Nikolai Gerasimyuk
An accomplice of bandits and embezzlers goes unpunished.
Yesterday it was announced that one of Ukraine's most notorious embezzlers, Vyacheslav Suprunenko, had been removed from Interpol's international wanted list. The ex-son-in-law of now former Kyiv mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi (Read more about it in the article Leonid Chernovetsky: How "Lenya Kosmos" robbed Kyiv and moved to Georgia) together with his father-in-law, they stole assets of the capital's community worth approximately 10 billion US dollars - enterprises, land, real estate...
The criminal organization, whose brains were L. Chernovetskyi, and whose executioners were led by Vyacheslav Suprunenko, Kyiv City Council Secretary Oles Dovhyi, and Chernovetskyi's deputy Irena Kilchytska. The criminal group included up to 30 individuals from close relationships with the four—relatives, classmates, fellow students, etc.
President Viktor Yushchenko, in his traditional nirvana, turned a blind eye to the large-scale thefts, committed publicly and with particular cynicism—Yushchenko had long-standing business ties with Chernovetsky. The leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Security Service of Ukraine, observing the head of state's attitude toward the criminal, also did nothing to restore the rule of law: under Yushchenko, everyone stole.
When Viktor Yanukovych became president, the new leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs took a hard look at the embezzlers. This wasn't because the twice-convicted Yanukovych respected the law. It was because the capital's stolen assets caught the eye of the "Donetsk gang." Chernovetskyi's gang went on the run. Chernovetskyi himself settled in Georgia near Batumi. Vyacheslav Suprunenko, by then divorced from Chernovetskyi's daughter but still holding onto his fortune, hid in Europe. Oles Dovhyi, whose father, a seasoned corrupt official, was friends with the Party of Regions and Yanukovych's inner circle, "bought" his son out of criminal prosecution, and he was left alone. However, Oles Dovhyi is a key accomplice in the crimes of L. Chernovetskyi's criminal group, as it was his signature that appeared on the fabricated Kyiv City Council resolutions.
The Revolution of Dignity would seem to offer ample opportunity for those in uniform to swiftly punish those responsible for Chernovetsky's gang and return assets to the Kyiv community, including those that, after a series of manipulations, ended up in the hands of Rinat Akhmetov. But alas.
As it turned out yesterday, Vyacheslav Suprunenko, one of the key figures in the "Chernovetsky case," was removed from the international wanted list back in late May 2014.
The request for removal from the Ukrainian Interpol Bureau came from the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office, which was then headed by the newly appointed (post-Maidan) Kyiv City Prosecutor Mykola Gerasimyuk (pictured). Without his approval, this would have been impossible. Nor would it have been possible without the approval of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (the Minister traditionally signs off on Interpol requests).
Nikolai Gerasimyuk joined the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office from the State Executive Service, where he served as deputy chairman and made a distinguished career during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych.
N. Gerasimyuk joined the Kyiv City Prosecutor's Office in March 2014. By May, the prosecutor's office had already dropped its prosecution of Vyacheslav Suprunenko, sending a "letter of happiness" to Interpol stating that it had no charges against the thief. Instead of reviving the "Chernovetskyi case,"
Incidentally, the appointment of N. Herasymyuk as Kyiv prosecutor resulted in a scandal—representatives of the Right Sector arrived to picket the Prosecutor General's Office (GPU) over the matter. They demanded the immediate removal of N. Herasymyuk, who held one of the key positions in the state's law enforcement system under Yanukovych. The new prosecutor general Oleg Makhnitsky was forced to accept the activists, but did not fulfill their demands.
Incidentally, it was N. Gerasimyuk who transferred the notorious prosecutor of the capital's Podolsk district, Serhiy Nechyporenko, son-in-law of S. Kivalov, to the Kyiv prosecutor's office. Nechyporenko was tasked with investigating the murders, beatings, and torture of Maidan activists, which had been ordered by the Prosecutor General's Office. Nechyporenko spent a whole year faking an investigation, effectively sabotaging it, until the Prosecutor General's Office took over the cases amid scandal.
As soon as Makhnitsky was replaced as Prosecutor General by Police General Vitaliy Yarema, Mykola Gerasimyuk was immediately hired by the Prosecutor General's Office as Deputy Prosecutor General! This happened on June 25, 2014.
In this position, N. Gerasimyuk – apparently under the patronage and in collusion with Vitaliy Yarema – essentially staged a “sale” of criminal cases against V. Yanukovych’s inner circle.
Thus, on March 22, 2014, the Serious Fraud Office, under the supervision of the Attorney General (UK), opened a money laundering investigation, as part of which, on April 16 and May 28, 2014, a British court seized $23,5 million in funds belonging to Mykola Zlochevsky (Yanukovych's Minister of Ecology) held at BNP Paribas. Having received the relevant materials from the UK, on August 5, 2014, the Prosecutor General's Office opened proceedings under the article "illicit enrichment on an especially large scale."
N. Zlochevsky began seeking avenues through the Prosecutor General's Office, while simultaneously challenging the seizure of funds in the UK. The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine was dragging its feet, providing no assistance to its British counterparts. On December 2, 2014, investigator Andriy Kravets wrote a letter to Zlochevsky's lawyers declaring their client's innocence. Even then, the Prosecutor General's Office had already opened proceedings against him for illegal enrichment and was gathering materials for the case. It was this letter, presented in London, that allowed Zlochevsky to lift the seizure of millions and move them out of the UK. After all, the letter was received on December 3, 2014, just in time for the start of the London hearings on lifting the seizure of the frozen assets.
What does N. Gerasimyuk have to do with this? He was clearly overseeing the process of N. Zlochevsky's "exoneration," because on December 3, 2014, the investigator signed a "letter of happiness" for Zlochevsky's lawyers, and on December 4, as soon as the letter was sent to Britain, First Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Gerasimyuk personally transferred Zlochevsky's case from the Prosecutor General's Office to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. This was a purely technical move—a common practice to "hide" a criminal case. If someone conscientious in the prosecutor's office had suddenly decided to rectify the situation with this case, give it proper direction, and provide materials to his colleagues in the UK—tracing the case through the bureaucratic hierarchy would have taken at least a week. Plenty of time for Zlochevsky to disperse his corrupt millions across offshore companies.
Let's emphasize: oversight of the investigation at the Ministry of Internal Affairs at that time was the job description of another then-Deputy Prosecutor General, Viktor Shokin. Shokin could not have been unaware of what Mykola Gerasimyuk was doing.
Nikolai Gerasimyuk's biography, connections, and patrons should have aroused the professional interest of Ukraine's intelligence agencies. But they haven't.
The sabotage of Ukrainian law enforcement shocked their foreign handlers. On December 10, the British issued a warning that the seizure of Zlochevsky's funds was about to be lifted. In response, Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema instructed Gerasimyuk and Shokin to resolve the issue of requesting legal assistance from British law enforcement in the Zlochevsky case by December 25, 2014. However, by that date, this pair of criminal prosecutors had done nothing.
The scheme was completed by N. Gerasimyuk's decision to resign voluntarily—the corresponding report from the First Deputy Head of the Prosecutor General's Office is dated December 22, 2014. Although, according to the law on the cleansing of power, N. Gerasimyuk should have been dismissed long before this date, Prosecutor General V. Yarema stubbornly "ignored" this legal inconsistency.
An important detail: even after his resignation, N. Herasymyuk was not subject to lustration. This is apparently due to the fact that N. Herasymyuk's meteoric rise, beginning in 2002, was linked to the patronage of very influential individuals. Not, however, the Dmytro Firtash-Serhiy Lyovochkin group, as the media erroneously portrays. Rather, it was Viktor Medvedchuk, whose appointment as head of President Leonid Kuchma's administration "coincided" with N. Herasymyuk's transfer from the provinces to the Prosecutor General's Office.
Let's remember: it was under V. Medvedchuk's leadership of the Presidential Administration from 2002 to 2004 that the leadership of Ukraine's security agencies was heavily "packed" with protégés of the Russian special services. It is also a fact that the career of N. Gerasimyuk's boss, Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema, is closely intertwined with those involved in the case of Igor Goncharov's "werewolf gang" and the murder of journalist Giya Gongadze. Judging by the nature of their actions, organization, tasks, and the extent of their cover from justice, these "gangs" were in fact sabotage groups of one of the Russian Federation's special services. They destabilized the political situation in Ukraine, assassinated prominent political figures in our country, and simultaneously moonlighted as contract killers of businessmen. V. Yarema held senior positions in the Organized Crime Control Department and personally knew many of these gang members.
Therefore, it is not surprising to the author that Nikolai Gerasimyuk, directly responsible for the collapse of the Prosecutor General's Office's work on the criminal prosecution of embezzlers from Viktor Yanukovych's entourage, was invited to work by Viktor Yarema and enjoyed his direct patronage.
…The story of Zlochevsky’s “laundering” is not the last one in N. Gerasimyuk’s biography.
This same official personally exonerated "Yura Yenakievsky"—Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, the "right-hand man" of V. Yanukovych, one of the "liquidators" of the Donetsk organized crime group "Lux"—from criminal prosecution abroad.
The lifting of the freeze on former MP Yuriy Ivanyushchenko's accounts in the EU was facilitated by a letter from the Prosecutor General's Office stating that he had not been prosecuted in Ukraine, had not been placed on a wanted list, and was not a party to any criminal proceedings.
And this despite the fact that it was Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a recent "militant" of the "Lux" organized crime group, who was one of the organizers of the Kyiv terror brought in by "titushki" (illegal thugs) from Donbass—essentially armed criminals.
In the spring of 2014, Ivanyushchenko, while formally still a member of the Verkhovna Rada but hiding in Russia, sent a letter to Prosecutor General V. Yarema asking whether he was "subject to any criminal proceedings" in Ukraine. He promptly received a reply: no.
A response to Verkhovna Rada deputy Serhiy Leshenko from the Prosecutor General's Office, explaining who, when, and how exonerated Yury Ivanyushchenko from international sanctions.
This indulgence for Yury Ivanyushchenko, dated September 1, 2014, was signed by First Deputy Head of the Prosecutor General's Office Mykola Gerasimyuk. Apparently, he took into account the importance of his "client" and understood that none of his subordinates would sign such a "paper." Thus, the bandit, murderer, and embezzler not only remains free but was also able to secure his assets.
So, Nikolai Gerasimyuk is directly involved in the removal of V. Suprunenko, N. Zlochevsky, and Yu. Ivanyushchenko from the shadows. He is directly involved in the collapse of the cases of murder, beating, and torture of Maidan activists. He is subject to lustration, but has escaped it. He is subject to criminal prosecution, but has escaped prosecution. In all these cases, with the exception of the "pure side job" in the case of V. Suprunyuk, there is interest from the Russian special services, but no interest from the SBU.
Today, Nikolai Gerasimyuk is posing as some kind of publicly misunderstood retired “thief in law,” giving interviews in which he praises V. Yarema and explains why the fugitive Andrei Portnov is completely right (Read more about it in the article Andrey Portnov: A Raider's Story). He's obviously not strapped for cash. Basically, the guy's waiting for a new government, one in which the services of people like him will be in demand again.
And he certainly doesn't expect SBU employees to come to him: the "authorities" of the previous government, with biographies of agents of the Russian special services, are invulnerable to this comical "office".
Nikolai Gerasimyuk laughs in our faces: betrayal of the Motherland is a profitable business!
Konstantin Ivanchenko, Argument
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