbian KRIK editorial board, we realized that this hit on Radoje Zvicer was an extension of the war between the two drug clans "Kavac" and "Shkalyar". According to Balkan law enforcement officials, the two cartels are involved in smuggling drugs from Western America to Europe.
In February we learned that the State Bureau of Investigation has registered a criminal case against then deputy chief of the Kiev police Evgen Deidei and two other policemen, who were transporting a group of suspicious drug dealers on the territory of Ukraine in spring of 2020.
Later it became known that one of the heroes of the film, Yevgen Deidei, who allegedly helped the missing persons to enter Ukraine, was dismissed from his position in the National Police.
How Semen Semenchenko's private military company helped oligarch Igor Kolomoysky to solve his problems
In the past few years, we reported that the private military company associated with ex-army deputy Semen Semenchenko had been carrying out tasks in the interests of Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky for the past few years.
Thus, we found out that in February 2021, members of the organization "Donkorp Ukraine", which is controlled by Semen Semenchenko, took part in a massacre on the capital's Maidan. One of the minibuses, which was detained by the police after the incident, belonged to Donkorp.
And Mikhail Kiperman, a friend and business partner of Ihor Kolomoyskyy, is associated with the construction company in the capital, where Semenchenka's fighters had committed the shooting.
We also found out that members of Semenchenka's structure guarded the Tsentrenergo office in 2020, after it was taken to the village of Kozyn near Kyiv. The media reported that it was then that the state energy company was taken over by the leadership loyal to Kolomoyskyy. And the companies associated with the businessman received the greatest zest from cooperation with Centrenergo.
In addition, we have seen that representatives of "Donkorp Ukraine" took part in rallies against the leadership of the National Bank (NBU) in the end of 2019. In particular, against the former head of the institution Yakov Smolya and his deputy Kateryna Rozhkova. Earlier Smoliy publicly called Igor Kolomoyskyi the mastermind of the actions against the NBU.
By the end of March, 2021 the Security Service of Ukraine informed about the termination of the activity of the illegal private military company. Among the organizers of this structure, the investigators named Semen Semenchenko, as well as Yevhen Shevchenko, "an out-of-state agent of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau". According to SBU data, the company consisted of over 150 people. During the search, law enforcers seized dozens of weapons, 5.5 thousand kits, financial documents and black records.
In February 2021, the Security Service of Ukraine announced that it knew the names of those responsible for the grenade launcher attack on the 112 Kanal building in 2019. In particular, Semen Semenchenko was named among the suspects. Already in February, the soldier was announced a new suspicion of possession, storage and transfer of military ammunition, munitions, committed by the previous group of persons. Semenchank was taken into custody, but later his preventive detention was changed to house arrest, and on April 26, the court again ruled to keep him under arrest.
At the beginning of December, the SBU sent a bill of indictment against Semenchuk to the court. It says that the SBU investigators established that Semenchenko and other organizers had created an illegal military formation on the territory of Ukraine with a military-type organization structure.
President Zelensky's "friends" and the Russian trace in the life of Ukraine's main dissident
At the beginning of the year we released a special report "Druzhochki". In it we describe how Maria Levchenko, the President's assistant, and her husband, Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Oleksandr Hahilashvili rent a house of about 350 square meters in the village of Hotiv near Kyiv. However, they did not live there alone. As we were able to ascertain, the Levchenko-Gogilashvili family had a quite influential partner - the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense, Kirilo Budanov.
In addition, we noted that Oleksandr Hahilashvili received an international passport of a citizen of Russia in 2012, which seems to be still valid. Russian registries could not find any confirmation that Oleksandr Hovhilashvili withdrew his citizenship or issued a passport. He did not provide such confirmation either on our official request or when we tried to contact him personally or by phone. Therefore, it turns out that the head Ukrainian investigator lived together with an alleged Russian citizen.
Oleksandr Hahilashvili was taken to the "Investigative Journalism.info" team before the special report and the uncontroversial scandal. We would like to remind you that at that time the video showed Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Oleksandr Hohylashvili being hostile and rude to law enforcers who asked him to show documents at one of the checkpoints in Donetsk region. Gogilashvili was offended that they did not know his face. The video received a significant response, after which the man was dismissed from the Ministry.
However, we were interested in the structures related to Gogilashvili back in the spring. At that time we realized that the International Anti-Drug Association, close to then Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs Oleksandr Hahilashvili, could be involved in the deportation and deportation of people to rehabilitation centers for drug addicts without their consent.
As we found out at the time, the court registry has dozens of court decisions describing possible cases of illegal deprivation of liberty of the residents of "MAA" rehabilitation centers. The investigation also includes histories of victims of incarceration.
Moreover, our journalist Maria Gorban conducted a journalistic experiment. She contacted the International Anti-Drug Association, introducing herself as the mother of a drug addict. In order to take the client to one of the three centers operating in Kyiv region, representatives of the "MAA" offered to come in a police uniform and pick up the person by force. And if she is restrained, they offered to inject her with a sedative.
The "Druzhochki" investigation helped to solve one more problem. Levchenko and Gogilashvili were staying in a private house near Kiev, which belongs to a family of businessmen whose companies are involved in dozens of cases of tax evasion schemes. And, as we have seen, such a link could have a potential conflict of interest.
As we found out, this house belongs to Diana Strelkovskiy. She is the former girlfriend of businessman Vyacheslav Strelkovsky. A number of companies owned by Diana and Vyacheslav Strelkovski have been involved in dozens of criminal cases since 2010. These cases mainly concern tax schemes and evasion from paying taxes, or the so-called "twisting" of the surplus value tax (schemes involving the formation of a piece tax credit for additional income - ed.). We also found out that together with the companies of the Strelkovskys' orbit, the representatives of big businesses - the companies of DTEK group of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, chain supermarkets Silpo (Fozzy Group), WOG petrol stations, mobile operator Kyivstar - were also involved in these cases.
Despite the large number of criminal proceedings, the Strelkovskis are not suspected in any of these cases.
However, that is not all. Later, we found out that Diana and Vyacheslav Strelkovski also have Russian citizenship and have repeatedly visited the Russian-occupied Crimea. Also, the cohabitation of the head of military detachment with Gogilashvili, who presumably has a Russian passport, in the house of a Russian citizen can pose a threat to the national security of Ukraine.
Who was the probable cause of the constitutional crisis and how Ukrainian politicians influenced the court system of the country
On Sunday we revealed the secret of the changes that took place in spring 2019, immediately after the election of the new president Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Constitutional Court of Ukraine. We described how Yanukovych's high-ranking deputy Andriy Portnov, former head of the Presidential Office Andriy Bogdan, and head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court Pavlo Vovk influenced the dismissal of Stanislav Shevchuk, head of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine, which took place in early 2019.
We received copies of the so-called "Vovk's tapes" - confidential records of conversations from the office of the head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court, which reveal political corruption and the capture of power by the judge Vovk and his colleagues. We have already released two films devoted to these tales.
We continued to investigate the "Vovk's tapes". They revealed that in the spring of 2019 Vovk repeatedly communicated with probably Portnov and Bogdan.
From the received tapes it emerges that at that time Vovk and his companions could simultaneously coordinate the dismissal of Stanislav Shevchuk from the position of the head of the Constitutional Court, and - in parallel - to ask for the cancellation of the law on lustration, in which they could be interested.
Not long after these events the Constitutional Court was addressed by its current head Oleksandr Tupitsky. In his commentary he said that they dismissed Shevchuk legally and that he had not consulted with Portnov, Bohdan or Vovk about this issue.
We would like to remind you that it was due to the leadership of Oleksandr Tupitsky in the autumn of 2020 that the CCU repealed part of the anti-corruption reform, including the mandatory declaration of assets by officials, as well as the authority of the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption to check the declarations. Later, the Verkhovna Rada cancelled the declarations.
Moreover, thanks to those very plates, we found out that the CCU is not the only body where Pavlo Vovk and Andriy Portnov could work. They were also likely to have influenced the change of the head of the main body of judicial self-government, the Ukrainian Council of Judges Oleg Tkachuk, which took place in Lipny 2019.
On December 9, the U.S. imposed sanctions against Andriy Portnov. According to the notice published on the website of the U.S. Ministry of Finance, Andriy Portnov was noted for "developing wide connections in the Ukrainian justice system and law enforcement agencies through khabar. And up to the middle of 2019 due to his activity together with other Ukrainian "high-ranking officials" led to "formation of the highest institutions in the sphere of justice and influence on the constitutional court of Ukraine".
Oleksandr Tupitskyy was also subject to sanctions, according to the U.S. Department of State.
In the new year, there will probably be a lot of topics for investigations. And we can do it thanks to you, our readers and viewers, thanks to your support! Thank you for being with us!
Yours, "Investigation.info".
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