Money talks. This well-known truth, in our reality, should be supplemented by the concept of "connections." If connections exist in the Ukrainian Prosecutor General's Office, then escaping responsibility is easy for dishonest officials and businessmen. A clear example of this is the Prosecutor General's Office's "cooperation" with Ihor Yakubovich, former head of the State Food and Grain Corporation of Ukraine (SFGCU).
To subjugate: the minister's godfather was appointed to lead the state agricultural corporation
The public joint-stock company "GPZKU" was established in 2010 during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych and with the direct involvement of then-Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Prysyazhnyuk. According to the official website of the GPZKU, it is the most powerful state-owned vertically integrated company in Ukraine's agricultural sector, owning no less than 10% of the country's certified grain elevator capacity.
The head of the state grain company, which then and now claims a monopoly on the market for grain storage, processing, and transshipment, was none other than the godfather of the relevant minister, Prisyazhnyuk, Igor Yakubovich, who had previously worked as a deputy to the head of the Ministry of Agrarian Policy.
It's no secret that in a country ranked among the world's top ten grain producers, agriculture has always been and remains the most promising economic sector. Consequently, considerable money is at stake here. And it's not at all difficult for an informed person to guess that if a "regulator" like our government has interfered in the affairs of farmers, the words "corruption" and agribusiness can be considered synonymous.
However, the very fact that the Minister's godfather, Prisyazhnyuk, was appointed head of the State Grain and Grain Company of Ukraine already suggested that not all was in order and that agricultural officials were attempting to seize control of a significant share of the domestic grain processing industry.
This was evidenced, for example, by the fact that the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, under Prysyazhnyuk's leadership, conducted all financial transactions for major tenders exclusively with banks associated with the offspring of the former head of state, Oleksandr Yanukovych. This included the All-Ukrainian Development Bank (VBR) and Unikombank. This business partnership allowed Prysyazhnyuk to pocket kickbacks of 15 to 30% of each transaction. Clearly, these were millions of dollars in sums.
Money upfront, but… no chairs: GPZKU siphoned off funds through shell companies
With the emergence of the state-owned enterprise GPZKU on the domestic agricultural market, serious talk has begun in the country about the emergence of yet another mafia structure. This time, it's in the food industry. The point is that the schemes used by the state-owned "managers"—the company's directors—would make even the most hardened businessmen bristle in their arrogance and mercantilism.
Last year, the State Food and Grain Company of Ukraine (SFGCU) entered into a forward contract with a certain agricultural enterprise, Koziyevskoye, to purchase grain from the upcoming harvest, transferring an advance payment of UAH 17,8 million. However, the State Food and Grain Company never received any grain from Koziyevskoye, which was to be expected – the piece of paper on which the agricultural enterprise existed never yielded a harvest. However, as soon as the money was transferred, in a classic scam, Koziyevskoye declared bankruptcy. However, to assume that in this case, the state-owned grain company was, to put it mildly, defrauded of almost twenty million hryvnias by dishonest businessmen would be wrong. Indeed, over the past year, the management of the State Grain and Grain Company, represented by Yakubovich, concluded more than 40 such contracts with fictitious enterprises. All of them, before, in this case, quite conveniently going bankrupt, received advance payments from the state-owned company in the amount of $1-5 million for the supply of non-existent grain.
Sometimes, to protect themselves from increased law enforcement scrutiny, company management would document grain quantities, but these were soon written off as unfit for use. However, the businessmen's fears about the prosecutor's office or the police were unfounded – while Yanukovych was in power, no one cared about the food mafia taking root in the country. Looking ahead, let's say that's the case now, as well.
In addition to the classic scheme for siphoning off budget funds through shell companies, Yakubovich also drafted crop insurance contracts with the company Garant-Prestige for accidents totaling over 177 million hryvnias. What's the catch here, you ask? The crux of the matter lies in the details of the insurance contract, which stipulates that collecting insurance payments is impossible at any time. At all. Well, if only because, in the event of an insured event, Garant-Prestige's guarantee liabilities would amount to 3 billion 832 million hryvnias, with total assets of 257.041 million hryvnias.
Thus, 177 million hryvnias irrevocably disappeared from the state-owned company's turnover and ended up in the pockets of enterprising businessmen led by Yakubovich, who had devised such a "brilliant" scheme.
"Everything is fine": the food mafia continues to operate, and the Prosecutor General's Office turns a blind eye.
Naturally, with the change of power in the country in February of this year, Yakubovich's position also began to waver. During the investigation of the State Food and Grain Company of Ukraine (GFKU), the Prosecutor General's Office opened three criminal cases against him. All of them, in one way or another, related to the episodes of his "activities" described above. But interestingly, none of them have yet reached trial. Therefore, although Yakubovich himself has left his post, the food mafia created by him and his boss, Prisyazhnyuk, continues to operate in the country to this day, causing millions in losses.
The essence of Yakubovich's "immunity" lies in his well-established connections in the corridors of Reznitskaya Street. The case against the State Food and Agriculture Organization of Ukraine (GPZKU) is being handled by Dmitry Paliy, a special investigator for the Prosecutor General's Office (GPU), who has reportedly been the Prosecutor General's Office's chief "tariff-setter" since 2010, quoting payoff amounts for defendants in criminal cases.
The investigator, a “big shot” from the GPU, managed to get such a lucrative “job” at the time thanks to his friendly relations with the Deputy Prosecutor General Rinat Kuzmin (Read more about it in the article Renat Kuzmin: The Family Business of Outlaw Prosecutors). But Paliy allegedly retained his position under the current GPU leadership due to the fact that many of them had themselves been "evaluated" by the investigator. Therefore, they don't need another disgruntled witness to their turbulent past. Moreover, Paliy's activities obviously bring in a tidy profit for the entire top brass of the Prosecutor General's Office. And who would want to "kill the goose that lays the golden eggs"?
Moreover, there has been recent talk of Dmytro Paliy being appointed as Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema's ninth deputy. Apparently, the Prosecutor General's Office leadership decided that the investigator's recent success in collecting payoffs has been quite impressive, and it's time for him to explore "new horizons."
The case of the food mafia and its overseer, Yakubovich, remains unsolved. Therefore, "Prokurorskaya Pravda" has legitimate questions for the GPU leadership:
— At what stage is the criminal investigation currently underway against the leadership of the State Food and Agriculture Organization of Ukraine and Igor Yakubovich personally?
— What or who is hindering the resolution of crimes committed by Ukraine's food mafia?
— How does the Prosecutor General's Office respond to rumors about payoffs to investigators in order to slow down certain criminal proceedings?
Prosecutor's Truth
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