It's no secret that the official lustration campaign has been a dead letter. And here everything is clear: the authorities' goals for this legally illiterate and highly corrupt act have already been achieved, and there's no point in dredging up the skeletons in the closet any longer. Everyone who needed to have received a pardon and continued serving the new leadership. Anyone who held lucrative positions but couldn't pay for them was fired. Moreover, in both cases, proximity to the "bloody regime" played no role.
Incidentally, something similar already happened under President Yushchenko, who also "lustrated" 25 officials, with the same result: corrupt order was replaced by corrupt chaos. Local elections demonstrated that Party of Regions membership was little more than a pass to bureaucratic upward mobility, just like the Our Ukraine card before it, and now the Solidarity badge. And in this regard, the end of the lustration campaign is actually somewhat of a positive. The country is in such dire straits that completely destroying any system of managing personnel through a cavalry-fueled chaos is sheer madness, even if done with the best of intentions.
But, be that as it may, regarding the Ukrainian bureaucracy, which always supports the current government until its seat teeters, there is a group of individuals who must be subject to mandatory lustration and investigation by the competent authorities. These are officials who are members of the Yanukovych family's organized criminal-political group (OCPG). At various times, they infiltrated the state apparatus to provide administrative support to the businesses of "Papa" and his family. Many of these moles survived their boss's political downfall undisturbed and today hold positions of responsibility within the state apparatus. And the big question is—in whose interests are these interests at stake?
For example, Maksym Valeriyovych Pampura, head of the Donetsk regional office of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, passed all the lustration commissions. This is surprising, considering that this official's direct ties to Oleksandr Yanukovych's inner circle are no secret. He began his career at the Donetsk regional office in the early 2000s as a leading specialist in the department of small-scale privatization and unfinished construction projects.
Who he “helped” in this small but profitable position will become clear below.
In 2010, just after Viktor Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine, Mr. Pampura unexpectedly headed the regional branch of the State Property Fund. And in 2013, his name was already involved in a high-profile coal scandal: with his active support, in 2012-2013, Oleksandr Yanukovych's companies were privatized, effectively stripping the state of the assets of five mining and processing plants in the Donetsk region—Komsomolskaya, Uzlovskaya, Krasnaya Zvezda, Ukraina, and Rossiya. Experts claim that the economic value of these unprofitable enterprises lay in the fact that they were used to legalize the flow of coal from the so-called "kopankas" (a nod to Luhansk's "kopanka princess," Natalia Korolevska). It's worth remembering that before the regime's collapse, the Yanukovych family's income from the coal business alone reached 7 billion hryvnias. per year (almost $1 billion). And there's every reason to believe this wasn't an isolated incident. After his father's accession to the throne on Bankova Street, Sasha the Stomatologist seized a huge amount of state property in the Donetsk region—land, real estate, and businesses. Thanks to his loyal Pampura, it all turned out to be "under the table."
However, one shouldn't exaggerate the level of Maksym Pampura's personal contacts with members of the presidential family. He's a minor player here. He was and remains a direct "connection" with the Family's second-tier businessmen. The fact is that Maksym Valerievich's brother, Andriy Valerievich Pampura, has served for many years as vice president of the infamous DMS corporation in the Donetsk region, whose owner is believed to be Andriy Alyosha, an accomplice of the Dentist. However, it is believed that the company, which engages in everything from scrap metal sales and construction to security services and advertising, is also in fact owned by the Yanukovychs. DMS is primarily known in the region for its corporate raiding. It is responsible for a series of illegal seizures of businesses, buildings, and land in Donetsk, including such lucrative targets as Vetkovsky Plant LLC and the sports ground on Blvd. Pushkin Street 2, the nightclub building at 34 Ekonomichna Street, the DonbassTransStroy Trust. Andrey Pampura shares not only a business relationship with his namesake, but also a long-standing friendship. They were classmates – they graduated together from the Donetsk Law Institute of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine and were involved in "sports" together. Incidentally, Andrey Alyosha is the chairman of the Donetsk regional organization of the Hand-to-Hand Combat Federation of Ukraine. But more on that "hobby" below.
The media usually associates Alyosha's rise to fame with Yuri Yenakievsky (Ivanyushchenko), who for many years closely "collaborated" with Donetsk Governor Yanukovych in criminal matters and, after his presidential triumph, became the Family's chief raider. However, when Yenakievsky's star began to decline and Sasha the Stomatolog assumed the leading role in the presidential clan's business, Andrey Alyosha defected to his wing. Alyosha's closeness to the Family is best illustrated by the scandalous seizure and destruction of the historic building of Ukraine's oldest winery, the Magarach Institute, in the village of Otradnoye near Yalta, and the expansion of President Yanukovych's "Tea House" onto its premises. Having effectively become an "advisor" to the institute's director on the Family's orders, Andrey Alyosha orchestrated its ruin in a surprisingly short period of time. And literally six months later, he was promoted. On the eve of the new... In 2014, replacing the jailed crime boss Yevhen Anisimov, he was appointed the Party of Regions' overseer for the Zaporizhzhia region—formally, an advisor to Zaporizhzhia Governor Oleksandr Peklushenko. And, incidentally, despite all the events of the next two years, he never left Zaporizhzhia.
Under the new government, his name has been linked to a number of economic scams, including, for example, the defrauding of depositors at the now-liquidated Avtokrazbank, where Andriy Alyosha was one of the beneficiaries for many years. In 2014, funds were deposited into the accounts of Avtokrazbank and Yuzhkombank, which, as is known, belonged to another friend of Oleksandr Yanukovych. Ruslana Tsyplakova, approximately 100 million UAH of funding for participants in the state affordable housing program is in limbo. Andriy Alyosha's name also appeared in the media due to an obviously corrupt contract, according to which, in the fall of 2015, Alyosha's Construction and Consulting Group Basis agreed to renovate the interiors of an empty boarding school in Artemovsk for the resettlement of refugees from the ATO zone (29 rooms!) for 14 million UAH.
Let's not speculate on the assistance the Pampur brothers provide to Andriy Alyosha in organizing this and a host of other frauds. That's a matter for the competent authorities, in particular the recently created Anti-Corruption Bureau. One thing is clear: in the Donetsk region, whose governor, Pavlo Zhebrivsky, has repeatedly declared that he will cleanse the region of the power of the "Donetsk clans," a group of individuals profiting from the state budget—a group from the inner circle of former President Yanukovych, at that—is operating without a trace. Moreover, in 2014, they played a key role in the separatist uprising in Donetsk, of which Sasha Stomatolog was one of the organizers and financiers.
As we've already noted, Andrey Alyosha was until recently the president of the Donetsk Regional Hand-to-Hand Combat Federation. Its training grounds served as a training ground for militants from the Shkval security agency, a combat raider unit within the DMS corporation. Furthermore, the federation was surrounded by numerous former and current Donetsk security service personnel, providing Alyosha with good connections within law enforcement. A dozen criminal cases brought against him have led to no results. It is known for certain that members of the Donetsk FRB were already actively involved in the first assault on the Donetsk Regional State Administration building on March 3, 2014, including neutralizing police guards. Alyosha's deputy in the federation, Yuriy Sivokonenko, also the head of the public association "Union of Donbas Veterans "Berkut," was until recently one of the most active figures in the DPR and even a rival to Zakharchenko in the "elections." As for the DMS corporation's economic activities in militant-controlled territory, there is information that it currently involves coal smuggling into Ukraine and financial fraud. In fact, Andriy Alyosha and his entourage are still operating in Ukraine to organize this trafficking.
Against this backdrop, the list of events carried out by the Donetsk regional branch of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, headed by Maksym Pampura, according to its official website, is pure mockery: cleansing the government and fighting corruption. What a brazen mockery!
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