Do you know what the Ukrainian tax service is undoubtedly the leader in? The number of arrests of its former bosses! It seems that decent people simply don't make it into its leadership. So, when the SBU came after Yevhen Bambizov, who recently headed the Office of Large Taxpayers, it surprised few, and certainly didn't upset anyone. On the contrary, the businessmen who suffered at his hands aren't hiding their gloating and hope that Bambizov will now get everything he deserves. And if law enforcement overlooks anything from his extensive corruption record, they'll certainly be reminded of it!
Yevgeny Bambizov was arrested on November 19, 2019, three days after the arrest of Ukreximbank CEO Oleksandr Gritsenko. Both are suspects in the case of the purchase of the Ukrainian Media Holding, in which many famous people were involved: Sergei Kurchenko, Boris Lozhkin, Petro Poroshenko, Alexander KlimenkoThe case is so complex that Bambizov alone has been charged with five volumes of indictment! But that's only a small part of what's now being brought against the former head of the Office of Large Taxpayers. This department of the tax service works with Ukraine's largest enterprises and businesses, and accounts for up to 60% of all tax revenues to the budget. Therefore, the corrupt officials who worked there weren't just pilfering small change; they were handling hundreds of millions and billions, with the corresponding kickbacks.
A costumed ATO soldier
Evgeny Evgenievich Bambizov was born on September 6, 1980, in Kharkiv. His father, Evgeny Petrovich Bambizov, made his career at the Radiorelay plant, located in the Odesskaya district. The entire family was tied to this enterprise. For example, the apartment in a brick Khrushchev-era building on Gagarin Avenue, where Evgeny Petrovich is registered, was allocated to the Bambizov grandparents back in the 60s. Evgeny Petrovich (born 1957), who joined Radiorelay in the 80s as a young specialist, was immediately given an apartment by the plant in a nine-story panel Brezhnev-era building on Kirgizskaya Street (near the plant). He later gave this apartment to his son, Evgeny Evgenievich, in 1999, where he remained registered until recently.
In the 90s, Yevgeny Petrovich Bambizov rapidly rose through the ranks of a company that had fallen into an economic coma. According to sources Skelet.OrgThis was facilitated by his "entrepreneurial" talent: the plant owned "surplus" real estate that rented well in this very busy area of the city. In 2007, Evgeny Petrovich was mentioned in the media as the plant's deputy director for human resources. In 2017-2018, he filed asset declarations as the company's chief engineer. Now he is described as a retiree, quite comfortably so, enjoying traveling around the world.
Naturally, his father did everything he could to protect his only son. He exempted him from military service and helped him graduate from Kharkiv National University. Interestingly, Bambizov Jr., who had never served in any military service (let alone fought in a war), enjoys donning a military uniform and even lectured on patriotism and the heroic "path of a warrior." For him, it's simply "role-playing," though not entirely for pleasure: the media reported that Bambizov wanted to somehow carve out the status of a combat veteran for himself, claiming he was unofficially in the ATO zone, following his heart's desire. However, it is known that from 2014 to 2019, Yevgeny Bambizov worked diligently and continuously in the civil service, and spent his legal vacations with his family at resorts.
In 2003, Yevgeny Bambizov joined the State Tax Inspectorate (STI) of Kharkiv's Dzerzhinsky (now Shevchenkivsky) District, starting as a lowly inspector but quickly rising through the ranks. By 2004, he had become a senior inspector, in 2005, deputy department head, and a year later, head of the tax audit department. According to sources, Skelet.OrgThis was made possible by his personal relationship with Galina Fedenko, then head of the Dzerzhinsky State Tax Inspectorate. However, there is no definitive opinion about their relationship. Some claim that Bambizov was either friends with Fedenko's daughter, or even courted her. Others claim that he became friends with Galina Mikhailovna herself. It's worth noting that, according to an open database, a certain Roman Parisi (nine years her junior), a graduate of Kharkiv National Medical University and a great fan of the "Russian News Agency," was registered in Fedenko's apartment (on Blukhera Street). His connection to Galina Mikhailovna remains unclear—perhaps she is his older sister, his aunt, or perhaps someone else entirely. In short, in this situation, Yevgeny Bambizov can be considered, at the very least, a friend of the Fedenko family.
Galina Fedenko
At the end of 2006, Bambizov transferred to Poltava. The reasons for this are still unknown, but in Poltava, he quickly rose to the rank of head of the Department for the Collection of Overdue Liabilities of the regional State Tax Inspectorate. However, the position, despite its high pay, proved unprofitable. So, in 2007, he returned to Kharkiv, where Galina Fedenko had just been appointed head of the Specialized State Tax Inspectorate for Large Taxpayers. She immediately hired Bambizov back, first as head of the Legal Entity Audit Department, and then promoted him to her deputy. For the next seven years, Bambizov served as her trusted assistant in shady schemes and corruption. The scale of these schemes is evidenced by the fact that he developed a saying, "I never leave work without 10,000 USD."
Meanwhile, Fedenko herself owed much of her success to the scandalous general. Stanislav Denisyuk, who in 2006 moved from the head of the regional Department of Internal Affairs to the head of the regional State Tax Inspectorate, where he unleashed monstrous corruption. Consequently, Yevgeny Bambizov soon became close with Denisyuk. This later led to the claim that Denisyuk was the one who propelled Bambizov to his position—however, as you can see, this theory is incorrect. Even before Denisyuk moved to the State Tax Inspectorate, the Bambizovs' career was rapidly gaining momentum thanks to Galina Fedenko, who remains largely unmentioned in Yevgeny Bambizov's scandalous biography.
Stanislav Denisyuk
But one more important detail needs to be added to this picture – the then Kharkiv governor Arsen Avakov, under whom Denisyuk carried out this reshuffle and then "boasted" for several years at the helm of the regional tax service. After all, Denisyuk, like his henchmen Zhilin, were well-known to all Kharkiv residents as odious figures, the very same "werewolves in uniform," the de facto founders of the Kharkiv "cop mafia." And Avakov, knowing this well, didn't even try to get Denisyuk removed—no! On the contrary, he "worked very well" with them. Of course, having his own man at the helm of the tax service was crucial for the businessman-governor. And now consider this: as the owner of Basis Bank (liquidated in 2016) and several large companies, Avakov was the very same major taxpayer with whom Galina Fedenko and her loyal deputy, Yevhen Bambizov, personally worked. And judging by the fact that after 2014, Fedenko remained in her position, and Bambizov even got promoted, he and Arsen Borisovich worked together very well...
The "Poor" Publican
After the second Maidan, a wave of so-called lustration swept the country. Officially, it was intended as a mass purge of the authorities and state structures of the corruption that had ravaged them, a move long overdue—and no one disputed it. However, in reality, lustration became a tool for settling political scores and ousting the "Donetsk people" from their positions. Their places were filled by equally odious corrupt officials from other parties and regions—those who declared themselves patriots and donned embroidered shirts or military uniforms to disguise themselves. Among them was Yevhen Bambizov. Despite his direct involvement in the Ukrainian Media Holding case and other schemes, Bambizov successfully passed the lustration process. True, he was forced to leave Kharkiv again, but instead of facing charges and a well-deserved criminal case, Bambizov received a promotion.
Initially, in February 2015, Yevhen Bambizov was "seconded" to Odesa to a similar position as deputy head of the Specialized Tax Inspectorate for Large Taxpayers. There, he witnessed the reform of his agency: the former State Tax Inspectorate, which became the Ministry of Revenue and Duties during the Yanukovych era, was reorganized into the State Fiscal Service (SFS), and its Specialized Tax Inspectorate became the Office of Large Taxpayers. In June 2015, Bambizov was appointed first deputy head of the Odesa Regional Office of the SFS, serving as acting head in his absence.
The new tax chief shocked Odessans with his feigned "poverty." For 2014, he declared only 80 hryvnias in income, an unemployed wife (with 10,5 hryvnias in child support), no vehicle, and a modest apartment (in Kharkiv) measuring 38,7 square meters. According to Bambizov, his father paid for his rented accommodation in Odessa, as the low-income acting tax chief, with his unemployed wife, Kateryna Eduardovna, and two children (now three), didn't even have enough money for food. This, however, didn't stop Bambizov from flaunting new expensive suits at work, wearing a watch worth two annual salaries, and driving "borrowed" expensive foreign cars. In other words, by pretending to be poor, Bambizov went so far as to draw intense public attention. However, he didn't care about the public, as he had powerful patrons behind him. And while the Odesans were just about to express their concerns to him, Bambizov abandoned them and, in early 2016, departed for Kyiv, taking up the high-ranking post of head of the State Fiscal Service's Office of Large Taxpayers.
