Anatoly Matvienko: Komsomol members of the Vinnytsia clan. Part 1
There are no former Komsomol secretaries. Even disguised as patriots and national democrats, they continue to hoodwink people with unrealistic projects. Meanwhile, they themselves carry out shady schemes and create new corrupt connections, including through old Komsomol and party connections. Anatoly Matviyenko could tell us a lot about this, as well as about the very foundations of the "Vinnytsia clan," a connection to which he stubbornly refuses to acknowledge.
Anatoly Matvienko, Chief Komsomol Organizer of Ukraine
Anatoly Sergeyevich Matvienko was born on March 22, 1953, in the town of Bershad in the Vinnytsia region. A young man with ambitions, for some reason rejected by the military enlistment office, after graduating from high school, he entered the Lviv Agricultural Institute (now the National Agrarian University), majoring in mechanical engineering. Although cars held little interest for the student Matvienko, he did develop a passion for football, playing on the institute team (a young man who hadn't been drafted into the army!) and became involved in Komsomol work, which opened up promising opportunities for him. His wife, Olga Vasilyevna, played a major role in this; they married in their fifth year, and after graduating in 1975, they moved to
Anatoly Matvienko: Komsomol youth
Bershad. Anatoly Matviyenko never spoke about her parents, but he did once admit that she was the first in their family to work for the Komsomol, as head of a district committee sector. Matviyenko himself, according to Skelet.Org , immediately became head of the garage, and a year later became chief mechanic in the mechanization department of the district inter-collective farm construction department.
According to his own recollections, the job was "easy": Matviyenko would either create a football team or figure out how to increase everyone's bonuses through various funds. It was a decent living: Matviyenko himself received a salary of 190 rubles plus 100-200% of various bonuses—a huge sum in the 70s! And in 1977, he was accepted into the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and invited to the position of First Secretary of the Bershad District Committee of the LKSMU. Judging by the exceptional nature of this appointment (straight from the street to First Secretary!), he had good connections. Perhaps his wife or her parents had prepared the position for him.
Olga and Anatoly Matvienko
Anatoly Matviyenko's Komsomol career progressed slowly, but confidently and far. In 1980, he rose to the ranks of the Vinnytsia Regional Committee of the LKSMU (secretary and second secretary), where he quickly became acquainted with the entire Vinnytsia Komsomol and party elite—who later stood at the origins of the "Vinnytsia clan." Among them were: Serhiy Tatusyak, head of the Vinnytsia Regional Committee's Department of Defense and Mass Work; Oleksandr Dombrovsky , secretary of the Vinnytsia City Committee of the LKSMU; and Yuriy Ivanov, Vinnytsia's "manager."
Alexander Dombrovsky
Matviyenko retains only positive memories of those times, including Komsomol drinking bouts. However, he always had to justify his Komsomol past as a mere club of merry drinking buddies: he'd never been a committed communist, and in the Komsomol we only drank vodka, and he'd practically been dragged into it by force. The fact is, in the 90s, Matviyenko rebranded himself as a Ukrainian national patriot, which greatly surprised everyone: the former first secretary of the LKSMU became a member of the Rukh party! True, he was never a member of the People's Movement; he had funds for his own political projects: New Ukraine, the NDP, and the UNP "Sobor."
Matviyenko was tight-lipped about the origins of this money, as well as about his Komsomol "business" that began with the onset of perestroika. Yet, as early as 1985, he was "plucked" from Vinnytsia to Kyiv for another promotion: Anatoly Matviyenko became Secretary of the Central Committee of the LKSM, gaining access to the republic's Komsomol treasury and its enormous cash flows (youth construction brigades, housing cooperatives, production cooperatives, joint ventures, etc.). He enrolled in the Higher Party School under the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, completed his postgraduate studies there in 1988-89, and in 1989 received the top position – First Secretary of the Central Committee of the LKSM (with the title of Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine). Well, it must be acknowledged that Matviyenko had an influential patron behind him, possibly even at the Moscow level. It is possible that at the same time this mysterious lobbyist got Alexander Zinchenko, a good friend of Anatoly Matvienko, into the Central Committee of the Komsomol.
Having become the chief Komsomol organizer of the Ukrainian SSR, Matviyenko received a very generous "starter package" of a new, top-tier level, allowing him to quickly settle into the challenging 1990s. First, he was elected as a People's Deputy of Ukraine in his native Bershad (he would later serve as a deputy in the Radas of the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and currently, the 8th convocation). He then founded the Ukrainian Center for Economic and Political Research, under whose auspices Komsomol and Communist Party funds were "mastered," becoming its president. So, when the Komsomol and the CPSU were finally declared moribund, Matviyenko already had another job, a start-up capital, a parliamentary mandate, and numerous connections throughout the former Soviet Union.
Alcohol mafia
If Anatoly Matviyenko always laughed off questions about his Komsomol past with stories of banquets and "I didn't want to, but they made me," he generally tries to ignore questions about his business. In this regard, the former leader of the Ukrainian Komsomol is completely secretive, which raises confusion and even suspicion: why? Indeed, Matviyenko's former comrades (or rather, subordinates) in the LKSMU, such as Serhiy Tigipko , Oleksandr Turchynov , Stepan Kubiv , Oleksandr Shlapak, and many others, don't hide their businesses and didn't even particularly hide how they earned their first personal million in the early 90s. Anatoly Matviyenko is an entirely different matter; he positions himself solely as a politician, a former official, a "social activist." But what kind of money has he been living on all this time and supporting his projects?
Skelet.Org has only fragmentary information about Matviyenko's early steps in business . In addition to the Center for Economic and Political Research, he oversaw several other projects that were well-funded throughout the first half of the 90s—even though the "free" Komsomol money ran out in 1991.
In 1994, Matviyenko even established the Foundation for the Support of the Development of the Arts—a seemingly noble undertaking, but rumors swirled about it laundering large sums of money. What this money was is unknown, but during the then-deep crisis, when all of Ukraine was literally living on potatoes and pasta, large sums of money were held only by state structures, metal exporters, oil and gas importers, and criminal groups.
It is known that in the 1990s, Anatoly Matviyenko was associated with the company "Kvazar-Micro" (founded in 90 by entrepreneur Evgeny Utkin and renamed "Sitronics" in 2008), which was then engaged in the assembly and sale of computer equipment. According to Matviyenko himself, he personally brought "Kvazar-Micro" to Vinnytsia and helped the company expand its business there. However, this was not Matviyenko's only interest in his native region, where he retained numerous connections in the regional and city administration.
In the 90s, there was another category of "successful businessmen": alcohol traders and distillers, who, due to circumstances, found themselves under the protection of officials, security forces, and organized crime groups. Few people remember today that in the 90s, the Vinnytsia region was "famous" not for its sugar refineries and confectionary factory, but for its "spirit distillers," who were constantly embroiled in corruption and criminal scandals. The region was the largest producer of "firewater" in the country, its alcohol provided a livelihood for many, and what schemes were created there! Including various raw material scams, allowing them to both produce additional, unaccounted-for alcohol and pocket the profits from inflated production costs. And here's something quite interesting: Vinnytsia's "spirit distillers" use sugar molasses, obtained from the Vinnytsia sugar factories, as raw material. And, according to Skelet.Org sources , the Poroshenko family's keen interest in sugar factories in the 90s was fueled not only by sugar but also by molasses, control of which could influence the shadow market for Vinnytsia alcohol and the profits from which many Vinnytsia "families" made their first fortunes. This is understandable: in the 90s, Ukrainians didn't indulge in sweets much, but alcohol consumption was at an all-time high.
So, at one time, the "baron" of the Vinnytsia alcohol mafia was Grigoriy Kaletnik – during the Soviet era, the chairman of the Ilyich collective farm in the Yampol district of the Vinnytsia region, then the head of the Yampol district administration, an alcohol businessman (1994-96), the general director of the Vinnytsia association of alcohol and liquor industries "Podillyaspirt" (1996-98), and then the chairman of the Vinnytsia regional council. The head of the family himself rose through the alcohol trade, and with his father's alcohol money, his scandalous son, Igor Kaletnik, made a rapid career in the Vinnytsia customs service in the 90s. In 2010, Kaletnik Jr. rose to the rank of chairman of the State Customs Service of Ukraine, becoming the embodiment of the corruption that reigns within it.
Grigory Kaletnik
And dad had a lot of money: according to episodes of criminal cases from the late 90s known to Skelet.Org , never brought to a conclusion, the state budget losses from the Vinnytsia "liquor mafia" schemes alone in 1998-99 amounted to approximately $100 million! In just two years! How much alcohol was "sold on the side" in previous years, how much everyone made from lemon balm schemes and barter transactions, remains a mystery – because Kaletnik and other high-ranking officials involved took great care to ensure their names were not associated with the Vinnytsia liquor mafia. And yet, the truth is, even 20 years later.
In 1996, Anatoliy Matviyenko, then co-chair of the New Ukraine political union and simultaneously head of the newly formed People's Democratic Party, was appointed acting head of the Vinnytsia Regional State Administration by decree of Kuchma. Three reasons were known for Kuchma's appointment of Matviyenko to the oblast. First, Matviyenko was literally Kuchma's wingman at the time, supporting all his initiatives, and in 1996, he had provided significant support for the presidential draft Constitution of Ukraine. Second, Leonid Danilovych needed a pro-presidential party, which the People's Democratic Party was intended to be, and Matviyenko promised him many votes in Vinnytsia Oblast. And he kept his promises: with the help of Dombrovsky and Tatusyak, Vinnytsia residents were driven into the ranks of the NDP wholesale, and in the 1998 elections, the party in the region “pulled” as much as 12,4% (the highest result in Ukraine), while on average it received only 5,01%.
Thirdly, there were rumors that Kuchma instructed Matviyenko to "restore order" within the region's alcohol mafia, expelling those deemed "unnecessary" and organizing kickbacks to the presidential election funds of 1998 and 1999. Of course, the question of Matviyenko's ties to the Vinnytsia alcohol mafia before 1996 remains open. It is only rumored that he had dealings with both the "distillers" themselves and the vodka producers who purchased their alcohol. Which ones exactly is unknown, but it may have been related to money laundering—enormous amounts of money. However, in 1996, the new regional governor, Matviyenko, and the then-newly appointed general director of Podillaspirt, Kaletnik, took matters into their own hands. Another interesting point: the Poroshenko family's first sugar refinery was Kryzhopolsky, the largest in Ukraine, producing both sugar and molasses. And it was privatized in 1998, right at the height of alcohol corruption, when one of the most profitable schemes was producing unregistered "illegal" alcohol from "illegal" molasses. So the future president made money from more than just sweets.
Interestingly, the newly appointed governor, Matviyenko, chose Nikolai Chumak as his deputy – a long-time acquaintance and confidant, the former first secretary of the Trostyanets district committee of the LKSMU, and then the district committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, head of the Trostyanets district from 1991-94, who, like Kaletnik, was also involved in business from 1994-96.
During his two years in power, Matviyenko carried out a massive purge of personnel, installing his acquaintances in key positions. But in the conflict of interests, and above all in the war for alcohol, Matviyenko's team encountered a contradiction in the form of Vinnytsia Mayor Dmytro Dvorkis (1992-2000), who had his own support in the region and later found it in Kyiv—albeit unsuccessfully. When Dvorkis secured the support of Pavlo Lazarenko in 1997, and Matviyenko delivered a speech at the NDP congress against the corrupt prime minister, Lazarenko's downfall was only days away. Nevertheless, Dvorkis was even elected in 1998 under the banner of Hromada, illegally retaining both his mayoral post and his mandate as a member of parliament. But after Lazarenko's arrest, he defected to the SDPU (U) faction, under the wing of Viktor Medvedchuk , who appointed Dvorkis as regional governor for several months. This only further antagonized Petro Poroshenko, who was then falling out with Medvedchuk (possibly for this reason as well). And in November 1999, Dvorkis was shot by hitmen from the gang of Lviv crime boss Vova "Morda " (Didukh), hired by his opponents. At the time, the media reported that the primary motive for the assassination attempt was the fight for alcohol, followed by the mayoral race—which, again, had to be wrested from under Dvorkis in the fight for alcohol.
Dmitry Dvorkis
This conflict became truly momentous, as it was during it that the so-called "Vinnytsia clan" emerged from among Dvorkis's opponents. Its ranks today include many of the participants in those events: the Groysman family , Volodymyr Kistion , Andriy Revu , Oleksandr Dombrovsky, and others. Anatoly Matviyenko, of course, could have led this clan, but at the very end of the 90s, he left Vinnytsia for Kyiv to pursue high-level politics. The more active Petro Poroshenko, whose father became close friends with Borys Groysman, the father of the future mayor of Vinnytsia and later the future prime minister of Ukraine, soon became the main patron of the "Vinnytsia clan" in Kyiv. Nevertheless, Anatoly Matviyenko remains a figure close to the clan, being closely connected (including through shared business) to many of the "Starovynnytsia clan" members, whom he knew from the 80s and 90s.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Anatoly Matvienko: Komsomol members of the Vinnytsia clan. PART 2
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