Pavel Petrenko
In 2014, when Pavlo Petrenko first headed the post-revolutionary Ministry of Justice, he was hailed as one of the most progressive members of Yatsenyuk's Cabinet. The "young and talented" minister was entrusted with a grandiose mission: to clean up the judicial system, conduct lustration, and combat corruption. Over the past two years, it has become clear that this characterization was greatly exaggerated. Petrenko is doing an excellent job in Arseniy Yatsenyuk's pocket, but completely ignores the stated goal of implementing systemic reforms. This is not surprising, as the newly appointed minister is a "pocket" protégé of Senya, a member of the Chernivtsi "Family," and an official hryvnia millionaire.
Young clan
Pavel Dmitrievich Petrenko was born on July 17, 1979, in Chernivtsi. Little is known about his family: his biography mentions only his mother and sister, Oksana.
Petrenko studied at Chernivtsi Secondary School No. 9 with an in-depth study of English (Chernivtsi Gymnasium No. 4). At some point, Pavlik became friends with the kids from the school who were five years older – Senya Yatsenyuk and the brothers Maksimka and Lesha Burbak (Read more in the article Maksym Burbak: How Chernivtsi residents sat on Donetsk's "golden toilet" ). These figures are well-known in Ukraine today. Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as the main leader and entrepreneur, united everyone under his wing. Later, it was he who would lead his school friends into the "Front of Change" and big-time politics.
In 1996, Petrenko graduated from high school with a gold medal. Under Arseniy Petrenko's guidance, the trio enrolled at various times in the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University to major in law. In 2001, Pavlo Petrenko graduated with honors. The law faculty dean offered him graduate school, but Petrenko, following the call of his heart and Yatsenyuk, moved to Kyiv.
"YOU'RE A JURIST"
In the capital, Petrenko began private practice, providing legal assistance to various firms. After a few months in Kyiv, he was appointed chief legal counsel at the state-owned Oschadbank, where he worked for almost the entirety of 2001.
Despite the opening up of opportunities in public service, Pavlo Dmitrievich decided to pursue a career in business that same year. Together with partners Volodymyr Hnatyshyn and Serhiy Stasyuk, he founded the law firm Justicia Service in Chernivtsi. Its business flourished, and Petrenko returned to the capital. Incidentally, new appointments at the bank were already awaiting him: he became head of the Legal Support Department at Oschadbank. Pavlo Dmitrievich remained in public service until 2005.
All this time, Pavlo Petrenko hasn't been sitting in the bank office, but rather making new connections. For example, he found a new partner, Oleksandr Ageyev, with whom he founded the law firm "Deklarant." Over time, another company, "MLGroup Law Firm," was founded. In 2006, Petrenko contributed 800 hryvnias to its authorized capital. He was listed as the sole founder, and a certain Yaroslav Bondarenko was registered as the director, although Ageyev was actually the director. An interesting story surrounds the address of MLGroup. Officially, according to the register of individuals and legal entities, it was located at 19 Chokolivskyi Boulevard in Kyiv. In reality, a nine-story residential building stood there. However, in the database of the Agency for the Development of the Stock Market Infrastructure of Ukraine, an identical company is registered at 57b Olesya Honchara Street. Incidentally, the company occasionally changed its name to Stolichnaya Yuridicheskaya Gruppa CJSC and "moved" to 7 Smilyanskaya Street.
In 2008, Oksana Petrenko, Pavel Dmitrievich's sister, was appointed a member of the MLGroup Supervisory Board. He then resigned as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board, thus stepping down and retaining only 49% of the shares. The controlling stake was transferred to an unknown party. By a strange coincidence, these changes coincided with Oleksandr Ageyev sharing a 30% stake in the freight forwarding company Zammler Ukraine with Pavel Petrenko. Zammler Ukraine planned to open a customs and logistics complex in the Kyiv region. Ageyev had no land. A 2,5-hectare plot of land for construction in Bila Tserkva belonged to Pavel Dmitrievich, along with Viktor Shevchenko and Oleg Rachov, who also shared the shares. In 2008, the customs complex in Bila Tserkva finally opened. Incidentally, Zammler Ukraine is located at the already-known address: 57b Olesya Honchar Street. So it's safe to assume that MLGroup and Zammler Ukraine are connected. Lawyers, after all.
According to official information, MLGroup closed in September 2010. The strangest thing is that in 2012, 25% of the company's shares were owned by an unknown individual. The company is now registered under the Virgin Islands firms Aidar Limited and Pod Investment Global. Zammler Ukraine is still operating. It is also owned by offshore companies: Zammler Holding Limited (owned by Cypriot Elena Ioannou) and the aforementioned Aidar Limited and Pod Investment Global. The ultimate owners of Aidar Limited and Pod Investment Global are Australian lawyers Ian Taylor and Rachel Amy, specialists in offshore company creation. Their names are linked to the corporate raid on the TVi television channel, as well as the sale of Ukrainian weapons to South Sudan at reduced prices by the company S-profit Ltd.
Big politics
In 2009, Petrenko, at the invitation of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, joined the Front of Change and oversaw the party’s legal affairs, serving as the head of the legal department.
During the 2010 presidential campaign, he provided legal assistance to Arseniy Petrenko, a presidential candidate. That fall, Petrenko was elected to the Kyiv Regional Council on the Front of Change party list. He became a member of the standing committee on law, order, and anti-corruption.
In the 2012 parliamentary elections, he was elected as a member of parliament from the All-Ukrainian Union "Batkivshchyna" (No. 52 on the electoral list). As usual, he is once again responsible for legal matters within the faction.
In 2013, after the merger of the Front of Change and Batkivshchyna, Petrenko became one of the deputy leaders of Batkivshchyna.
It's worth noting that Pavel Dmitrievich has avoided scandals throughout his political career and has always maintained neutrality—his education, in fact, obliges him to. It was only in 2013 that he became embroiled in a dispute between Tatyana Bakhteeva and Read more about it in the article Tatyana Bakhteeva: "cured"!, a Party of Regions MP and former chair of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Healthcare, and Raisa Bogatyreva, the Minister of Health. The two women began to clash over spheres of influence: Bakhteeva was unwilling to share her connections and income in the pharmaceutical business with Bogatyreva. Then, unexpectedly, Batkivshchyna MPs Anatoliy Dyriv and Pavlo Petrenko joined the conflict.
They joined the so-called Temporary Investigative Commission of the Verkhovna Rada to investigate abuses in the Ministry of Health, the creation of which was initiated by Tatyana Bakhteyeva. This was preceded by the scandal surrounding the alleged "children who died from vaccines." It was a commission: by the end of the campaign, no one had named a single one of the 11 children who allegedly died from vaccines. The people's representatives were required to understand what was really going on in the ministry and in healthcare as a whole and, based on their findings, to issue a report. The commission met four times over six months. Clearly, no one wrote the report. Petrenko received the completed text on a flash drive from an assistant to deputy Tatyana Bakhteyeva. The report contained one interesting point. For some reason, the text ends with a call to grant greater powers to the State Service of Ukraine on Medicines. This is all the more surprising, since no one authorized the Temporary Commission to draw such conclusions, which are completely at odds with the topic of abuses and corruption in the Ministry of Health. However, this is understandable, since the deputy head of the State Service for Medicines, Inna Demchenko, was Tatyana Bakhteeva’s person.
Petrenko made another attack on Bogatyreva when he criticized the Health Ministry's allegedly billion-dollar tender for the purchase of ambulances. In this case, Pavel Dmitrievich's interest is understandable: he wanted to push his companies into the competitive bidding process and secure a share of the state treasury funds.
Maidan changed everything in Pavel Petrenko’s life.
Pavlo Petrenko at Euromaidan
In early December 2013, he became head of the National Resistance Headquarters and began providing legal assistance to students who had been killed by the Berkut. The politician opened his own office, where he consulted with victims. Pavlo Dmytrovych spoke at a hearing in Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi District Court, where 60 cases against Euromaidan protesters were being heard. He co-authored a bill to exempt participants in mass protests from criminal prosecution and promised to drop criminal cases brought against students.
When the standoffs on the Maidan began, Pavel Dmitrievich was at the forefront of his activity and vocal statements. He even said that a good half of the protesters had his phone number written down as "Pasha the Lawyer."
In the Ministry of Justice team
On February 27, 2014, Pavlo Dmitrievich was elected Minister of Justice in Arseniy Yatsenyuk's government. His candidacy was proposed by representatives of the Automaidan movement, though not without persistent lobbying by Yatsenyuk. Petrenko was approved unanimously.
Pavlo Dmitrievich promised to bring Euromaidan activists into the "new ministerial government" team. Pavlenko kept his word – people from the Maidan joined the government, but how professional are they? The "standout" figures in the minister's team:
— Agia Akhundova, First Deputy Chairman of the State Executive Service of Ukraine. In 2003, she provided intimate services to men in the Donetsk region. A criminal case was opened against her for prostitution and pimping, but it was dismissed three years later. She worked there for about a year. She was the secretary and then the mistress of the head of the Pechersk court. She had ties to the Azerbaijani mafia and controlled the criminal "Azerbaijan" tavern "Baku Boulevard."
— Inna Zavalnaya, First Deputy Chairperson of the Ukrainian State Register, public activist. Responsible for the decision to register the Right Sector political party. She served on the job for less than six months.
— Deputies from Petrenko's company "MLGroup". This is Anton Yanchuk (still in this position) and the head of the State Registration Service, Anna Onishchenko (she served for less than a year). Before Onishchenko, Petrenko's deputy was also someone associated with both MLGroup and the People's Front—Oksana Ivanchenko. Incidentally, many refer to the Ministry of Justice as MLGroup or a branch of the law firm MLGroup.
— Sergey Shklyar, another of Petrenko's deputy, worked at the now-famous "legal talent pool" firm Arzinger. This is the very same company linked to the "Kurchenko fuel" scam and work for Rosneft.
— Natalia Sevostyanova, the first deputy minister of justice, worked at the National University "Odesa Law Academy", whose president is the disgraced former people's deputy, chairman of the High Council of Justice of Ukraine Sergei Kivalov (Read more about it in the article Sergey Kivalov, the Godfather of Corruption and Justice). She was an assistant to the people's deputy Mustafa Dzhemilev (Read more about it in the article Mustafa Dzhemilev: The Dark Tatar Past of a Bright Fighter Against Regimes). It still works.
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Petrenko and his "honest" team's image suffered a serious blow in 2015 when one of his subordinates, Oleksandr Lypovyi, deputy head of the registration service at the Main Department of Justice in Kyiv, was arrested while accepting a bribe of 70 hryvnias for registering the ownership of a 700-square-meter property. The official was dismissed from the Ukrainian State Register in late 2014 under the "Law on the Purification of Government." Petrenko immediately announced that he had fired Lypovyi, but he was reinstated by a court order.
Petrenko, of course, announced competitions for vacant positions at the Ministry. But this was nothing more than a PR stunt. Similar "competitions" had been held at the Ministry of Justice before. The "right" person, the one with the most points, always won. Furthermore, Pavel Dmitrievich appointed whomever he wanted to the positions. A striking example of his brilliant personnel policy is the appointment of 28-year-old Oleksiy Zaytsev as deputy overseeing the state executive service in Kharkiv. This man's resume lacks any particular professional achievements. In December 2014, he joined the Ministry of Justice as an assistant minister and was later transferred to Kharkiv.
In general, any justice minister always faces a choice: defeat corruption or lead it. It's not for us to judge Petrenko's choice, but the following fact speaks for itself.
Almost immediately after his appointment, Pavel Dmitrievich was noticed in one of the capital’s fashionable establishments, “Safe”.
The photo was taken on the cell phone of lawyer and Kharkiv City Council member Anatoly Rodzinsky. The newly appointed minister was dining with blonde Natalia Sevostyanova, his first deputy and lover, an unknown brunette in her 20s, and a multimillionaire egg magnate. Oleg BakhmatyukHe is the owner of the Ukrlandfarming holding and the Avangard agricultural holding, one of the largest egg producers in Ukraine. The oligarch's identity became known in 2007 during a conflict over six regional gas companies he owned with the Boyko-Firtash group (read about them in the articles Yuriy Boyko – "The Untouchable" и DMYTRO FIRTASH. THE STORY OF A TERNOPIL BILLIONAIRE ). The latter ousted Bakhmatyuk from the energy market, and he went into the agricultural sector. An informal meeting with one of Ukraine's richest men shocked the public. Although this isn't surprising. There had long been speculation about Bakhmatyuk's problems at the Ukrlandfarming holding company. He was supposed to repay a $600 million loan he took out in 2011 from Russia's Sberbank. The money hadn't been repaid, so the bank could have seized all of the holding's mortgaged real estate at any time, even without a court order. The only thing that could have prevented this was the "position" of the state registration service, which is controlled by the Ministry of Justice. So the meeting was quite businesslike.
On December 2, 2014, the Verkhovna Rada approved the new composition of the Cabinet of Ministers, in which Petrenko retained the post of Minister of Justice.
On April 14, 2016, the parliament dismissed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, supporting the candidacy of Volodymyr Groysman in his place (Read more about it in the article Volodymyr Groysman: Dark Spots in the Biography of the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada). On the same day, the Rada approved the new Cabinet of Ministers, in which Petrenko again took up the post of head of the Ministry of Justice.
How the Minister got into trouble
It's no secret that working at the Ministry of Justice is lucrative. This isn't due to high salaries, but rather to the fact that the agency oversees all corporate raids, land divisions, tender hijackings, and promised full lustration.
Selling confiscated goods online. This idea had been floating around the Ministry of Justice for over two years, but Petrenko, having created SETAM, an electronic trading system, decided to claim all the credit for himself. It seemed like this innovation would bring in a ton of money for the state, but Petrenko managed to profit even here. He monopolized a state program. It's difficult, but for a lawyer, nothing is impossible. A little history. In early 2013, four organizations selected by the Ministry of Justice were selling the seized property; by the end of the year, only one remained—NIVA V.Sh., a private enterprise. Petrenko marked his arrival by holding a tender, the results of which he was reluctant to announce. It turned out to be quite simple—the tender was won by firms directly associated with the new Minister of Justice.
The first winning company, "Lik Torg," is registered to a certain Alexander Borisyuk and is registered at the same address as the law firm "MLGroup." Previously, it had a different name, "Aktsioner" (owner: Oleg Stepanenko, director: Oleg Yelchik). These are Petrenko's partners in the company "Megapolis Capital." Moreover, the firm should not have participated in the tender at all, as it declared no fixed assets and zero profit for 2013. The second winner was the company "Capital Price." This is the reincarnation of the previous main dealer in confiscated property, the joint venture "Yustitsia." The companies shared the same addresses. Also with signatory authority for "Capital Price" was Evgeny Mashkin, one of the former founders of "Yustitsia," which was eliminated in 2013 for violations. In addition to the aforementioned firms, the other winners were "Avista" and "Ruby Integration."
Logically, the new Ministry of Justice should have allowed the sale of confiscated goods to any willing company. However, the agency decided to monopolize the sales process through the state-owned enterprise Informjust, which it controlled, for a 5% fee. Previously, this service from private traders "cost" 15%. In reality, of the 15% of the trader's commission, 10% went to the Yanukovych Family, 5% remained with the Ministry of Justice, and the trader, at best, got 1%. Since the Family is no longer in office, the Ministry of Justice's financial position has not suffered. Furthermore, this innovation instantly allowed for control over all financial flows from the sale of confiscated goods and forgot about kickbacks. However, there was a catch to the whole scheme: Petrenko, while seemingly having established his "business," would easily transfer funds from the state enterprise to private pockets, would lose his "feeding trough" if he left office. But Pyotr Dmitrievich found a solution: transferring the money to a private company for services related to the storage of confiscated goods. And in this case, a "fair" tender was essential. It was held in three days, and Alfa Khimtrade LLC, with a registered capital of 5,000 hryvnias and no previous experience in this type of activity, was selected. Furthermore, the firm was expected to store assets worth billions of hryvnias for 3% of their value, out of the 5% fee charged by Informjust. It's hard to imagine a more ingenious scheme. However, under pressure from journalists and the public, Petrenko was forced to refuse the services of Alfa Khimtrade LLC and delegate the right to select a custodian to ordinary state enforcement officers.
And most importantly, the numbers: in 2013, without SETAM, the enforcement service sold seized property for 1,115 billion hryvnias, and in 2014 – only for 393 million hryvnias.
TendersThe most widespread and effective scheme for raising money is government procurement. It has always been and will always be. Tenders are won by "insiders" who set inflated prices. The difference is split between officials and businessmen. Petrenko successfully intervened in this well-worn scheme with his "predecessors." A striking example: last year's scam by the Ministry of Internal Affairs involving the purchase of Renault Dokker and Renault Duster police vehicles, which are significantly inferior to the Toyota Prius. However, this acquisition was no accident.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs held a tender. The winner was a rather mediocre company called Niko Prime Megapolis LLC. The total transaction value was 122,52 million hryvnias. This would be fine, but the company's founders are Kovin Capital Asset Management Company LLC and Niko Auto Holding LLC (Ukraine), with Cypriots Katya Apostolou and Ioannis Elia listed as its nominal beneficiaries. These same individuals also own Niko Auto Holding (Ukraine). Among the company's founders are Viven Management S.A. and Kovin Capital Asset Management Company, registered to Pavel Petrenko's old partner, Volodymyr Hnatyshyn, with whom they opened their first law firm, Justicia Service, in Chernivtsi, and the British firm IFL International Finance and Leasing Limited. Is it a coincidence that, according to the terms of the tender, the firm of a friend and colleague of the Minister of Justice won? Of course not.
And the most significant achievement of 2016 was the completion of the full transition to electronic public procurement through the ProZorro system in Ukraine on August 1. This means that from now on, all tenders exceeding thresholds (up to 200 hryvnias for goods and services, up to 1,5 million hryvnias for works) must be conducted through the new system.
The customer must upload tender bids to ProZorro, thereby announcing the procurement. Once the winner is determined, the results are uploaded to the system. It's worth noting that the Ministry of Justice tested the system for two years.
Liquidation of government servicesIn January 2015, the Cabinet of Ministers, at the instigation of the Ministry of Justice, liquidated the State Registration Service (Ukrgosreestr) and the State Enforcement Service. Their powers were transferred to the Ministry of Justice. Thus, the corruption schemes that benefited state registrars of real estate, business, and civil status acts have not disappeared. They are simply now directly subordinate to the Ministry of Justice.
Construction mattersIn 2015, the Kyiv City Council decided to retain the lease of land at 151-b Mykola Bazhan Street for Niko Invest LLC and also granted the company the right to build a residential and public complex. Despite numerous violations, the matter dates back to 2004. The Kyiv City Council signed a 25-year lease agreement for 2,24 hectares of land in the city center with a little-known company, Niko Invest LLC. The land was then valued at 50 million hryvnias. The company was supposed to complete construction within five years. In 2014, the Kyiv City State Administration's Department of Land Resources discovered that no building had been built there. They attempted to terminate the agreement, but it was not to be. All courts upheld the legality of the lease, citing the decision of the Kyiv Commercial Court dated August 5, 03.08.2009. Then the notorious judge Lyubomyr Golovatyuk (who aided in the privatization of Mezhyhirya) cancelled the lease term and the right to terminate the agreement. Thus, Niko Invest's lease agreement became effectively unterminable. The reason for this "favor" lies in the company's founders' close ties to the Minister of Justice. Niko Invest is owned by the Cypriot company Niko Holding and Investment Limited and Kovin Capital Management Company LLC. The latter is owned by Vladimir Gnatyshyn.
Lustration is not for everyonePetrenko's main slogan was complete lustration. He even claimed that judges feared his "guiding hand," and were resigning at a rate of 200 a day across Ukraine. However, it turned out that all-encompassing lustration could be avoided. In March 2015, Anna Ignatenko, Deputy Head of the Main Directorate of the State Fiscal Service in Kyiv, appealed to the Ministry of Justice to clarify certain provisions of the law "On the Purification of Power." It resulted in a sort of "lustration indulgence," signed by First Deputy Minister of Justice Natalia Sevostyanova, stating that she (Ignatenko) was not subject to lustration and should not be fired. Petrenko claimed this was a fabrication and that the ministry had never sent any letters. Everyone believed her.
Help for Yanukovych and Co.It would seem that the new Maidan government should focus its efforts on ensuring that the "criminal" regime of Yanukovych and the Family is punished. However, it's clear that the Chernovitsky brothers have taken advantage of the Donetsk brothers' well-established schemes. One's own don't abandon one's own, and the Ministry of Justice is even more so; it will even help.
In March 2014, the EU Council froze the assets of 18 Ukrainian officials suspected of embezzling funds and involvement in the murders of activists on the Maidan. A few months later, former President Yanukovych and his sons, Pshonka (Read more about it in the article Viktor Pshonka: The Rise and Fall of the Prosecutor's Caesar), Klyuev brothers and young oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko have filed lawsuits in European courts against the EU's decision to impose sanctions against them. The General Court of the EU and the European Court of Justice are to hear these cases in cases against the Council of the EU.
What is the Ministry of Justice doing under Petrenko’s leadership?
Pavlo Dmitrievich, without consulting the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which had taken the opposite position, decided to introduce Ukraine as a third party in the sanctions challenge. This played perfectly into the hands of Yanukovych and company, allowing them to unfreeze their assets, hand some over to the new government, and transfer the rest to offshore accounts. In September 2014, the Ministry of Justice granted power of attorney to Maitra Kamilla Mekhtiyeva, a member of the Paris Bar Association, to represent Ukraine's interests in European courts. Most interestingly, the European specialist agreed to work pro bono.
Two months later, the Ministry of Justice changed its mind – Ukraine refused to participate in the proceedings. However, during this time, Viktor Yanukovych's lawyer, Joseph Hague, managed to appeal Ukraine's actions. In March 2015, the former president filed a motion for reimbursement of the costs he incurred in connection with the appeal proceedings. The court granted the motion. Yanukovych is to be reimbursed £57,317 ($70,000) from the Ukrainian budget, according to former Ukrainian Justice Minister Olena Lukash. Meanwhile, progress in the legal proceedings against the Yanukovych family has been more than modest – only 8,000 hryvnias have been recovered over two years.
Raider takeoversAt the end of 2015, two corporate raiding scandals erupted, culminating in the latest government outrage.
In November 2015, approximately 400 unidentified individuals illegally entered the Zhytomyr confectionery factory "ZhL." They wanted to seize the building, a fight ensued, and grenades were used. It sounds like the plot of an action movie. But Interior Minister Arsen Avakov (Read more about it in the article Arsen Avakov: The criminal past of the Minister of Internal Affairs) and his associates classify the incident as a routine public disorder. This is unsurprising, since Avakov is a member of the People's Front party, and his fellow party member, MP Serhiy Pashinsky, was named as the main instigator and leader of the corporate raid. Pashinsky's business partner, Serhiy Tyshchenko, repeatedly called the factory owner, American investor Ihor Boyko, demanding a $10 million "tribute" for "peace." Boyko refused. Then the state machinery sprang into action, primarily the Ministry of Justice and Pavlo Petrenko. The Ministry of Justice removed the company from the State Register of Legal Entities and arbitrarily "appointed" a new director. Avakov then stepped in, providing assistance to the raiders by providing security for the factory. Local authorities turned a blind eye, despite the loss of 100 million hryvnias in taxes annually. And Petro Poroshenko simply decided not to interfere—one less competitor.
Pavlo Petrenko's name suddenly surfaced when the Ukrainian National Lottery was raided. The pattern repeated itself. UNL General Director Andriy Bochkovsky learned online that someone (who? The Ministry of Justice, led by Petrenko, and the head of the ministry's Registration Service Department, Serhiy Benedysiuk) had amended the Unified State Register of Legal Entities and Individual Entrepreneurs. According to the register, a Swiss citizen, Peter Rudolf Schetti, was registered as the new owner, and the company already had new management. These changes were made based on a ruling by the Korolevsky District Court of Zhytomyr.
The court's decision was bitterly overturned, but the registration service continued to play on the raiders' side, attempting to transfer the corporate rights of UNL's legal owner to a new one. The Ministry of Justice is assisting in this effort.
E-declarationThe recent scandal involving Pavel Dmitrievich is the systematic disruption of the electronic declaration system, which launched on August 15, 2016, without a certificate of compliance. The heads of the Ministry of Justice and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Pavlo Petrenko and Arsen Avakov, categorically refused to submit their data. Of course, the system is not perfect, but then again, the government is "young." But there's another side to it—corruption—linked to the struggle for monopoly power among companies that maintain state registry software. They report to a certain Oleh Klimenkov. A search for "Oleg Klimenkov" reveals this man as a "freelance advisor to First Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov" (Turchynov held the post in 2009, Read more about it in the article Oleksandr Turchynov: Skeletons in the Closet of Ukraine's "Bloody Pastor") and General Director of the Center for Information and Computer Technologies LLC.
So, in Ukraine, Enter-com is the company responsible for servicing state registry software. It operates under a contract that expires at the end of 2016. It was registered in an apartment in a residential building in 2009, shortly before the tender. Oleg Klimenkov lobbied for the company's interests. He has a software partnership agreement with the Russian firm Letograf. This system powers document management in government agencies across the CIS. Essentially, Enter-com, along with state registries and gigabytes of confidential information on Ukrainian politicians, is under Russia's thumb. So, understandably, Klimenkov and his company are being given the green light. In this entire story, a corruption thread also leads to former Prime Minister Yatsenyuk. Because the most logical thing for the new prime minister is to remove the suspicious company from state registry flows. Nothing has changed since Yatsenyuk's resignation in April 2016 – the company is still allowed to operate. The embrasure is being held by Senya's allies, Petrenko and Avakov, who remained in the Cabinet after the spring government rotation. Moreover, strangely, the company Enter-com won a multi-million-dollar contract, having won a tender to support the operation of the registers under the new Minister of Justice. No one has verified the origins of this company's software.
The Minister's "Weaknesses"
Hryvnia millionaireWhile Ukrainians are struggling to make ends meet, Petrenko's income has increased sixfold during the crisis. His net worth in 2013 was 3,8 million hryvnias ($146,000), and by 2015, it had reached 24 million hryvnias ($926,000). Pavel Dmitrievich attributed this rapid increase to inflation, i.e., the rise in the dollar exchange rate.
Petrenko officially became a hryvnia millionaire in 2012, declaring 1,6 million hryvnias. His purchasing power peaked in 2013. Then, the official purchased a 748-square-meter plot of land for 141 hryvnias, a new apartment for 968 hryvnias, and a 2006 Land Rover for 980 hryvnias. The total purchases amounted to over 2 million hryvnias.
Apartment for a mistress"My personal life doesn't interfere with my work," says Pavel Petrenko. The minister is romantically involved with his first deputy, Natalya Sevostyanova.
They rent the same apartment, as evidenced by the politicians' income declarations. In his 2014 declaration, Pavel Dmitrievich indicated that he spent 255 hryvnias on renting 144 square meters of luxury housing; this information is no longer included in his 2015 expenses. An apartment of the same size is also listed in Sevostyanova's income declaration.
The nuance of Petrenko and Sevostyanova's relationship is that new anti-corruption legislation prohibits relatives from working while subordinate to each other. So, with his civil marriage, the politician violates this legal provision. A passport stamp would have saved Petrenko. But there's an even bigger "but"—you can't transfer everything you can transfer to your civil wife—real estate, expensive cars, and other property—to your legal wife.
Pavel Dmitrievich also owns two plots of land. The 15-acre plot is located in the village of Novi Petrivtsi. Petrenko's neighbor at the dacha is Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Shoes on salePavel Petrenko completely ignores dress codes, but he loves expensive items that often seem out of fashion. For example, his well-worn shoes turned out to be a brand-name model from the Italian fashion house Bottega Veneta. However, they are very difficult to find. They are from the 2008 collection. The shoes originally cost $810, or about 20 hryvnias at the current exchange rate. They can now be found at online flea markets with a 60% discount.
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In short, the current Minister of Justice doesn't qualify as either a "minister" or a "justice minister." He's a simple fixer for small clients, a flunky for the powerful, and a henpecked husband for women. What could one expect from a "minister" born of Yatseyuk and the Euromaidan?
Arina Dmitrieva, for SKELET-info
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