Part 1. Pre-war "exploits" of the future battalion commander
Konstantin Mateychenkonn
The name of People's Deputy Kostyantyn Mateichenko has only recently become known to the general public. Bill No. 2225, which he registered in early March and which proposes criminalizing criticism of the government, was immediately dubbed "dictatorial"—by analogy with the infamous laws of January 16 of last year. Even his faction colleagues quickly disavowed Mateichenko's legislative initiative, and the author himself was forced to temporarily abandon the controversial idea.
It would be a mistake to consider this innovative move by a people's deputy an unfortunate oversight or a consequence of a lack of professional experience. Rather, it's another natural stage in his life and a reflection of his personal worldview. Few know that Mateichenko has committed even graver sins, including responsibility for human deaths. This journalistic investigation aims to shed light on the exploits of this battalion commander-turned-deputy, and to demonstrate how little has changed in the consciousness of the Ukrainian people a year after the Maidan, if we still manage to elect such odious individuals to our own detriment.
Konstantin Mateichenko's first interest in politics, as a means to achieve his own mercenary goals, arose back in the 1990s. Around that time, he joined Moroz's Socialist Party, which was logical, given that Konstantin Vladimirovich was a farmer. However, by the early 2000s, everyone in Donbas realized that true success in their native lands was impossible without joining the Party of Regions. Mateichenko didn't reinvent the wheel, acquiring a lucky party card. And he was right—in nearly 10 years of membership in the Party of Regions, he managed to be twice elected as mayor of Pokrovskoe village in the Artemovsky district and significantly expand his agricultural business. Moreover, the corrupt combination of serving the villagers while holding leadership positions on several farms simultaneously didn't bother Mateichenko at all. The same cannot be said about his fellow villagers, who were simply fed up with the chairman of the Pokrovsky village council with his outrageous administrative management, widespread use of nepotism, predatory business practices, and unprecedented greed and pettiness.
A telling example is the attempted treachery of Konstantin Mateychenko and his family in appropriating rural land through the acquisition of the unprofitable local Shevchenko LLC. The village mayor purchased the enterprise, almost all of whose assets were mortgaged at the time, for his nephew, Dmitry Bandurko. The relatives then drove the LLC to bankruptcy and merged it with the private firm Chapayevskoye, de jure owned by Mateychenko's sister, Natalia Bandurko. Thus, hundreds of hectares of land belonging to someone else came into the possession of the Mateychenko-Bandurko enterprise, as the land shares of most of Pokrovskoe's villagers had long been leased by Shevchenko LLC, a former collective farm.
From that moment on, the villagers, most of whose families relied solely on this lease to support themselves, found themselves in virtual dependence on the Mateichenko family. Fully aware of this, Pokrovsky's mayor tormented them, withholding and underpaying shareholders for years. Naturally, all the peasants' complaints were mired in the village council.
In 2008, the villagers, tired of Mateichenko's insolence, exchanged their shares for land, which they leased to another company, the Artemida peasant farm. However, the Mateichenko family refused to abandon the land leased by the new company, continuing to use it illegally. A protracted legal battle ensued between Artemida and Chapaevskiy. Meanwhile, while the courts were raging, Mateichenko and his company managed to sow the disputed plots with wheat and harvest the crop. Artemida appealed to the Artemovsky District Prosecutor's Office, but it was then headed by Mateichenko's godfather, Vladislav Yanyuk, who left the plaintiffs no chance.
Only after more than two years did Chapaevskoye finally lose all the legal disputes; the company was forced to abandon the land and even pay the amount of damages inflicted on its opponents.
A video that perfectly illustrates the connection between Mateychenko the village mayor and Mateychenko the businessman, and how he conducted his business in Pokrovskoye. A complex of outbuildings, previously owned by the bankrupt Shevchenko LLC, was transferred to Oschadbank to pay off debts. But later, Chapayevskiy somehow managed to enter into a legally invalid, uncertified "preliminary agreement" with the bank branch for the purchase and sale of the bank's property. Thus, Mateychenko received the entire complex of outbuildings for free. Oschadbank's senior management subsequently caught on. The branch director was fired, and the "preliminary agreement" and land lease were cancelled. Naturally, Mateychenko did everything he could to prevent this. The video clearly shows the village council chairman attempting to block the bank employees' path, threatening to call the prosecutor, raising his voice, provoking the police—in short, attempting to outsmart the law with insolence. It didn't work. The buildings were transferred to the safekeeping of another company, which subsequently purchased them.
Be that as it may, during his eight years in power in Pokrovskoe, Mateychenko fell out not only with farmers, public sector employees (the village mayor once believed that only his street should be illuminated at night), and entrepreneurs, but also with the members of the village council he led. The result was Mateychenko's complete defeat in the next elections in 2010—the new mayor of Pokrovskoe, a clear outsider in the race and also a member of the Regions, Sergei Gaidabuka, became the clear outsider.
By this time, a criminal case for abuse of power had already been opened against Mateychenko, which several years later would gain considerable public attention. The village mayor was accused of submitting to the deputies a draft resolution allocating land for the development of a gypsum quarry to a company without a permit for such work, and of subsequently lobbying for it. It's worth noting that this company was controlled by Mateychenko himself, and, according to my sources, the enterprising mayor of Pokrovsky derived his greatest income from the illegal quarrying, not from agricultural activities. It's telling that Mateychenko's former partner in this illegal business, with the colorful surname Krasny, is currently serving time for tax evasion.
Mateychenko's case languished until the summer of 2013, when he was taken into custody. The trial court found the former village mayor guilty, and the case went to appeal. Mateychenko was released from pretrial detention several months later, in early December, and only after the victory of the Maidan revolution were all charges against him dropped.
In fact, the abuses of power by the head of the Pokrovsky village council could be the subject of a book, or at least a pamphlet—there's a mountain of material. It's quite possible that other investigative journalists will return to this topic in the near future.
Significantly, Mateychenko's trials were accompanied by numerous pickets and public statements from the Donetsk Batkivshchyna party activists, whose regional branch was then headed by the failed socialist and Party of Regions member. According to a tradition ingrained in independent Ukraine, real criminals often hide from justice under the guise of victims of political repression. My numerous interlocutors, who knew Mateychenko well from his exploits in Pokrovskoe, rightly say that the former village mayor always had a phenomenal sense of the right place and the right time. This, in particular, predetermined his future career advancement in the current post-Maidan era of social mobility.
Mateychenko first appeared in Donetsk opposition political circles in 2011. Resentful of the Party of Regions for his electoral defeat and the preceding standoff with his own deputies in the village council, he was introduced to key people in the Donetsk Regional Front for Change by Andriy, son of the longtime mayor of Krasny Liman, Leonid Perebeynos, a member of the Party of Regions. For this, Mateychenko "repaid" Perebeynos several years later by harshly pressuring his father, now a member of parliament. But more on that below.
As it happened, the position of head of the Artemivsk branch of the Front for Change party remained virtually vacant when Kostyantyn Mateichenko unexpectedly emerged into those circles. Therefore, he soon became head of the local organization, simultaneously joining the regional bureau of Yatsenyuk's party. This was despite the fact that his assumption of this new role was accompanied by a scandal within the regional party organization, sparked by the disapproval of Mateichenko's new position by Yatsenyuk's supporters in Krasny Lyman, neighboring Artemivsk. They had long known well what kind of person the newly-minted opposition figure really was.
Subsequently, the former village council head's rise in politics accelerated even more rapidly. The very spirit of the times facilitated this. In 2012, Mateychenko was among those "Frontovik" members who, having suspended their membership in Yatsenyuk's party, ran in the parliamentary elections in a single-member constituency as part of the United Opposition. As Oleksandr Yaroshenko, the current chairman of the Donetsk regional Batkivshchyna party, told me, after the elections, Mateychenko, while still a member of the regional bureau of the "Front of Change," went to bow to the most prominent BYuT figures, Yaroslav Fedorchuk and Serhiy Pashynskyi. It was with the latter's blessing that the former "Frontovik" assumed leadership of the Donetsk regional Batkivshchyna organization, which had been utterly compromised in the eyes of Tymoshenko's supporters by its former leader, Garegin Arutyunov, a member of parliament who had been a member of the "Tushka" faction.
Thus, at the helm of Batkivshchyna in a region that has always been problematic for this political force is an ardent supporter of Yanukovych's "professionals", who, as recently as the end of 2009, foamed at the mouth criticizing the anti-crisis program of the Tymoshenko Cabinet.
Having ascended to the leadership, Mateichenko launched a purge, which, frankly, the regional branch of Tymoshenko's party had long needed. However, Mateichenko made replacements and reshuffles based solely on personal gain, thereby strengthening his influence within the organization. Thanks to this personnel policy, people personally loyal to Mateichenko were brought into local organizations at all levels, while the few worthy members of Batkivshchyna were left behind. A striking example is the removal of Volodymyr Rybak, a member of the Horlivka City Council known for his integrity and uncompromising stand, from the leadership of the Horlivka city branch of Batkivshchyna, the regional bureau, and then the party itself. It was he who was recently posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine. Let me remind you that last spring, Rybak was kidnapped and brutally murdered by terrorists for attempting to remove the flag of the "Donetsk People's Republic" and hoist the Ukrainian flag over the building of the Horlivka City Council.
By placing his people everywhere possible, including on party audit commissions, Mateychenko gained unlimited control over the regional organization's finances. This subsequently allowed him to pocket a large portion of the budget allocated by Batkivshchyna's central leadership for the 2014 Ukrainian presidential election campaign. I heard about the funds embezzled by the head of Batkivshchyna's regional organization from many of Mateychenko's former party comrades. Among them is Olha Lytvynenko, a member of Batkivshchyna's political council in Donetsk. However, all of them refused to give me specific figures. After all, all of this is internal party accounting, which is practically impossible to independently verify.
At the same time, credible sources claim that Mateichenko embezzled $560 for himself (allegedly not forgetting his benefactor and patron, Pashinsky). The remaining $800 allocated for Tymoshenko's election campaign in Donetsk Oblast went toward occasional payments to campaign staff and commissions, as well as to buy the loyalty of mayors in the perennially "white-blue" region. Specifically, the "black budget" laid on the desk of Mateichenko's former party member, Olena Ledovskikh, mentioned the mayors of Donetsk and Mariupol—Oleksandr Lukyanchenko and Yuriy Khotlubey, respectively.
Off topic, I'll say that the son of the odious Artemovsk mayor, Party of Regions member Alexei Reva, Dmitry, who ran in the recent Verkhovna Rada elections in district No. 46, received comprehensive assistance from none other than Konstantin Mateichenko.
The subsequent story of political tourist and swindler Kostyantyn Mateychenko is well known. Before the last parliamentary elections, his name predictably surfaced in a favorable spot on the lists of a new political force, one of the favorites in the parliamentary race, the People's Front Party. This allowed Kostyantyn Mateychenko to be elected as a member of parliament in the "renewed" post-Maidan Ukraine. True, before that, the former "prince" of rural origin managed to lead the patriotic volunteers of the Artemovsk Battalion. But that's another story.
To be continued ...
Artem FURMANYUK, specially for SLED.net.ua
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!