Alexander Derkach: The Komsomol Tribe's Corrupt Network. Part 1
Thirty years into its independence, Ukraine continues to be governed by former communist functionaries and Komsomol leaders who have retrained as politicians and businessmen. All these years, they have exploited and strengthened their old Soviet connections and acquaintances for personal enrichment and impunity. One of them is former banker and current dairy and cheese oligarch Oleksandr Derkach, co-owner of the Milk Alliance, former co-owner of Bank Aval, and, even earlier, First Secretary of the Kyiv Regional Komsomol Committee. He once taught his peers to be honest and selfless, but he himself was the first to trample on these moral values of the failed builders of communism.
How Komsomol members became bankers
Oleksandr Vitalievich Derkach was born on January 31, 1960, in the town of Glukhov in the Sumy region. Immediately after high school, he enrolled in the Kyiv Automobile and Road Construction Institute (majoring in highway engineering), which spared him the need for military service. However, according to sources, he also failed his studies. Skelet.OrgHe didn't pay much attention to his studies, instead pursuing a career as a Komsomol leader—and profiting handsomely from it, as the university's Komsomol activists enjoyed certain privileges and opportunities. In these opportunities, the young Derkach saw the promise of a lifetime. That's why he practically never worked in his chosen field: after spending about a year as an engineer at the Kyivputstroy Trust, where he also immediately took up Komsomol work, Alexander Derkach transferred to the district committee of the LKSMU and briskly climbed the career ladder.
Whether this was facilitated by his family connections (Derkach's wife remains a shadowy figure, concealing even her name) or by his unique ability to please his superiors remains unknown. But by the early 90s, Oleksandr Derkach had risen to the rank of First Secretary of the Kyiv Regional Committee of the Komsomol, and whatever the future course of events, this post would have been a springboard to an even higher career. Indeed, had the USSR not collapsed, Derkach could well have headed the regional committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (he was also a party member, something he now keeps quiet about) or become a minister. However, what happened happened—the former Komsomol member became an oligarch-banker, which was no worse!
Fyodor Shpig
During his leadership of the Komsomol organizations in Kyiv and the surrounding region, Derkach met many fellow Leninist activists, some of whom played a significant role in his later life. This applies primarily to the former manager of the Central Committee of the Leninist Young Communist League. To Fyodor Shpig, who has been a business partner and close friend of Alexander Derkach for almost a quarter of a century. That's why their business histories have been virtually identical since the early 90s.
Their mutual acquaintance and colleague was Pyotr Miroshnikov, the head of a sector at the Republican Headquarters of Student Brigades. He managed not only the construction brigades but also their cash registers, so it's no surprise that Miroshnikov became the first Ukrainian Komsomol banker, heading a branch of the Moscow Inkombank, which in 1991 received independent status under the INKO brand. Incidentally, an interesting fact: one of his subordinates Stepan Kubiv — the former head of the Lviv regional headquarters of student brigades, in the early 90s he headed the West Ukrainian Commercial Bank (ZUKB), created with Komsomol money.
Petr Miroshnikov
Miroshnikov himself is better known to Kyiv residents as the former head of the capital's metro department (in 2007-2010), a position given to him by his close friend (practically a confidant) and business partner. Leonid Chernovetsky During his time as Kyiv mayor, Derkach's Komsomol connections also included Anatoly Matviyenko, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the LKSMU, and Roman Nefed, Secretary of the Brovary City Committee of the LKSMU.
It was Peter Miroshnikov who created another bank in March 1992, calling it Aval. Its founders were INKOM (90%) and the Pension Fund (10%), and Aval was intended for a corrupt scheme to funnel Ukrainian pensions through it. Why corrupt? Ukrainian banks in the first half of the 90s were in dire need of large amounts of cash. Such volumes could be provided by the budget and state-owned enterprises (still state-owned); all that was needed was to ensure that they began conducting their financial transactions through commercial banks. There was nothing corrupt about the idea itself, but its implementation was carried out entirely behind the scenes, by arrangement among old acquaintances. Former party officials became ministers, former Komsomol secretaries became bankers – and they immediately found common ground. And so, for example, they decided to fill Aval Bank with money from the Pension Fund, and through Prominvest they pumped funds from state-owned enterprises, obliging them to open their own accounts there.
Miroshnikov installed his business partner, Fyodor Shpig, as the head of the new bank's board. Shpig, who had held the position of head of the credit resources department at INKO, generously handed out these loans to dubious shell companies, including lining his own pockets. This answers the question of where Shpig got the initial capital to buy out Aval Bank's stake. The buyout, incidentally, was carried out using a nearly criminal scheme: over the course of four years (1992-96), the bank's board (Shpig and Derkach) carried out several additional share issues, increasing Aval Bank's authorized capital from 100 million rubles (about $4 million) to 19,4 million hryvnia (about $12 million). Thus, the initial shareholding was diluted 12-fold, and the bank's managers were left with no choice but to acquire additional shares, forming a controlling interest.
But another question arises: how, and with what money, did Oleksandr Derkach, whom Shpyg hired as deputy chairman of the bank's board in early 1992, become a co-owner of Aval Bank? Of course, the former first secretary of the regional committee of the LKSMU was no poor soul: during perestroika, he oversaw the creation and operation of youth cooperatives in Kyiv and the surrounding region, and even had access to Chernobyl funds. However, in his biography, Derkach doesn't specify what business he was involved in before 1992, and for several years afterward, he was listed only as deputy chairman of the board of Aval Bank, not as a co-owner—that is, again, a hired manager, not a businessman. Where did he get the money to buy out his share of Aval Bank? Did he borrow from friends, was it a gift, or did he borrow from his own bank? This is not an idle question; today, anti-corruption investigations are being initiated on such issues, although cases from a quarter of a century ago are not being raised yet – probably because then very high-ranking officials would have to be jailed and entire corporations confiscated.
Alexander Derkach. Financial Business, Ukrainian Style
Another question is no less intriguing: the role of Oleksandr Derkach and Fedor Shpyg in the collapse of INKO Bank, which took place between 1995 and 1997 (it was finally liquidated in 2002). While this case has now been painstakingly forgotten, INKO was one of the first Ukrainian banks to collapse even before the first financial crisis of 1998. According to the prevailing theory, INKOR Bank was initially a scam, a mechanism for siphoning off funds (including from the Pension Fund and deposits) and laundering dirty money, which was deliberately and artificially bankrupted to cover its tracks and, ultimately, snatch a couple hundred million hryvnias from depositors. Its direct successor was Inkombank-Ukraine, founded in 97 by the Dutch company NOSTIK FINANCIAL HOLDING, the Irish HOMERTRON TRADING LIMITED, the Russian AB Inkombank and Inkomstroyinvest, and structures of the oligarch’s Energy Corporation. Victor NusenkisIn 1999, Inkombank-Ukraine was fully acquired by the Energia Corporation and renamed Kreditprombank, with its supervisory board chaired by the "Georgian Greek" Konstantinos Papunidis, better known as the crime boss Kostya Grek. What interesting connections!
Interestingly, the bankruptcy of INKO Bank nearly threw its founder, Pyotr Miroshnikov, out of business (he was later helped to find a job at the KazakhOil-Ukraine representative office), but it became a powerful impetus for the independent development of Aval Bank—and its acquisition by its own executives, Derkach and Shpig. But in the tough world of business and the equally tough world of Ukrainian corruption, coincidences are impossible! However, Derkach and his partner Shpig remain silent about those events, and Miroshnikov… where is Miroshnikov now?
In short, when INKOM Bank, which had become involved in fraudulent schemes, began experiencing problems as early as 1993, Pension Fund funds flowed to Aval Bank, which became independent after Derkach and Shpig acquired it. According to unofficial sources, they were not only interested in this but also participated in the operation, leveraging their own connections. And so, starting in 1993, Aval began to rise briskly, thanks to pension karbovanets, and then hryvnias—and this growth continued despite the change of prime ministers and even presidents. Thus, Skelet.Org I've already reported that Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko favored Aval, specifically by forcing some state-owned enterprises to open accounts with it. However, the bank's main source of finance in the 90s was the Pension Fund, and the bank relied on it both before and after Lazarenko's tenure. How can this be?
The thing is, journalists often dig in the wrong places: they habitually focus on connections to prime ministers and ministers, when they should have paid attention to their deputies. Indeed, if we dig through government documents from the 90s, the decrees and orders that transferred postal pension payments through Aval accounts, we'll find the signatures of deputies. Those directly involved were former Soviet officials and Kyiv party officials, longtime acquaintances of Derkach and Shpyg:
- Boris Zaychuk, Deputy Chairman of the Board (since 1993) and Chairman of the Board (1996-2008) of the Pension Fund. In the 80s, he served as Deputy Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Kyivo-Svyatoshinsky District Council.
- · Deputy Minister of Social Protection Svetlana Vegera (1993-2002). In the 80s, she was secretary of the Minsk District Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which did not prevent her from becoming an advisor to the "anti-communist" President Yushchenko in 2005.
- Volodymyr Matviychuk is a relentless Soviet official with endless connections. From 1979 to 1993, he handled finances in various departments of the Ukrainian SSR. In 1993, he became Deputy Minister of Finance of Ukraine, a position he held until the spring of 2001. He was then appointed several times, first as Deputy Minister of Finance, then as Deputy Minister of Social Policy, and finally, in March 2014, he once again assumed the position of Deputy Minister of Finance of Ukraine.
Vladimir Matviychuk
Note: they all took their deputy positions at practically the same time in 1993, and put down deep roots there. Ukraine has seen a change of prime ministers and presidents, shifting political vectors and economic policies, but these gray, unnoticed deputies continued to "saw off the cash" in the 1990s and 2000s, and some even after the second Maidan! It seems these people aren't so "gray" after all; their role was much greater than it seems at first glance. Even more interesting is what their share or fee was in all these projects? After all, they weren't lobbying for the interests of Aval for free, were they? And what fees did Mr. Matviychuk receive for lobbying the interests of commercial banks in 2014-2015, when they received tens of billions of hryvnias in refinancing and transferred billions of dollars abroad, collapsing the national currency? Placing the blame on finance ministers Oleksandr Shlapak (2014) and Natalia Yaresko (2014-2016), for some reason, no one questioned their deputy, Volodymyr Matviychuk. Meanwhile, this man is a real find for the Prosecutor General's Office and NABU!
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Alexander Derkach: The Komsomol Tribe's Corrupt Network. Part 2
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