Gennady Vatsak
At first glance, Mogilev-Polsky appears to be an unremarkable provincial town. But it's located right on the Ukrainian-Moldovan border and has long had a reputation as a major gateway for alcohol smuggling. Consequently, local corrupt and criminal clans have been battling for control of this gateway for years. During this time, their leaders and henchmen have traded their leather jackets for business suits, and then for patriotic embroidered shirts. They've been elected mayors and members of parliament—but at their core, they remain bandits and "werewolves in uniform."
The residential high-rises of Mohyliv-Podilskyi stand just fifty meters from the border crossing. And beneath the nearby Dniester River, "alcohol pipelines" are laid , through which tankers pump "firewater." However, alcohol isn't the only contraband item in this region. According to numerous Skelet.Org sources , drug trafficking routes are already being established there, on such a scale that they could soon simply eclipse the traditional local alcohol "business." It's no wonder that passions and even bloodshed have been running high in this city recently.
Mogilev-Polsky: Residential areas begin immediately after the border crossing
True, local clans try to keep their dirty linen private, so information about these events usually didn't spread beyond regional media. And so, for all Ukrainians, Mohyliv-Podilskyi remains a small provincial town where seemingly nothing is happening. And where, in 2019, Gennadiy Vatsak, with his impeccable reputation as a local confectioner businessman and the looks of a Hollywood action hero, was elected to the Verkhovna Rada. However, this man is not as simple as his hometown!
Gennady Vatsak: Family organized crime group
Gennady Anatolyevich Vatsak was born on February 9, 1972, in Mogilev-Podolsky (Vinnytsia Oblast). His official biography is very laconic, more like a resume: he studied, worked, ran for office, and received awards. It seems like there's nothing to complain about! And it's unlikely Skelet.Org would have paid attention to such an exemplary businessman and member of parliament if not for numerous publications in the Vinnytsia press about his "gangster methods" of running his business. As the saying goes, there's no smoke without fire! And the search for this fire allowed us to learn a lot of interesting things not only about the life of Vatsak and his circle, but also about the shady dealings going on in Mogilev-Podolsky.
Let's start with his biography. There's no information about his parents, but according to his neighbors, Gennady Vatsak came from a simple family, even by provincial standards. At school, he wasn't particularly keen on learning, preferring physical education to geometry. So, to many people's surprise, in 1987, after completing eighth grade, he entered the Mogilev-Podolsky Medical College (now a medical college). After graduating, he avoided conscription (a fake certificate?) and worked as a paramedic at a children's hospital until 1994. Then, suddenly, he ditched his stethoscope and thermometers and went into the food service industry, working as a waiter at a restaurant for another five years. Finally, in 2002, Vatsak became the founder and director of the Vatsak Confectionery House (EDRPOU 42796845, re-registered in 2019). In 2010, he was elected to the Vinnytsia Regional Council as a member of the Batkivshchyna party, re-elected in 2015 as a member of the BPP party, and in 2019, as an independent candidate, he won a seat in the Verkhovna Rada. That's it, really!
And now about what's never written about in commissioned articles about the brilliant and hardworking owner of the Vatsak confectionery factory. For some reason, they keep silent about the fact that Vatsak's closest confidant (well, aside from his family) is the nearly permanent mayor of Mogilev-Podolsky, Petro Petrovich Brovko (the city's mayor from 1994 to 2006 and from 2011 to 2020). He's been close since at least the early 90s. However, local residents say Gennady Vatsak has been friends with the Brovko family since their school days, in the mid-80s. It was then that Petro Brovko and his brothers, Viktor and Valery, formed a family "brigade," which began with shell games and rose through the extortion of local entrepreneurs. The Mogilev residents who told this story also mentioned the code phrase “Ivan Ivanovich,” used by Brovko’s “brigade.”
Petr Brovko
Gena Vatsak started out as a young "snooper" in the Brovko brothers' gang, but he dreamed of becoming a tough "fighter." So he began actively training first in boxing, then in the then-fashionable kickboxing, and spent hours at the gym. The members of the Brovko gang were very young, and therefore were more interested in American action films than in domestic gangster romance. They were so into it that Pyotr Brovko and Gennady Vatsak still sport the "Schwarzenegger" haircut (also known as the "flattop"), once the signature style of their "brigade."
It was Petr Brovko, who himself graduated from the same school in 1978, who advised (and helped) Vatsak to enroll in medical college. Perhaps a deep knowledge of the sciences wasn't in great demand at this educational institution! After graduating, Vatsak was actually listed as a paramedic, and then a waiter—because in reality, he was performing a completely different job for the Brovko brothers. Incidentally, he was listed as a waiter at one of the establishments controlled by Petr Brovko. Apparently, it was the very same one near which an attempt was made to blow up Brovko on November 7, 1999. However, the clumsy execution of the bombing sparked persistent rumors in the city that he had simply staged the assassination attempt to gain the image of an anti-corruption fighter and free state security. The latter had a number of advantages over his "boys," and Brovko needed them for protection from rival groups who wanted to wrest the mayor's seat from him and control over the flow of goods—primarily, alcohol smuggling.
In fact, the story of the rise of a local "authority" who extorted money from "suckers" and "businessmen" to the mayor's office is quite fascinating. It's just a shame that there's almost no one left to tell it in detail. Petro Brovko was one of the first to understand the importance of Mogilev-Podolskyi as a gateway for smuggling. Moreover, he himself organized numerous trafficking routes, frequently traveling "on business" to neighboring Moldova, and even received Moldovan citizenship in 1994! His second passport was reported back in 2010, leading to scandalous legal proceedings and nearly leading to a re-election, but the Party of Regions, under whose banner he was running at the time, deflected the allegations. In 2015, Brovko's Moldovan passport was brought up again, but he again won the election without a hitch.
Rumor has it that Brovko was appointed mayor in the 90s by "respected people," whom he promised to organize and cover up smuggling operations. Therefore, Brovko's first election in 1994 was practically "uncontested," as all other candidates were simply intimidated by gangsters. From then on, his victory or defeat depended on the support of criminal and corrupt circles.
The mayor's office gave Petro Brovko the opportunity to "privatize" local businesses (almost all of which were bankrupted and sold off between 1994 and 2006), as well as virtually unlimited access to budget funds. He used these funds, for example, to carry out a major renovation of the Smaragd Hotel, framing it as flood restoration. He also registered the Smaragd Hotel and a number of other businesses in the name of his common-law wife, Larisa Andronyuk (later transferred them to his grown sons).
Petr Brovko and Larisa Andronyuk
As for Gennady Vatsak, his youthful dreams came true. Using his fists, he quickly rose to a high position in Brovko's gang, heading its "power squad" in the 90s. By then, they had already moved from handing out beatings to cooperators to seizing businesses and protecting their smuggling operations, so Vatsak and his "boys" were faced with more serious tasks. For this, he was rewarded, receiving a company to feed in 2001, which, with the help of his boss's dirty money and the imagination of his wife, Victoria, he transformed into the Vatsak Confectionery House. They began by processing surplus sugar and molasses, and then moved into making cakes and pastries. It's curious that the entire history of "Vatsak" before 2019 has been practically erased; it was even specifically re-registered (with a charter capital of 1000 hryvnias) to remove previous information from public databases. You must admit, this is quite strange! What secrets are they hiding? Could the rumors that "Vatsak" confectionery products are merely a cover for smuggling schemes, and that certain cakes distributed throughout Ukraine have "special fillings," be more than just empty rumors?
Speaking of Vatsak cakes, the owner of the company spares no expense in directly and covertly promoting them. In 2019, a film crew from the program "Stop Corruption" arrived in Mogilev-Podolskyi to film a report on the illegal sand mining of Kamelot LLC (42663802). This is another Vatsak company, also with a registered capital of just one thousand hryvnia. Meanwhile, journalists became interested in another topic – the appalling quality of Vatsak cakes. Experts found exceeding permissible levels of extremely harmful trans-isomers (which cause cancer and heart problems) in its cakes, as well as a whole host of various microflora capable of causing a host of serious illnesses, from sepsis to meningitis! But instead of establishing basic sanitary standards at his business, the alarmed Vatsak merely tried to remove the report "Gennady Vatsak's Toxic 'Tenderness'" posted on YouTube by StopKor from public access. Thus, taking advantage of Ukrainians' ignorance, Vatsak continued to poison them with his cakes (and their "special filling").
And then, as if staph bacteria in the cream weren't enough, Vacak decided to add coronavirus to the mix! How else could one interpret the fact that, at the height of the second wave of the epidemic, when five people were infected at the Vacak factory , he didn't quarantine the business but ordered it to continue operating. Apparently, it was crucial for him not to disrupt the delivery of his next batch of cakes! And so, workers infected with COVID-19 continued making cakes, squirting coronavirus into them...
Gennady Vatsak, kickboxer and pastry chef
Moreover, judging by the current scandalous publications about Vatsak, he still has certain "titushki" (bosses) at his disposal, who aren't above assaulting even women. It was reported that he controls them as the chairman of the regional kickboxing federation. Well, as is well known, the heads of strength sports federations in Ukraine are often former "brothers"! So in this case, this once again confirms the "unofficial" information about Gennady Vatsak's past.
Hatfields and McCoys, Mogilev Style
In February 2019, the prosecutor's office served the mayor of Mohyliv-Podilskyi with a notice of suspicion of corruption , and a week later, the Vinnytsia City Court placed Petro Brovko under house arrest. It seemed as if his cherished position was shaky. But soon the country's leadership changed hands, Brovko returned to his office, and his case was forgotten—like all previous scandals and investigations. This was greatly facilitated by the new MP, Hennadiy Vatsak, who became his boss's reliable "protector." This, in fact, was precisely why Vatsak's victory in the 2019 parliamentary elections was orchestrated.
This failed attempt to prosecute Petro Brovko was far from the only misadventure he encountered during his long reign in Mogilev-Podolsky. As we noted in the first part of this story, other clans also sought control of the city, so Brovko's position depended largely on his agreements with powerful figures. But sometimes these agreements were disrupted or violated, leading to serious conflicts. Some remained confined to local crime news, while others unfolded in the capital itself. Let's recall a few of them!
Unfortunately, the media hasn't mentioned the turbulent events of 1998-99, when the city teetered on the brink of a criminal war, nor the panic of 2005-2006, when Brovko, having lost his Kyiv patrons, was ousted from the mayor's seat for four years. Someone even deleted articles about the scandal surrounding the Stavisky city market, half of which Petro Brovko literally seized through fraud, falsifying a city council resolution! He then created Stavisky Market LLC (EDRPOU 32354981) from this half and gave it to his 21-year-old son, Denis, for his wedding. He immediately began charging entrepreneurs trading at the market, in addition to rent, 3 hryvnias ($0.60 at the then exchange rate) per square meter (the total area of his half of the market was over a hectare). Those who called these extortions illegal and tried to fight them were persecuted and harassed by bandits from the Brovko clan. For example, local businessman Alexander Tsarenko had his market stall destroyed. crashed the car, intimidated the family.
The crimes of the Brovko clan were covered up not only by the then city prosecutor Gulko (Anatoly Kinakh's godfather), but also by the scandalous prosecutor of the Vinnytsia region Alexander Shmorgun, who was reported to have attempted to have Andriy Bondarenko, the leader of the anti-corruption public movement, committed to a mental hospital. It was thanks to Shmorgun that criminal case No. 06130052, opened for allegedly falsifying the city council's decision to sell the Stavisky market, was subsequently hushed up and forgotten.
The Brovko clan's haste to pocket city property was explained by its sense of loss of power. After the first Maidan, competing families gained power in the city, and in 2006, they promoted Mykhailo Savoliuk, a member of the Our Ukraine political council, to the mayor's seat. He was remembered by Mogilev residents only for the fact that under his leadership, the city budget was so plundered that there wasn't even enough money for street repairs, and Savoliuk himself traveled to Kyiv begging for new subsidies (http://www.golos.com.ua/rus/article/180918). But they wouldn't give him any money because the Brovko clan had then begun supporting the BYuT, and Tymoshenko was prime minister. When power in Kyiv changed again in 2010, and not in Tymoshenko's favor, Brovko immediately reached an agreement with the Party of Regions. And with the help of prosecutor Shmorgun, before the 2010 local elections, he removed Savolyuk from his path, setting the prosecutor's office on him. received a three-year suspended sentence, and Petro Brovko won the election. However, his competitors pulled out a trump card—Brovko's Moldovan citizenship—so Brovko only regained the mayoral seat after several months of legal battles and with the help of his friends from the Party of Regions.
CONTINUED: Gennady Vatsak and Petro Brovko: Smuggling Barons of Vinnytsia. PART 2
Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Org
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