Kirovograd "King" Igor Sharov: Is Greed a Vice? Part 1
Ukrainians are already well acquainted with the corrupt oligarchic and criminal clans of the "Donetsk," "Vinnytsia," "Odesa," "Dnipropetrovsk," "Transcarpathian," "Lviv," and "Bukovina" factions. Well, it's worth broadening your horizons and taking a closer look at the "Kirovohrad" faction, one of whose most prominent representatives is Igor Sharov. Always quiet and politically cautious, and therefore little known to Ukrainians outside his native Kirovohrad (Kropyvnytskyi), he was once involved in major schemes and colossal sums. And some of this money ended up in his hands, in such quantities that it allows Sharov to live a luxurious life even in these times of crisis.
Igor Sharov. First Capital
Igor Fedorovich Sharov was born on August 10, 1961, in the village of Skalovskie Khutory in the Novoarkhangelsk district of the Kirovohrad region, to Maria Korneevna and Fedor Makarovich Sharov. They had four children: Alexander (born in 1957), Valentina (born in 1959), Igor, and Yuri (born in 1965), but only Igor achieved national fame. In 1967, Fedor Makarovich abandoned the family, leaving the mother to raise the children alone. Thus, the childhood of Igor Sharov and his brother Yuri was not entirely rosy, and they don't laugh when they joke about wooden toys. This left a deep imprint on their developing personalities: chronic materialism, constant material dissatisfaction, and a desire to earn as much money as possible by any means necessary.
After school, Igor Sharov, at his mother's insistence, enrolled in the Kiev Medical School, graduating in 1980. He even managed to work for a few months as a paramedic in a drug addiction clinic. Back then, drug addiction specialists primarily treated alcoholics, but soon, having joined the army, he also learned the all-powerful power of drugs. This happened in Afghanistan, where Igor Sharov volunteered for extended service (to earn money) as a military paramedic, becoming a medical platoon commander in the 103rd Airborne Division. While in the peaceful USSR, opiate painkillers were hidden from soldiers (even confiscated from first-aid kits), in hot Afghanistan they were indispensable, and some soldiers occasionally "relaxed" with a dose of morphine or methadone. And these could only be obtained from medical units, so Sharov had a good opportunity to earn some extra cash, and, according to sources, he Skelet.OrgHe took advantage of this opportunity. He served in the Soviet Army from 1980 to 1983, not without merit, and even became a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. According to these same sources, Igor Sharov was allegedly expelled from Afghanistan back to the USSR early precisely because the consumption of painkillers in his medical unit exceeded all reasonable limits.
Working as a military paramedic in some place called Karaganda didn't appeal to him, so he returned home to civilian life. One day, in an interview with Fakty, Igor Sharov would say that he earned so much money in Afghanistan that it was enough to open his first business, Inkopmark, in 1993. But did he really return from Afghanistan with a suitcase full of dollars, which he then hid under his bed for ten years—even though he was living in a rented apartment? Just some Koreiko! Apparently, Sharov lied to the journalists after all, and the reason for this was an attempt to explain the origins of his initial capital. After all, there is another version.
In 1983, Igor Sharov entered the Kirovohrad Pedagogical Institute, graduating in 1987 and remaining there as a history teacher, also becoming chairman of the trade union committee and Komsomol cell (as a young communist). It's worth noting that he took his party membership seriously—not ideologically, but as a career advancement. Igor Sharov even wrote his first dissertation on the history of the CPSU, "The Ukrainian Working Class in the Sphere of Production under the Conditions of the Formation and Strengthening of a Command Economy," but he didn't have time to defend it: it was 1991. However, Sharov didn't throw away his party card, and it came in handy in 1993, when the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) reincarnated. A little-known fact, but from 1993 to 95, Igor Sharov was a member of the Communist Party of Ukraine!
Yuri Sharov
So, although Sharov was late with his dissertation, he managed to organize a youth cooperative, receiving funding from the Komsomol treasury, and enthusiastically engaged in small-scale wholesale trade in scarce goods: he traveled the country, procuring food, household chemicals, and cosmetics, bringing them to Kirovohrad, and selling them at a healthy profit. He was assisted in this business by two brothers: the younger, Yuri, who also proved to be a savvy businessman and quickly found his way into the Kirovohrad bazaars, and the older, Alexander, who worked at the Kirovohrad Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and protected the brothers' business from attacks by criminals and law enforcement.
Igor Sharov. "Fuck" with Bakai
In 1993, the Sharovs transformed the family business into the company "Incopmark," which became the foundation of the corporation of the same name. Yes, this is the very same enterprise allegedly opened with money "earned in Afghanistan," as Igor Sharov claimed! Journalists' interest in Incopmark was no coincidence: before expanding into a network of various enterprises well known to residents of Kirovohrad, in 1994 the company co-founded the well-known "Respublika" corporation throughout Ukraine. As a reminder, this infamous corporation defrauded the country of millions of dollars and left Ukraine with a half-billion-dollar debt to Turkmenistan.
The story of Kirovohrad businessman Igor Sharov's rise to Kyiv remains an intriguing mystery. He himself admitted that he suddenly rose to the capital's ranks with the help of a powerful lobby of influential people, but he never revealed the names of his patrons. Journalists once speculated on who it could have been, listing the names of influential people from Kirovohrad: SBU General Yevhen Marchuk and Russian businessman and high-ranking official Dmitry Kozak. Marchuk? Quite likely, since it was in 1994 that he became deputy prime minister in the new government, and later assumed the first prime minister's chair himself.
Yuriy Kravchenko
Minister. However, there is no apparent connection between Sharov and Marchuk. Therefore, the most likely candidate was Yuriy Kravchenko, who worked in the Kirovohrad Oblast Department of Internal Affairs until the end of 1992 (and likely knew Alexander Sharov), and in 1993 became Chairman of the State Customs Committee of Ukraine.
So, in 1994, some influential people introduced Igor Sharov to a businessman Igor Bakai – and they immediately became business partners, creating the Respublika corporation, which dealt in gas operations and became Ukraine's largest gas trader in 1995. Bakai himself only acquired this business thanks to his extensive connections, and not just in government. Among his "business partners" were then-Kyiv crime bosses Vladimir Kisel (Ded), Viktor Rybalko (Fish), Alexandra Presman (Semyon Mogilevich's man). Accordingly, Igor Sharov also had close contacts with them.
Igor Bakai
By 1995, Bakai was preparing to wind down Respublika's operations and was developing a new project: Intergas CJSC, intended to implement more profitable (from the perspective of its shareholders) and more corrupt schemes. Specifically, on August 11, Intergas Inc. (a subsidiary of Intergas CJSC) was registered in Pennsylvania (USA) under company number 2664703. The company was designed to evade taxes and transfer Intergas's earnings abroad. Igor Sharov served as the director of Intergas Inc., and Stanislav Melnik served as its chief accountant. Interestingly, Bakai and Melnik also bought their own homes in Pennsylvania at the same time. Whether Sharov also acquired a "hut" there remains unknown. But at least Skelet.Org It is known that in 1996 he took over the main company in Kyiv, becoming Chairman of the Board of Intergaz CJSC. However, not for long.
In 1995, Ihor Sharov won the re-election in Rozdolnensky Electoral District No. 41 (running as a Communist), receiving a mandate as a People's Deputy and immediately joining the parliamentary Committee on Fuel and Energy. However, Ihor Sharov had no intention of defending the interests of the working class: he immediately resigned from the Communist Party of Ukraine, joined the "Constitutional Center" parliamentary group, and quietly remained there, without any political initiatives, but not forgetting to quietly lobby for his business interests and fulfill the requests of important people. This, apparently, earned him the appreciation of Leonid Kuchma, who in 1996 appointed Ihor Sharov as his representative in the Verkhovna Rada. However, things were not going well for Sharov and Bakai in the gas business at the time, possibly due to the frenetic activity of the UESU corporation, whose "roof" was the new Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who had replaced Yevhen Marchuk.
In 1997, Kuchma appointed Ihor Sharov as his advisor (he remained in this position until the Maidan), and in 1998, he was appointed Deputy Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers. However, Sharov didn't last long in this obscure position: in the 1998 elections, he again won a parliamentary seat, this time on the NDP list (led by Prime Minister Pustovoitenko). But this time, he received a seat not on the Fuel Committee, but on the Committee on Healthcare, Motherhood, and Childhood. Odd? Not at all!
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Kirovograd "King" Igor Sharov: Is Greed a Vice? Part 2
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