Nikolai and Yaroslav Banchuk: The Chernivtsi Prosecutor's Family Clan. Part 1
Feigned patriotism remains the most popular guise for scoundrels and corrupt officials of all stripes in Ukraine. This masquerade often conceals not only bribery, theft, and corporate raids, but also direct collaboration with the very aggressor they claim to fight. This story will tell you about Mykola and Yaroslav, the sons of Mykola Banchuk, and their extended family, who have spread a web of corruption from Chernivtsi to Kyiv and Zaporizhzhia. Formerly known as the "Prosecutor's Family," the Banchuks now control the Agrarian Fund, serve as advisors to the head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and cover up smuggling on the border with Romania.
Several clans of "compatriots" and "classmates" from the Chernivtsi region are active in Ukrainian politics, government, and business, the most famous of which is the Yatsenyuk- Burbak clan . "Family contracts" are also common among them, with the Matios and Banchuks families serving as examples. According to media reports, the "Chernivtsi clan" has a tradition: whenever one of its members achieves success, they drag along their brother, son, nephew, godfather, or childhood friend. Such clans and "families" exist in every village, and there are already dozens of them in cities, with varying levels of influence—some are content simply to control the local oil mill, while others are involved in high politics and divvy up billions in state funds. If the "Chernivtsi clan" weren't used to competing with each other and had managed to unite, they would have surpassed both the "Donetsk clan" and the "Dnipropetrovsk clan"!
Yaroslav Banchuk: a costumed "Cossack" and a raider
The Banchuk family clan consists of no fewer than four "patriots and supporters of the state" (as they call themselves), all of whom are close relatives. The eldest of them is Yaroslav Arsenievich Banchuk, born on May 25, 1958, in the village of Mikhalkovo, Sokiryansky District, Chernivtsi Oblast, and a cousin of Mykola Banchuk. He's quite a colorful character! His path to the prosecutor's office was a complicated one: after graduating from high school, Yaroslav Banchuk worked for a year at an eight-year school in a neighboring village... as a physical education and labor teacher. Of course, "Yarik" was an athlete, like his brother "Mykola," and they competed in regional competitions. However, he had no formal training or pedagogical education, and he hadn't yet reached adulthood—and these lessons carry the risk of physical injury and require the teacher to be held accountable. So, he was hired illegally! This speaks volumes about the fact that the Banchuk family already had great influence in the area.
Yaroslav Banchuk: ex-prosecutor and disguised “Cossack”
In 1978, after serving in the army, Yaroslav Banchuk decided to become a political officer and enrolled in the Kyiv Higher Naval Political School (now long closed, its premises given over to the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy). But in 1981, for some reason, having dropped out of just one year, he was sent to Murmansk, to the Northern Fleet base, where he served until 1987. Simultaneously, from 1981 to 1985, he studied law at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv (apparently by correspondence). In 1987, Yaroslav Banchuk returned to his homeland and became a lawyer, but two years later, he decided to become a prosecutor. He initially worked as an investigator in the Khotyn District Prosecutor's Office until 1997, then as a senior investigator in the Chernivtsi Regional Prosecutor's Office until 1999. From 1999 to 2000, he served as a senior assistant to the regional prosecutor, then for about a year as the prosecutor of the Kelmenets District. In 2001, he moved to Kyiv to the Prosecutor General's Office, where he headed one of the departments. However, when Svyatoslav Piskun replaced Prosecutor General Potebenko in 2002 , Yaroslav Banchuk did not get along with him and was sent to Chernihiv as deputy regional prosecutor.
But in 2003, Piskun himself was dismissed (not without the help of one of the Banchuks), and Gennady Vasylyev became head of the Prosecutor General's Office . He rehired Yaroslav Banchuk as deputy head of the Main Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office. He developed a very close relationship with Vasylyev, a representative of the Donetsk gang and the father of the prosecutorial mafia – although at the same time, his brother, Mykola Banchuk, then serving as the Kherson Oblast Prosecutor, had a public falling out with Vasylyev (more on that below).
Nikolai and Yaroslav Banchuk: The Chernivtsi Prosecutor's Family Clan. Part 1
When Piskun was reinstated in the Prosecutor General's Office after the first Maidan, Yaroslav Banchuk was forced to retire "on a length-of-service pension." His path to the prosecutor's office was blocked for five years, during which he earned a legal living as a lawyer, "secretly" participated in land and real estate grabs, and amused himself by becoming a costumed "Zaporizhian Cossack." He became a "general judge" in the public organization "Zaporizhian Cossacks," where he was awarded the mock shoulder straps of a general and a multitude of "orders" adorning his uniform. These included church awards, "Cossack" insignia, several prosecutor's office badges, and medals from the Russian and Transnistrian Cossacks (the one with the St. George ribbon). Incidentally, according to Skelet.Org sources , Yaroslav Banchuk has many friends not only among the same costumed Russian "Cossacks," but also among real Russian security officials, including the FSB—he made these connections while serving in Murmansk.
In March 2010, as soon as power in Ukraine passed to Yaroslav Banchuk's Donetsk friends, he returned to work in the prosecutor's office: first as a modest deputy inter-district prosecutor in Fastov, and from October of that year as senior assistant to the military prosecutor of the Central Region. However, this triumph was short-lived, and after the second Maidan, he was again expelled from the prosecutor's office. But it wasn't for nothing that Yaroslav Banchuk played the "Zaporizhian Cossack" for many years! Along the way, he made extensive connections in Zaporizhzhia within the prosecutor's office, government agencies, and business. Banchuk found himself a position as director of economic security at Zaporizhzhyaelektropostachannya LLC, part of Zaporizhzhyaoblenergo. The latter was then controlled by the Surkis brothers , and it's possible that Banchuk was hired there with their help.
In 2018, Yaroslav Banchuk attempted a hostile takeover of the independent trade union of Zaporizhzhia Oblast prosecutor's office employees. Of course, he didn't do it on his own, but in agreement with the then-deputy regional prosecutor, Pavlo Vinda (a former Donetsk prosecutor who worked under Vasilyev and Pshonka). Their plan was as follows: Vinda and his subordinates, Sivtunov and Kramarchuk, exerted severe pressure on the union's leadership, demanding that they accept Yaroslav Banchuk into their ranks—an illegal move, as he had never worked in the Zaporizhzhia Oblast prosecutor's office. Banchuk would then be elected chairman of the union, taking control of both the union's treasury (approximately 3 million hryvnias) and its premises.
Yaroslav Banchuk even ran in Zaporizhzhia's 2019 parliamentary elections (in the 82nd constituency), under the banner of the marginal Patriot party, but only received 0,42%. It seems only the local "Cossacks" casting their votes for him!
Banchuk Nikolai Vasilievich: growing connections
The main and most scandalous "hero" of our story, Nikolai Vasilievich Banchuk, was born on September 22, 1959, in the same village of Mikhalkovo in the Sokiryansky district of the Chernivtsi region. According to his fellow villagers, in their youth, he and his cousin Yaroslav "held the village together," but back then, it never went beyond a teenage struggle for leadership. Then the brothers were pulled from the village and separated by military service, after which Nikolai Banchuk spent almost two years hanging around somewhere, picking pears. According to Skelet.Org sources , he literally did this: the Banchuk family controlled the local horticultural state farm (which is how the parents of the future prosecutors made their fortune), and even then, they were already "conspiring" in various schemes. For example, they sent part of the harvest (selected, best fruits) for sale in other regions of the country, disguised as "homegrown." Fruit schemes were lucrative at the time: for example, future oligarchs Alexander Feldman and Boris Kolesnikov profited from them , selling them at markets. And the Banchuks, it's worth noting, sold them wholesale!
Nikolai Banchuk
Therefore, it was only in 1981 that Nikolai Banchuk, along with his brother, enrolled in the law faculty of Kazan State University. Yaroslav studied there part-time, but Nikolai's background remains unknown—he studiously conceals the details of his early life. However, he proudly emphasizes that after receiving his diploma, he worked for four years in a certain "legal group" (in reality, in the Sokiryansky District Prosecutor's Office), where he was involved in "defending Bukovina's horticultural state farms." Now let's digest this pompous phrase in light of the information we've received. It turns out that Nikolai Banchuk became a prosecutor to cover up the family "apple business"!
In 1988, with the legalization of private cooperatives, such a "roof" for the fruit trade became virtually unnecessary, but a host of other schemes emerged, the architects of which turned to the Banchuks for assistance. Therefore, from 1988 to 1996, Mykola Banchuk worked in the prosecutor's offices of neighboring districts, then in the Chernivtsi city and regional prosecutor's offices as a senior investigator for particularly important economic cases. And this was a real gold mine! Mykola Banchuk, along with his brother Yaroslav, closed cases involving family friends or those they had been "scored" for, and successfully brought to court the cases of competitors and those with whom they had failed to agree on a price. During this period, they made numerous useful connections among Chernivtsi clans and "families," including Mykhailo Papiyev. They couldn't help but cross paths: Papiyev was one of those crooks who opened cooperatives within state-owned enterprises, drained the factories of all profits, bankrupted them, and prepared them for privatization. So Mykola Banchuk surely had his case on his desk, and perhaps more than one! But he prudently closed it "due to lack of evidence," and he was right: in 1997, Papiyev was appointed head of the Chernivtsi Regional State Administration—and Mykola Banchuk immediately became head of the Chernivtsi City Prosecutor's Office, overtaking his brother Yaroslav, who served as senior investigator for another two years.
Mikhail Papiev
Do you know who the new Chernivtsi prosecutor immediately hired as his assistant? 28-year-old Anatoliy Matios, who also, after years of doing something unclear (his biography from 1990 to 1997 is a mystery), received a law degree from Chernivtsi University. From then on, Mykola Banchuk and Anatoliy Matios became inseparable for a long time!
Papiyev led the region for three years, and during this time, Mykola Banchuk's career soared. In the summer of 1999 (again, ahead of his brother), he left for the capital to take up the post of assistant prosecutor of Kyiv. He didn't stay there long, however, and after just six months was transferred to Kherson—but he was promoted to regional prosecutor, a position he held until 2005! He took Matios with him, who rose through the ranks from prosecutor to head of the Department for Supervision of Law Enforcement by Special Forces. This helped Matios later strike out on his own, soon earning the rank of major general in the SBU.
Anatoly Matios
During this period, the Banchuks seemed to split: from then until today, each of them kept silent in public about having a cousin who was a prosecutor, although they maintained close family and business ties, even while working in different parts of the country. This allowed them to conceal the apparent motives behind some of the joint "special operations" they carried out to assist each other. For example, when Piskun was in charge of the Prosecutor General's Office, Mykola Banchuk wrote denunciations against his immediate superior. To whom? President Kuchma! The media has repeatedly cited an excerpt from one such report, in which Bachuk recounted a conversation with businessman Yuriy Tryndyuk, married to Piskun's sister:
"Continuing his story about himself and S. Piskun, Yu. G. Tryndyuk stated that they have significant support from members of parliament of Ukraine from various factions, a powerful financial foundation that enables them to actively participate in the Ukrainian presidential elections. After these words, which I didn't attach much importance to at the time, I asked Yu. G. Tryndyuk how they intended to build S. Piskun's political image. He replied that they had a serious trump card up their sleeve—the criminal case for the murder of journalist G. Gongadze. I asked him what he meant. Tryndyuk explained that at the right moment, the perpetrators would be named, and, in their opinion, the names of those who ordered the murder were police officers led by Yu. F. Kravchenko and the name of the President of Ukraine, that is, You. October 28, 2003."
You shouldn't have heart-to-heart talks with prosecutors! These denunciations were immediately filed as "arguments" that led to Piskun's dismissal. Why did Nikolai Banchuk inform on Svyatoslav Piskun? Because, like Lenin, he was taking revenge for his fired brother, Yaroslav Banchuk! True, his relationship with the new Prosecutor General didn't work out at first, so Nikolai Banchuk himself almost joined the "people's opposition."
This happened during a scandal that erupted in January 2004, when, at a meeting of the Prosecutor General's Office, Gennady Vasylyev attacked Mykola Banchuk, accusing him of negligence and corruption. Specifically, Vasylyev cited official data showing that 16 people had been illegally and unjustifiably prosecuted in the Kherson region, to which Banchuk claimed ignorance. Vasylyev then claimed that Banchuk was "playing the fool" and not showing up for work. In response, Mykola Banchuk, his chair crumbling under his feet, went all in and loudly declared that he "would not tolerate insults to his dignity" and was resigning. However, this remained mere lip service, as no one resigned—Banchuk was still playing the fool and being hypocritical! The conflict was resolved at the protection level: Papiyev, then a minister in Yanukovych's government, the head of the Chernivtsi Social Democrats, and a close associate of Viktor Medvedchuk , who then headed the Presidential Administration, intervened on behalf of the Banchuk brothers. So, not only did Vasilyev not fire Mykola Banchuk, but he also reinstated his brother, Yaroslav, with whom he quickly became friends, in the Prosecutor General's Office.
Nikolai Banchuk's clumsy attempt to portray himself as a persecuted opposition figure failed to pay off: in 2005, he, like his brother, was dismissed from the prosecutor's office. But while Yaroslav Banchuk spent the next five years in retirement and business, Nikolai found a job at the Ministry of Health, as head of the Department of Personnel Policy and Science. This position also brought considerable benefits, as he received handsome "kicks" for appointments to chief physicians and heads of regional health departments!
With the rise of the "Donetsk gang," both brothers triumphantly returned to work in the prosecutor's office. Mykola Banchuk worked in the Prosecutor General's Office from November 2010 to February 2014 as deputy head of the Main Department of Representation in Court, becoming one of the close associates of the odious Viktor Pshonka . It was for this that he was later lustrated! But what exactly Mykola Banchuk was doing during those years of prosecutorial lawlessness remains unclear: he thoroughly scrubbed media reports from that period, writing in his biography that he "helped people." I wonder which ones and for how much? Incidentally, it's worth remembering that during the same period (2010-2014), Mykhailo Papiyev again headed the Chernivtsi Regional State Administration. The entire old corrupt gang returned to power!
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Nikolai Banchuk: The Chernivtsi Prosecutor's Family Clan. PART 2
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