Alexander Medvedko: The Prosecutor General and the Gravedigger of High-Profile Cases, and His Corrupt Family. Part 1
The Ukrainian prosecutor's office under the "Donetsk gang" was long remembered for its contract criminal cases, concocted for the purpose of intimidation, extortion, and corporate raids. However, Oleksandr Medvedko, who headed it from 2005 to 2010, specialized in just the opposite. He deflected corruption, thieves, and murderers from prosecution, including his own relatives, and also dragged out and "buried" the most high-profile and high-profile cases: the murders of Gongadze and Alexandrov, the bizarre suicides of Kirpa and Kravchenko, the poisoning of Yushchenko, and the death of Kushnarev. In this way, Medvedko catered to several political forces simultaneously, which rapidly shifted from one to the next in power.
Alexander Medvedko. First Cases
Alexander Ivanovich Medvedko was born on July 25, 1955, in the village of Iskrovka, Akimov district, Zaporizhzhia region. His parents, Ivan Fedorovich and Lidiya Illarionovna Medvedko, didn't stay there long (or even worked briefly on a collective farm after being assigned to do so), as their family soon moved to the industrial city of Druzhkovka, Donetsk region, where they settled in a private house on Lvovskaya Street (Gornyak district). Their son, Alexander, grew up there, joined the army, and began his career as a prosecutor in Druzhkovka. Ivan Fedorovich was buried in Druzhkovka; his grave was vandalized by juvenile thugs in 2009.
But Alexander Medvedko carefully conceals all information about his family, and is extremely reluctant to talk about his past, or tells some tall tales, confusing his own biography.
For example, he kept quiet about which branch of the military he served in or why he enrolled in law school immediately after demobilization. Medvedko's neighbors rumored that "Sashka" wore crimson shoulder straps, and he didn't boast about the details of his service, as the area was home to many previously convicted individuals, and the youth of Gornyak were drawn to criminal themes. So, without lingering at home for long, he went to study at the Kharkiv Law Institute. After graduating in 1980, he returned to Druzhkovka and began working as an investigator in the city prosecutor's office. But here's the interesting thing: one day, Medvedko decided to share his memories of his first case with journalists, telling a fascinating story that began with the words, "I started out as an investigator in the Konstantinovka city prosecutor's office..." Excuse me, what Konstantinovka? After all, according to his official biography, Medvedko started his work in Druzhkovka and transferred to Konstantinovka only many years later?! It turned out that the Prosecutor General was either lying or not telling the whole truth.
Alexander Medvedko: The Prosecutor General and the Gravedigger of High-Profile Cases, and His Corrupt Family. Part 1
So, after working in the Druzhkovka prosecutor's office until 1992, Alexander Medvedko received his first significant promotion: the position of city prosecutor of Konstantinovka. At the same time, in the early 90s, the relatives of Pavel Borulko , often referred to as Alexander Medvedko's nephew, were rapidly rising in Konstantinovka. However, according to Skelet.Org , it is not Pavel Borulko who is Medvedko's relative, but his wife, Alla Kuzmina. Some sources claim that Alla Kuzmina is merely a very close friend of Galina Medvedko, the prosecutor's wife. Alexander Medvedko himself could have shed light on this matter, but he has refrained from any comment on his possible family ties. However, his ties to the Borulko family (and his business partners), clearly established back in the 90s, are so obvious and close that they cannot be described as anything other than family.
In the 90s, the Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office, headed by Gennady Vasilyev , Viktor Pshonka , and the Kuzmin brothers , spawned its own mafia, which for years terrified many Ukrainians with extortion and the seizure of businesses under the threat of fabricated criminal cases. Was Kostyantynivka Prosecutor Medvedko also involved in this? There's no information on this yet, but Skelet.Org sources report otherwise: already in Kostyantynivka, Medvedko became "notorious" for his ability to "on demand" slow down, redirect, shelve, or even completely close any criminal case, even the most high-profile ones. Medvedko had a lot of contracts, because in the 90s, Kostiantynivka, like the entire Donbas and Ukraine, was engulfed in criminal chaos: people were constantly being robbed, maimed, and killed, money and state property were being embezzled, corporate privatizations were underway, and shady schemes were being created. So the prosecutor's office made a good living by shielding local officials, businessmen, and organized crime members from responsibility. This is how Alexander Medvedko mastered his specialty in prosecutorial corruption, which later helped him earn high-ranking rank.
This is the high-profile and high-profile case of journalist Igor Aleksandrov, murdered in July 2001 by members of the Kramatorsk-based organized crime group "17th Precinct," which Skelet.Org covered in detail in its article about Maksim Efimov . At the time, Medvedko had already been working for two years as the head of the Department for Supervision of the Legality of Investigative Activities, Pre-Trial Investigations, and Pre-Trial Investigations at the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor's Office, reporting to then-regional prosecutor Viktor Pshonka. This position, which allowed him to directly influence the progress of any case, had become a lucrative position under Medvedko's thumb.
Igor Alexandrov
The attack on Aleksandrov occurred on July 3, 2001. Crippled by bats but still alive, he was sent to intensive care, and the incident rocked Ukrainian society. The wave immediately reached Kyiv (where Aleksandrov had friends and patrons among the opposition), and Kuchma personally ordered the culprits to be brought before the people as quickly as possible. The Donetsk prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs interpreted this differently. Regional prosecutor Viktor Pshonka dispatched Aleksandr Medvedko to Slovyansk, who personally oversaw the case. According to media reports, from the very first day, Medvedko stalled the investigation while it was still fresh—an investigation that the local police, however, hadn't pursued with much zeal. Moreover, Medvedko's first initiative was to open a case under the article... hooliganism motivated by revenge. Only when Aleksandrov died in the hospital on July 7 was the case reclassified as murder. It gained even greater resonance, involving over 800 prosecutors and police officers, and a special investigator, Vladimir Golik, arrived from Kyiv. And then, according to several Skelet.Org sources , it was Medvedko who suggested the investigators quickly "solve" the case by blaming a vagrant or insane individual for the murder. The local police happily agreed and immediately arrested the homeless man Yuriy Veredyuk. This poor man, who suffered from tuberculosis, was blamed for Alexandrov's murder. It was reported that Kyiv investigator Golik tried to object, but Medvedko silenced him and then succeeded in having Golik removed from the investigation.
Yuriy Veredyuk
This was done not only to exonerate the immediate perpetrators (members of the 17th Precinct organized crime group), but also to cover up the names of potential masterminds, including the Bliznyuk family, the Pshonka prosecutor's family, and businessman Alexander Leshchinsky —then known as the "vodka king of Donbass," and today the owner of Lauffer, the largest grain agroholding. Leshchinsky waged a veritable war against Alexandrov, even attempting to ban him from journalism through the Donetsk prosecutor's office.
It was reported that Medvedko was personally present at Veredyuk's interrogation, that he personally witnessed his "confession," and that he considered the investigators' conclusions to be correct. In short, the case was concocted under his direct supervision and was already being prepared for trial when suddenly, something went wrong, not as usual, not as the Donetsk prosecutor's office was accustomed to. The public and the opposition in Kyiv called the investigation a farce, new facts were published in the media, and the falsifiers realized they were one step away from a high-profile, scandalous collapse. A new investigator for particularly important cases from the Prosecutor General's Office, Oleksandr Kalifitsky, arrived in Slovyansk from Kyiv.
Alexander Leshchinsky
He had an even more corrupt reputation than Medvedko. He began reviewing the case—and the unfortunate Veredyuk suddenly died in his cell, along with two witnesses to the case and the Interior Ministry officer Andrei Ryabtsev, who was working on it. Kalifitsky then "exposed the falsifiers," who were declared to be employees of the Slavyansk Department of the Interior, but allowed Alexander Medvedko to "clean up the case" and exonerate himself from prosecution. After this, Medvedko completely "fled" to avoid trouble: in early September 2001, he was transferred to Luhansk, appointed deputy regional proctor. The transfer was personally carried out by Prosecutor General Potebenko, who awarded him a "travel allowance" and a bonus equal to one month's salary "for achieving results in the investigation" (Order of Prosecutor General Potebenko dated September 10, 2001, No. 662-k).
Alexander Kalifitsky
It's worth noting that Kalifitsky's own future career was also quite successful: in 2011, he became the prosecutor of the Ivano-Frankivsk region. From his very first days on the job, he shocked local entrepreneurs with his "taxes" (starting at $50,000), contributing significantly to the growing discontent with the "Donetsk regime." Meanwhile, his son, Mykola Kalifitsky, who worked in the Lviv regional prosecutor's office after the Maidan, was caught in 2017 accepting a "meaningful" bribe of 12,000 hryvnias.
Intrigues of the Prosecutor General's Office
In July 2002, the Verkhovna Rada demonstrated rare unanimity, casting 350 votes for the new Prosecutor General, Svyatoslav Piskun , whose candidacy was expected to please both the government and the opposition. But none of the voters suspected the kind of Truffaldino the new Prosecutor General would turn out to be. He immediately launched a new investigation into the Gongadze case, something the opposition had long demanded of the government, making a whole show of it: he gathered journalists, regularly held press conferences with reports, delivered high-flown speeches, and even brought in a couple of scapegoats, the most prominent of whom turned out to be General Pukach. But behind this boisterous imitation lay no real action; it merely diverted the investigation from the question of who ordered the Gongadze murder, from the figures of Kuchma and his entourage. Piskun turned out to be a kind of prosecutor-Susanin, an unrivaled master of leading high-profile cases into hopeless labyrinths and leading them around in circles, and doing all this publicly, openly.
Well, he was assisted in this by another such master – Alexander Medvedko, who moved from Lugansk to the Prosecutor General’s Office a month before Piskun’s appointment, in June 2002.
He was appointed to a familiar position as head of the Department for Supervision of Lawfulness in Investigative Bodies, but this time within the framework of all of Ukraine and with the rank of one of the deputy prosecutors general of Ukraine. Rumor had it that he was dragged to the capital by Potebenko, who was leaving the Prosecutor General's Office and an old acquaintance of Medvedko's, and not only from the Alexandrov case. Thus, Medvedko was inherited by Piskun, and he played a direct role in the sham investigation into Gongadze's murder.
Piskun's tenure as Prosecutor General didn't last long. First, he had a serious falling out with Yulia Tymoshenko, reopening criminal cases against her family (the EESU case), and the BYuT furiously demanded his resignation, looking for any excuse. Second, with the appointment of Viktor Yanukovych as Prime Minister, the "Donetsk people" actively promoted their own man, Gennady Vasylyev, to the Prosecutor General post. There were several other factors, and ultimately, in October 2003, Leonid Kuchma dismissed Piskun, replacing him with Vasylyev. The new Prosecutor General's first act was to get rid of Oleksandr Medvedko. This raised eyebrows: why would a "Donetsk person" fire a "Donetsk person," especially since they had literally worked together in the 90s (Medvedko, the city prosecutor, reported directly to Vasylyev, the regional prosecutor). Perhaps the reason was that Medvedko later became too close with Potebenko and Piskun, breaking away from his "Donetsk roots." The semi-official reason given was Medvedko's involvement in the falsification of the Alexandrov case—after all, at that very time, through the efforts of the opposition, this case became one of the main levers of pressure on the "Donetsk people."
Oleksandr Ivanovich was never idle: he immediately took a job as head of the legal department at Aviant (the Antonov aircraft factory), orchestrating several financial scams there. He carried out one of them literally under the guise of the Orange Revolution, transferring 26,6 million hryvnias to four shell companies—after which both the companies and the money disappeared. The criminal case opened on this matter had no chance, as Medvedko was reinstated in the Prosecutor General's Office a few days later.
This happened immediately after the resourceful Piskun was reinstated as Prosecutor General through the courts, and Alexander Medvedko returned with him—and no one mentioned the Alexandrov case to him anymore. Both began diligently working to secure their return to the new government (to avoid being fired again), and so they enthusiastically took up the investigation into the deaths of former Transport Minister Georgy Kirpa and former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko. They took on the case to quickly close it.
Funeral of Yuri Kravchenko
The case of Kirpa, who was found dead at his dacha on December 27, 2004, was initially opened under the statute of "incitement to suicide," but by January 2005, the investigation settled on the theory of simple suicide, ceasing to investigate possible causes. Prosecutor General Piskun and his deputies, Viktor Shokin and Alexander Medvedko, stated that it was impossible to find any evidence to support the theory of incitement to suicide. Meanwhile, the case of Yuri Kravchenko, who allegedly committed suicide on March 4, 2005, at his dacha, dragged on for almost a year. The investigation's theory that Kravchenko committed suicide with two gunshots to the head was perceived by the public as a cruel joke. Nevertheless, a divided Ukrainian society was unable to develop a unified response to this "suicide," which allowed the Prosecutor General's Office to close Case No. 47-642 on Kravchenko's death on December 27, 2005, led by Senior Investigator for Particularly Important Cases Lyubomyr Viytovych, citing "the absence of a criminal offense." Skelet.Org sources reported that Medvedko was instrumental in reducing both tragedies to mere suicide, as he was tasked with overseeing the legality and objectivity of the investigation.
Interestingly, later, in 2007, Yuriy Lutsenko publicly expressed doubts about the suicides of Kirpa and Kravchenko . Moreover, Lutsenko then claimed to have certain evidence that allowed him to disbelieve the official version of the Prosecutor General's Office. But when he became Minister of Internal Affairs again a few months later, he forgot about this evidence. Nor did Lutsenko recall it when he became Prosecutor General of Ukraine.
Alexander Medvedko: The Prosecutor General and the Gravedigger of High-Profile Cases, and His Corrupt Family. Part 1
Less high-profile was the "suicide" case of banker Yuriy Lyakh (a member of the SDPU (o), who claimed to be Viktor Medvedchuk's cashier ), who was found dead in his Kyiv office early in the morning of December 3, 2004 (at the height of the Maidan). Although eight (!) stab wounds were found on his neck, the investigation concluded that Lyakh had committed suicide—a theory later confirmed by the Prosecutor General's Office.
At the same time, Medvedko also worked on "commercial contracts," saving embezzlers, fraudsters, and swindlers from criminal liability. For example, in May 2005, he was approached by Oleksandr Kyrylenko, the stepson of Ukrainian diplomat Andriy Kuzmenko, Ukraine's representative to the Council of Europe (in 2014, by decree of Poroshenko, he was appointed as Ukraine's Chargé d'Affaires in the United Kingdom). Kyrylenko was charged under several articles of the Criminal Code (Articles 191, 209, and 358), including causing damage to the state in the amount of 800 hryvnias. He was already in the process of making his living when he was suddenly given a "meeting" with Medvedko. Kyrylenko was soon arrested by the SBU, but during interrogation he practically cursed the investigators away, claiming that he had already "decided everything up high." A few days later, the Prosecutor General's Office requested his case, and a few days after that, Kyrylenko was released.
At the same time, the SBU, using a bug, managed to catch Medvedko's trusted confidant, Vyacheslav Ryabenko, deputy head of the Prosecutor General's Office's Investigative Department (incidentally, he oversaw the Kirilenko case), accepting a bribe. As it turned out, Ryabenko was acting as Medvedko's "cashier," channeling all the bribes and kickbacks, allowing the cautious Medvedko to remain legally innocent. When Ryabenko learned of the wiretapping, he ran to his boss to complain, but the general reassured him that even if they opened a case, it would end up in the Prosecutor General's Office anyway. And that's exactly what happened: the SBU passed the material on Ryabenko to Prosecutor General Piskun, who "lost" it.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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