Nikolai Skorik: Little-Known Chapters from the Life of an Odessa Hypocrite and Scoundrel. Part 1
Most Ukrainian politicians suffer from "the righteous syndrome": they believe they have nothing to repent of, either before the law or before the people. And if they do have any sins, they're minor and can be atoned for by wearing an embroidered shirt or singing the national anthem a hundred times. But above all, they hope that Ukrainians will never learn the secrets of their past. Like MP Mykola Skoryk, for example, who has something to hide from his voters...
Until 2014, Mykola Skorik was virtually unknown outside of Odesa and Crimea, and even then, he "rose to fame" largely due to his ongoing duality with Oleksiy Honcharenko . In 2016, their feud reached its peak, but Skorik's fellow party members defended him, while Honcharenko fought him almost alone—and therefore often suffered defeats. For example, when he attempted to plant a bag of crackers with a clear hint on his Rada colleague.
Commenting on this incident, Nikolai Skorik, with his characteristic cheerful confidence, hastened to declare that Goncharenko is a vile and unprincipled man, “nurtured by the previous regime,” who, during the Yanukovych era, was the second person in the Odessa Regional Council, until Skorik himself was “sent into exile in Crimea.”
Well, that was quite a bold statement for someone who himself was far from an ordinary member of the Party of Regions for eight years (from 2006 to 2014), and even headed its Odessa regional organization during the second Maidan (November 2013 – March 2014). And in the fall of 2014, Mykola Skorik was elected as a people's deputy on the Opposition Bloc list – essentially remaining a member of the Party of Regions. As for the alleged "exile to Crimea," according to Skelet.Org , it brought Skorik considerable dividends, obtained through fraudulent use of public funds. However, now we will tell you everything in order and in detail, giving you the opportunity to discover for yourself who the real scoundrel and "fosterling" is.
Kolya and "Uncle Lyonya"
Nikolai Leonidovych Skorik was born on November 29, 1972, in Odessa, where he graduated from Secondary School No. 121 in 1989. At school, Kolya was intelligent and diligent (this is especially noted in his biography); he attended a rocket modeling club and even won a national competition for young rocket scientists in 1987. Perhaps he truly dreamed of building real rockets, which is why he enrolled at the Odessa Polytechnic Institute (now the National Polytechnic University), but later changed his major to a more practical one: "Economics and Management in Mechanical Engineering." Our hero did not serve in the army, although he is in excellent health and even played sports. Overall, his childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood were carefree and free of many of the problems his peers faced. This was because his family had the right connections—and in the late 80s and early 90s, connections were everything, just as they are today.
From Kolya Skorik's school album
Their family was "scientific and technical": their father, Leonid Davydovich Skoryk, was a renowned electronics specialist, and their mother, Lyudmila Zalyubinskaya, was a physicist (she is now an associate professor at Mechnikov University). However, in the late 80s, Lyudmila Zalyubinskaya was more involved in politics and social activism than in science: she was one of the founders of the People's Movement (personally acquainted with Vyacheslav Chornovil) and the Union of Ukrainian Women, headed the Committee of Soldiers' Mothers of Odessa (although Kolya never served in the army), and was also a member of the well-known Odessa "Ecoclub"—the organization that launched Eduard Gurvits into power . For the next quarter century, Zalyubinskaya was a "nationally conscious Ukrainian of Odessa" (a point she always emphasized), supporting both Maidan protests, but already in the fall of 2014, she criticized the new government.
Politics and public involvement provided their family with numerous connections and connections, thanks to which the Polytechnic University graduate with a degree in economics and management immediately found a job at the Primorye joint venture. It's worth explaining the extraordinary nature of this event. It was 1994, the year of the first wave of layoffs and layoffs, and finding work was already difficult, let alone paying one. But Nikolai Skorik was hired for a good job, not just at a commercial firm, but at the Primorye joint venture, owned by Leonid Klimov.
Leonid Klimov
Leonid Mikhailovich Klimov (born 1953) is not only one of Odessa's most influential and wealthy men (in the 2014 crisis, his fortune was estimated at $122 million), but also one of its "shadow masters," maintaining his high position since the 80s. He successfully survived the collapse of the Soviet Union, the gangster-ridden 90s, the endless power struggle between Eduard Gurvits and Ruslan Bodelan , two Maidan revolutions, and five presidents. Yet, his closeness to Viktor Yanukovych, to whom Klimov served as an advisor from 2010 to 2014, never came back to haunt him. The point is that Klimov knows how to keep a low profile in public, despite having been involved in numerous Odessa scandals involving illegal development on the city's waterfront.
Klimov tells Yanukovych about Odessa's preparations for Euro 2012
In the 80s, Leonid Klimov headed the Primorsky District Food Trade Department of the Odessa Trade Directorate, which, amid Soviet shortages, made him a kingpin with connections across all sectors. In 1989, he even rose to the rank of deputy head of the Trade Department of the Odessa Regional Executive Committee, but then suddenly fell to the head of the Food Trade Department of the Odessa Railway. Apparently, the wave of leadership changes that swept through Odessa (and the country as a whole) had an impact. According to information available to Skelet.Org , this was due to Klimov's overzealous economic machinations—primarily speculating in food products through cooperative networks. But by 1990, he had left his post and gone into business, opening his first small enterprise, Progress. In 1991, together with Arkady Schneider and Vladimir Lemza, he founded the Primorye joint venture, which became the foundation of his business empire, which now comprises over fifty enterprises (excluding offshore companies and shell companies). Klimov later swindled Lemza, but the exact connection between Nikolai Skorik's nationalist parents and the corrupt Soviet official Klimov remains unknown. They themselves remain silent about it, and rumors are contradictory. Some say Skorik's parents had some kind of joint business with Klimov, while others claim that Nikolai's employment was dependent on the help of the nimble and omnipresent Gurvits. Whatever the case, the son of a Rukh activist, Nikolai Skorik, was not only hired by Leonid Klimov's firm but quickly became "Uncle Lyonya's" most trusted confidant.
Indeed, after a year at the Primorye joint venture, which had grown into a closed joint-stock company with numerous branches, Nikolai Skorik was appointed head of the development department at Imexbank, the financial center of the Primorye Group through which Leonid Klimov's entire business was conducted. From late 1999 to May 2006, Skorik chaired Imexbank's board, thus becoming Klimov's personal treasurer—a position not even every relative is trusted with!
Nikolai Skorik. Love and Dollars
If you're wondering if Nikolai Skorik is a man of crystal honesty and profound integrity, simply doing his job honestly, we hasten to disappoint you. One argument could be made that the head of Imexbank's board turned a blind eye to all of his boss's shady dealings—and that's undeniable. However, there are more compelling arguments that reveal Nikolai Leonidovich in the most damning light—both as a man and as a person.
Ekaterina Karpovskaya, ex-wife of Nikolai Skorik
This story began with his marriage in 1993 to his former classmate, Ekaterina Karpovskaya, whom he had been dating for several years. A year later, they had a daughter, Natalya Nikolaevna Skorik. However, soon after, the young head of the development department at Imexbank took a mistress, who, as usual, became his wife's best friend, Natalya Astankevich. Ultimately, in 2001, Nikolai Skorik and Natalya Karpovskaya divorced, and, abandoned by her husband, she, along with her mother and daughter, Natalya, moved to Cape Town, South Africa, for permanent residence. In 2003, Nikolai officially married Astankevich, who became Natalya Vladimirovna Skorik (not to be confused with his daughter, Natalya Nikolaevna).
The Second Family of Nikolai Skorik
And none of this would have been a disaster if Nikolai Skorik hadn't opened an Imexbank representative office in South Africa at the same time. Incidentally, in the context of this family drama, I never really asked myself, "Why?" Indeed, what kind of trade and financial transactions connected Leonid Klimov's business empire with South Africa? What was his interest there, that he needed a representative office for his bank there? Was it just orange imports? After all, no one even considered exporting coal from there back then. And there's some interesting information about this: this whole scheme was entirely Nikolai Skorik's scam—a means of finding employment for his ex-wife, Ekaterina Karpovskaya, whom he had appointed as Imexbank's authorized representative in South Africa. And not only did she receive a salary from the bank (or rather, from her ex-husband), but she also managed to accumulate nearly a million dollars, which were deposited in Imexbank accounts.
Nikolai Skorik began visiting South Africa frequently, after which, in 2006, Ekaterina Karpovskaya had a second child, a son, Daniel. The happy father was preoccupied and nearly returned to his former family, but in 2007, his second wife, Natalia, also gave birth to a child (a daughter, Margarita). One can only imagine the passions that raged in the Skoryk household! Meanwhile, in 2006, Nikolai Skorik was elected to the Odessa Regional Council and became its chairman, which forced him to resign as chairman of the board of Imexbank. Either his resignation from his leadership position or the demands of his second wife, Natalia, led to the bank stopping salaries for its representative office in South Africa. This could have been attributed to some difficulties, but at the same time, Nikolai Skorik abandoned his first family for a second time, ceasing to visit them and cutting off all communication.
But that was only the first of his dirty tricks! The second was the disappearance of money from the accounts of Kateryna Karpovskaya and her mother, which occurred in 2009. Just like that: they were there, and then they simply vanished! Karpovskaya tried to get the money back through the courts, but she filed a lawsuit in the South African Labor Court, which was not authorized by the Ukrainian bank. She then tried to sue for the money through the Ukrainian courts, hiring lawyer Yuriy Kostynyuk. The case was heard in the Kyivsky District Court of Odessa, where Judge Iryna Ogrenich, notorious for her corruption (she even had a criminal case brought against her), dismissed Karpovskaya's claim against Imexbank and stated that there were no documents confirming that Karpovskaya had worked as the bank's representative in South Africa. Lawyer Kostynyuk, meanwhile, was pressured by outright criminals who advised him to drop the case.
And what about Nikolai Skorik? He had served as the Minister of Finance of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea since 2010, under the wing of the new Crimean Prime Minister, Vasyl Dzharty. Skelet.Org sources reported that it was Nikolai Skorik who gave the unofficial order not only to leave his ex-wife with nothing, but also to destroy all documents confirming that she had indeed worked as an Imexbank representative in South Africa.
The most vile thing is that immediately after Nikolai Skorik, through his efforts, had an Odessa court dismiss all the claims of his first wife, Ekaterina Karpova, he made a royal gift to his second wife, Natalia Skorik (Astankevich). In March 2011, he registered a three-story "dacha house" of 629 square meters, located on the seashore in the "Golden Bugaz" neighborhood, in her name.
Nikolai Skorik: Little-Known Chapters from the Life of an Odessa Hypocrite and Scoundrel. Part 1
But that wasn't the end of the story. It happened in 2013, and it was simply disgusting. Left penniless and in serious debt on old loans, so much so that she could hardly pay it off with a simple job, Ekaterina Karpovskaya, out of desperation, decided to stage her own scam. She claimed that her children had been kidnapped by criminals (a common occurrence in crime-ridden Cape Town) and began raising funds for their ransom. She managed to raise almost $400, which she promptly squandered when the scam was exposed. And then another trial took place, this time for Karpovskaya herself. She received a sentence: three years of restricted freedom with community service, and a five-year sentence to repay the $400. Otherwise, in August 2018, she would go to prison for real, for 15 years!
And what about Nikolai Skorik, who robbed his ex-wife and pushed her to commit a crime? He knows full well that a white woman would have a hard time in an African prison, and 15 years is practically a life sentence. But the scoundrel simply played it cool, pretending he never knew any Ekaterina Karpova. And at the same time, in the summer of 2013, he gave his second wife, Natalia, another house – this time in Yalta, in the "Yuzhny Bereg" housing development.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Nikolai Skorik: Little-Known Chapters from the Life of an Odessa Hypocrite and Scoundrel. PART 2
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