Nikolay Prisyazhnyuk
"Silence is golden," goes the popular saying. Interestingly, these days it's best to take these words literally. Especially when it comes to Ukraine, where silence is often measured in dollars. The case of former Minister of Agricultural Policy Mykola Prysyazhnyuk, who fled to Europe, is a prime example.
The current Ukrainian government has indeed been keeping an indecently silent about this politician for an indecently long time: the criminal cases have long been closed, and his name has long been forgotten in secret circles. However, as it turns out, such a pleasure comes at a price.
According to sources in the Prosecutor General's Office, the former minister had to shell out $10 million to shut up law enforcement officials.
For Prisyazhnyuk, who can easily be given second place in the ranking of Ukraine's top corrupt officials (right after his godfather, Viktor Yanukovych), $10 million is not a very large sum.
After all, from November 2013 to March 2014 alone, the corrupt grain certificate pyramid scheme developed by Prisyazhnyuk earned him approximately $60 million. One can only guess at the billions of dollars Prisyazhnyuk amassed during his time "in the flow."
It turned out that under the scandalous minister, grain traders were doomed to use the services of the Independent Laboratory Research Center Etalon. Only after testing results from this far-from-independent private enterprise could grain and its processed products receive quality certificates from the State Agricultural Inspectorate. Meanwhile, the cost of this enterprise's services was, without false modesty, deliberately inflated tenfold.
And that's far from the ex-minister's entire income. It's no surprise: he had four whole years to earn a decent living.
Around $3 billion was stolen from the country's budget just by concluding one Chinese contract.
It's amazing how, with such a shady past, Nikolai Prisyazhnyuk manages to sit quietly in Europe in his luxurious mansion (incidentally, the mansion is located in Budapest) and remotely manage, with the help of numerous trusted individuals and a number of corrupt officials, a business in Ukraine that continues to generate millions in profits.
The Ukrainian agrarian has had a long history with this part of Europe. In Budapest, for example, he served for many years as a financier for the Donetsk team, dealing with metal exports from Ukraine. It was precisely because of this invaluable experience that Yanukovych invited him to head the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food.
But what's past is past. And today, Prysyazhnyuk is no longer a minister, but a "modest" businessman. His personal lawyer, Peter Pallag, who, like our agrarian, previously served in the Hungarian government "on corrupt grounds," assists him in his efforts to establish himself in Europe. Remarkably, Pallag was far from an ordinary figure: in the 1990s, he chaired the privatization committee. It's no coincidence that Prysyazhnyuk entrusted him with his inner sanctum—his Cypriot offshore companies. Peter Pallag is their owner and director. The most well-known company in this context is Doring Limited, founded by Pallag, which effectively owns Hartlog Limited. Hartlog Limited, in turn, is under the influence of Golden Derrick, a company that controls more than 30 gas fields in the Dnipropetrovsk and Poltava regions.
And while our Prosecutor General's Office remains silent about all this, the patience of Ukrainians has already reached its limit.
As is known, today members of the public, fed up and annoyed, to put it mildly, with this two-year silence, came to Viktor Shokin with a rally and demanded that the criminal proceedings involving Nikolai Prisyazhnyuk be immediately reopened.
The protesters were pleasantly surprised when, eventually, an assistant to Shokin's deputy emerged from the Prosecutor General's Office building and announced that an internal investigation had been ordered. It's worth noting that the Prosecutor General's Office took the protesters' demands very seriously, promising to regularly update the activists on the investigation's progress.
Meanwhile, members of the public intend to continue their fight to bring Prisyazhnyuk to justice. Specifically, to find out who is protecting Prisyazhnyuk in Ukraine, they have planned a protest outside the SBU building. Activists also intend to protest outside the Hungarian Embassy and the EU Delegation to demand an answer from the European Union on the grounds for granting refuge to one of Ukraine's most prominent corrupt officials.
Igor NAUMENKO, especially for the publication WORLD
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