Is Gennady Vovk planning to revive corruption schemes at Ukrposhta?

A few days ago, a report surfaced online that a certain Gennadiy Vovk was returning to work at Ukrposhta. It's unclear what position he'll be appointed to, but his future boss is apparently completely unfamiliar with his work history.

Gennady Vovk

The fact is that wherever Gennady Vovk worked, his activities always ended in major scandals and criminal cases. He even managed to become one of the subjects of the acclaimed book "Pharmrynok: Recruiting and Promotion Gangs," which devotes many pages to his fraudulent activities and details his work for pharmaceutical companies involved in drug distribution.

Gennady Vovk was born in Artemivsk, Donetsk Oblast. In 2004, he graduated from the Kharkiv Pharmaceutical University with a degree in pharmacist. He then worked as a pharmacist at a pharmacy in Slavyansk. In 2006, he became a regional manager at the pharmaceutical company Ranbaxy. By 2007, Vovk was managing the company's medical representatives—personal salespeople who promote medications to doctors and pharmacists. Vovk set unrealistic quotas for the medical representatives in order to reduce their salaries. He also required them to enter the company car's mileage at the start and end of the workday into the CRM system daily, setting fuel limits that made it impossible to meet the quota.

Vovk fined those who failed to meet his fantastical plans, and some were not paid at all. Moreover, only a small portion of their salaries was paid officially—the rest was paid in envelopes. Thus, the substantial fines from the envelopes ended up in Vovk's pockets.

In 2008, Gennady Valerievich was hired as Deputy Chairman of the Board for Marketing at the Biopharma plant. At that time, Biopharma did not have its own external service, and drug promotion was conducted through the outsourced pharmaceutical marketing firms Pharmaliance and Pharmlink. These firms served Biopharma as tax evasion, money laundering, and cash-out tools. Behind these firms were criminal elements collaborating with criminal underworld figures who also laundered money through dirty businesses masquerading as private investigations and expediting customs procedures—such as racketeering, debt collection, and the physical intimidation of journalists and lawyers, among other activities. Vovk ordered payments to Pharmaliance and Pharmlink for supposedly provided marketing services to promote biopharmaceuticals, and the management of Pharmaliance and Pharmlink cashed the money, keeping some for themselves and giving the rest to Gennady Vovk. Vovk pocketed the remaining portion, which should have gone in envelopes to pay the salaries of medical representatives employed (officially or unofficially) by Pharmaliance and Pharmlink. But in reality, medical representatives worked at Farmalyans and Pharmlink for no more than three months, then, having listened to promises of "paydays will be here soon," "oh, we're late with your paycheck being transferred to your card," "everything will be fine and we'll pay your salary soon," and other such nonsense, they ultimately left empty-handed.

No less "glowing" reviews can be found online about Gennady Vovk's work at Namafarm, a company he co-founded:

"Senior manager and acting CEO Vovk unfairly fires employees and cheats them out of pay. During their employment, salaries are paid with long delays, and they are constantly fed "breakfasts." Many managers have already left due to a lack of prospects. Salaries have not been paid for the last month of work," "those who worked for Namafam worked for free. They were paid, even though everyone worked until 9 p.m. The criminal Gennady Vovk, acting CEO, is a repeat offender and scammer who did not pay salaries. He previously worked at the Kyiv Biopharma plant, where he laundered promotional funds through the outsourcing firms Pharmlink and Pharmaliance. Volchar pocketed the money stolen this way, while the employees went without pay and quit," "during my time at Namafarm and when I was fired, Gennady Vovk wanted to cheat me, and not just me, out of pay. G.V. Vovk is a man who holds nothing sacred; meanness and lies are his hallmarks. In my many years, I've never encountered such bastards."

Incidentally, Vova's wife, Nadezhda, who was on maternity leave, was listed as the general director of the Namafarm company, while Gennady himself had been the general director of MedExpo Invest since 2009.

Pharmacist Vovk would have continued selling medications, cheating medical representatives out of payroll, fending off the prosecutor's office and tax authorities, and collecting negative reviews about himself online, but fate, in the person of Oksana Plotnikova, unexpectedly offered Gennady Vovk the position of director of the courier delivery department in May 2012, and less than a month later, deputy director of trade at Ukrposhta.

Oksana Plotnikova

Gennady Vovk knew Oksana Plotnikova, who had been appointed acting CEO of Ukrposhta a couple of months earlier, from their work at the Biopharma plant. Plotnikova was his boss there and chaired the plant's board. The plant's owner, Infrastructure Minister Kostyantyn Yefimenko, was the one who appointed Plotnikova to head Ukrposhta.

Until 2012, pharmacist Gennady Vovk had no idea about the specifics of postal services, but together with Plotnikova, he went full steam ahead at Ukrposhta. The prosecutor's office is still unraveling his corruption schemes. Thanks to this partnership, Ukrposhta introduced centralized trade, and the General Directorate sent clear instructions to the regional directorates on what to sell and, most importantly, with whom. The directorates' profits immediately plummeted, but the couple's personal profits skyrocketed.

This wasn't surprising, since a percentage of profit (at least 30%) was factored into the price of the goods sold. Furthermore, Volk (without revealing the details to Plotnikov) introduced a new innovation: in 2012, postal workers were forced to sell expired Citramon and Analgin in villages, even meeting sales targets. Comments like these can be found online: "My sister works as a postal worker, and they're forced to sell expired goods at much higher prices than they cost in stores, and they're forced to write reports for failing to meet sales targets. Not everyone has the decency to foist products on pensioners at twice the store price. When will this end?" Medical representatives once wrote the same things about Volk, calling him the main kingpin of Ukraine's black market pharmaceutical industry.

Another source of income for Vovk and Plotnikova was kickbacks. Suppliers outside their business interests were charged a 10 to 15 percent commission for returning the proceeds from sold goods. This "small" income allowed the modest manager of a state-owned enterprise to upgrade to a luxurious Touareg, quickly buy a luxury apartment in Kyiv, and acquire a 400-square-meter private house within the capital.

And then, such a torrid affair broke out between 30-year-old Gennady Vovk and 42-year-old Oksana Plotnikova that the Ministry of Infrastructure's leadership was forced to fire Plotnikova for "immorality."

However, Vovk's antics impressed the new general director (appointed under Sergei Arbuzov's quota), Konstantin Krivenko, and instead of involving law enforcement, he decided that Vovk's "talents" could serve him well.

In October 2013, a criminal case was opened regarding mass poisonings caused by counterfeit alcohol purchased at Ukrposhta branches. In addition to Ukrposhta's top managers, law enforcement identified First Deputy Minister of Health Oleksandr Kachur as suspects in the case "Concerning the Sale of Substandard Alcohol Disguised as Medicinal Balms at Ukrposhta Branches." His signature was found on the permits for the "Tsiliushchiy" trademark.

It turns out that the scammers disguised cheap vodka as "Healing Balm" and sold it at Ukrposhta branches, even to children. The aldehyde content in this swill was 30 times higher than the legal limit, the ester content was three times higher, and the methyl alcohol content was also exceeded. The Prosecutor General's Office investigation was initiated by a group of MPs, one of whom stated: "We are essentially dealing with a massive scam, where people are being sold low-quality alcoholic beverages that are harmful to the body without excise duties or taxes."

The main figure in the investigation was the instigator of the scam, Gennady Vovk, Deputy General Director of Ukrposhta. Vovk, accused of selling expired medications and low-quality alcohol disguised as balms through Ukrposhta branches, was forced to reveal to investigators the role of Oksana Plotnikova, General Director of the state-owned enterprise Ukrposhta, in the scheme. He also provided investigators with the names of those who oversaw the scheme on behalf of the tax and sanitary-epidemiological services.

However, thanks to Plotnikova's high-ranking patrons, the case was hushed up, and it was only reopened in August 2014, when none of these scammers were working for Ukrposhta anymore.

After Plotnikova's dismissal, Vovk was promoted to technical director, and Vasyl Veselyi, a longtime friend of Gennady's from Lviv, was appointed commercial director. They shared businesses with him, including Partiot PJSC, Farion LLC, Mystetstvo LLC, Lider Snack LLC, Hemoplast LLC, Petrus-Konditer LLC, Areal LLC, Sun InBev, Tulchin Myasoprodukt LLC, and others. There were also shell companies, which law enforcement is currently investigating.

In late summer 2014, during an SBU investigation, former Ukrposhta CEO Kostyantyn Krivenko agreed to name the main organizers of corruption schemes and describe the methods used to launder funds from the state-owned enterprise. Specifically, the investigation focused on the connection between former CEO Plotnikova and Deputy CEO Vovk and their role in selling counterfeit alcoholic beverages disguised as medications, expired pharmaceuticals from a shell company, and expired food products through Ukrposhta's network of branches.

Gennady Vovk was fired from Ukrposhta in April 2014 and hasn't been heard from since. However, the state-owned enterprise continues to face accusations from inspectors and law enforcement agencies regarding corrupt deals orchestrated by this exceptional crook. His work history demonstrates that, while lacking an intellectual bent, Vovk possessed a knack for fraud, adventurism, and a quarrelsome nature, and has always demonstrated a penchant for devising schemes for personal enrichment. Therefore, it's safe to say that Vovk's possible appointment to Ukrposhta could only be lobbied by crooks seeking further participation in the corrupt schemes he has revived.

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