Mikhail Saakashvili
Well-informed sources report that the former president of Georgia, who is pursuing a political career in Ukraine, has become involved with some very suspicious characters.
The "Rukh za ochishchennia" (Movement for Purification) party of the indefatigable Mikheil Saakashvili is moving its office to the "Europa" business center in central Kyiv. As Grom reports, renowned "insider" journalist Alexander Dubinsky wrote this on his Facebook page.
“Judging by the registers, recently Mr. Vladimir Deinega, the general director of Argo Trading Network LLC (which owns, among other things, nine fashion stores on Khreshchatyk), sold his share of the business center, with an area of approximately 300 square meters,” he wrote. “Former partners had the priority right to purchase these areas.” Vladimir Stelmakh "Serhiy Rys' and Serhiy Krivosheya were involved in Ukrinbank. But they refused. The premises were purchased by a certain Boris Vladimirovich Shuba, who may be the son of Volodymyr Shuba, the Dnipropetrovsk regional prosecutor."
Citing his sources, Dubinsky claims that Saakashvili's party will now be located on his premises.
According to media reports, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Prosecutor Volodymyr Shuba died on October 15, 2008. As the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported at the time, during target practice, he was reloading a Saiga hunting rifle and dropped it. The rifle's butt struck the ground and fired. The bullet struck the heart. According to the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Prosecutor's Office, the prosecutor died as a result of an accident.
On October 15, 2008, at approximately 10:00 a.m., Vladimir Shuba, accompanied by his friends—an employee of the Mechnikov Dnipropetrovsk Regional Clinical Hospital and a businessman (whose names have not been disclosed)—arrived at the Berkut sports and entertainment complex, located in the Frunzensky residential complex in Dnipropetrovsk. Vladimir Shuba "came to relax and shoot at targets at the shooting range." "According to the testimony of those nearby, Vladimir Vasilyevich was in a great mood. After firing several excellent shots from his new Saiga carbine, he began to reload. Suddenly, he felt ill and dropped the carbine," a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported.
The rifle's butt struck the ground and fired. The bullet passed through his rib, pierced his heart, and exited through his shoulder, lodging in the shooting gallery ceiling. Vladimir Shuba died instantly.
Officially, law enforcement officials declined to comment on the details of the investigation into the prosecutor's death. "It was an accident. Vladimir Vasilievich died in a tragic accident. We have already prepared an obituary," said Svetlana Chernaya, Senior Assistant to the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Prosecutor.
In Dnipropetrovsk, comments on the death of Volodymyr Shuba were very cautious. He personally oversaw the investigation of all high-profile business conflicts in the region. For virtually his entire tenure as Dnipropetrovsk Oblast Prosecutor, Volodymyr Shuba had a tense relationship with the Privat Group. This culminated in the assassination attempt on one of the group's top managers, Gennady Korban, on March 19, 2006. The following day, Mr. Korban stated that Volodymyr Shuba may have been involved in the assassination attempt.
According to Dubinsky, another odious businessman, Vyacheslav Suprunenko, may be behind the son of the late prosecutor and the owner of Saakashvili's office (Read more: Vyacheslav Suprunenko. The eminence grise of Chernovetskyi's "young team" is returning.), who has long been looking for a way to return to big politics.
Vyacheslav Suprunenko is the son-in-law of the notorious former mayor of the capital, Leonid Chernovetsky, who, by a strange coincidence, until recently tried to build a political career in Saakashvili's homeland.
Vyacheslav Ivanovich was born in June 1976. After studying at the Kyiv Technical School of Transport Construction, he received a higher education at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. As a young man, he and his older brother, Alexander, were arrested by police for "group hooliganism." Since then, he has been listed in the police database as a "malicious hooligan."
In his youth, their father, Ivan Suprunenko, like our former president, stole hats at the train station. It's no surprise that after rising to a leadership position, he retained his thieving tendencies. Ivan Suprunenko, having assumed the post of deputy section chief of the Kyiv Reserve Conductor Section, based at the Kyiv Passenger Station, used corporate raiding to gain control over the vast Kyiv Reserve Conductor Force (approximately 4,000 personnel). By intimidating his subordinates, he effectively forced them to work for him. Anyone who wanted to continue working as a conductor was required to bring him substantial bribes. It's said that the notorious crime boss Vakhtang Ubiriya, known among gangsters as "Vakha," helped Suprunenko intimidate and control the conductors.
The father's criminal exploits helped the Suprunenko family amass a substantial start-up capital, which they used to establish over a dozen interconnected companies. To lend credibility to their businesses, they even brought in foreigners. One of them was Guinean citizen Carlos Nunes (S.A.K. Connection), and the second was naturalized German Gleb Lyubomirsky (Svit Zlagodi and Vostochny Express). Their firms primarily focused on legal services, the sale and lease of premises, and construction. Vostochny Express specialized in wholesale bed linens, while another of their enterprises, Rentex, provided real estate rental and sales services.
Vyacheslav Suprunenko and his family were able to further expand their business after marrying Leonid Chernovetskyi's daughter, Kristina. With the rise of "Lenya Kosmos" and his "young team" to power in Kyiv, a massive land grab began. It was led by key figures in Chernovetskyi's team – Vyacheslav and Oleksandr Suprunenko. Suprunenko Jr., as a member of the Kyiv City Council, became the so-called "gray cardinal" of Chernovetskyi's team. Together with his brother, they were the main initiators of corporate raids and the forced privatization of several hundred state-owned and municipally owned enterprises. In particular, they took control of shares in the municipal enterprises Kyivmlyn, Kyivkhlib, Kyivkhimvolokno, and even a controlling stake in Kyivmiskbud (which, however, they were unable to hold on to – Viktor Yanukovych's team, which replaced Chernovetskyi, prevented them from doing so). Given all these "exploits" in the area of "municipal embezzlement," it's quite strange that Vyacheslav Ivanovich was wanted for an entirely different matter.
In 2005, they, along with Denis Komarnitsky, the head of the Chernovetsky Bloc faction, beat up lawyer Ivan Grantsev, taking from him documents allegedly incriminating them in embezzlement, and a large sum of money, the total of which, according to media reports, amounted to approximately $20.
The incident occurred in the premises of the Bureau of Technical Inventory, where Grantsev intended to register the ownership of the Kniga company (formerly the Oktyabr factory). Representatives of the "young team," Komarnitsky and Suprunenko, were also competing for this same enterprise. Vyacheslav Ivanovich ultimately regretted his ambition to acquire this enterprise—it turned out that Ivan Grantsev was a business partner of Andriy Portnov (a close associate of Yanukovych, who once served as deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine). Read more about it in the article Andrey Portnov: A Raider's Story).
During the years when Chernovetskyi's position was strong, the case was hushed up. But with Viktor Yanukovych's rise to power and the appointment of Viktor Pshonka as Prosecutor General in 2011, the case was reopened (apparently, the vindictive Andriy Portnov never forgets old grievances). Following the investigation, Komarnitskyi was arrested and given a suspended sentence of six years. Suprunenko, however, was forced to flee abroad, where he spent more than three years enjoying the stolen assets. Incidentally, in that same year, 2011, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) sent materials to the prosecutor's office regarding the illegal seizure of Kyiv municipal property by Vyacheslav Suprunenko's entities. The aforementioned enterprises, Kyivmlyn and Kyivmiskbud, as well as Kyivvodokanal and Khreshchatyk Bank, were implicated in the case. According to the investigation, the companies artificially lowered the value of their own shares through additional issues, after which the Kyiv authorities "voluntarily" transferred them to the businessmen. Notably, all such transactions were conducted through the Novy Region company, owned by the Suprunenkos.
An interesting coincidence: Vyacheslav Suprunenko's name disappeared from the wanted list immediately after Andrei Portnov fled to Moscow, from where he is suing the Ukrainian authorities in European courts over sanctions imposed on him at the request of the current Ukrainian government.
In topic: Vyacheslav Suprunenko. The eminence grise of Chernovetskyi's "young team" is returning.
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