It's no secret that the prosecutor's office in our country cannot side with any actions taken by agencies dealing with public finances, or anything else. It's a different matter when it comes to the State Financial Monitoring Service, whose new leader has been a man with ties to Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema since the "wild 90s."
What is it and why is it not performing its functions properly?
On March 1 of this year, Igor Borisovich Cherkassky was appointed to oversee the country's financial intelligence agency, the State Financial Monitoring Service. If you think this agency investigates cases involving dirty money, you'd be right. There's just one caveat: this executive body has information about suspicious cash movements in Ukrainian banks, as it posts agents in virtually every one of them. These agents provide the agency with relevant information from the bank, and if management deems it necessary, it will forward it to law enforcement.
It would seem that the State Financial Monitoring Service should have easily tackled the offshore companies of Yanukovych and Co., which hold deposit and securities accounts in a number of Ukrainian banks. In June, the agency even announced that it had frozen $77.22 million in these companies' funds in just two weeks of operation. Materials regarding the financial transactions of these companies, which transferred funds totaling $1,36 billion and deposited them into accounts in Ukrainian banks, were submitted to the Prosecutor General's Office.
But, as we know, the Prosecutor General's Office's further "investigation of financial fraud" against representatives of the previous government has vanished into thin air. Moreover, no matter what materials state financial monitoring provides, the prosecutor's office has no legal basis for further action. Moreover, the accounts of disgraced young and old oligarchs have supposedly been frozen, but the business assets of wealthy fugitives somehow continue to operate (for example, VETEK-media). And financial intelligence, whether joking or seriously believing, believes that monitoring is purely about monitoring, calculations, recommendations, "drawing up a pretty figure," and handing it over to the right people. That's all.
"This is our common cause and we are responsible for it."
How could Cherkassky be connected to the current Prosecutor General, Vitaly Yarema? Igor Borisovich is far from poor. He learned to count and "monitor" money not only from his father, a crime boss who emerged from the underground, but also from his father's agility and drive during the turbulent 90s. Back then, Igor Cherkassky supplied the Kyiv mob with expensive foreign cars, which were driven there by men in military uniform, along with weapons stolen from military depots. All of this was protected by the Avdyshev organized crime group, well-known far beyond Kyiv, of which he was a member. Cherkassky later worked under Igor Fadeyev, nicknamed "Moscow."
At that time (1993), the head of Kyiv's UBOP was none other than the current Prosecutor General, Vitaly Yarema, who, whether he wanted to or not, was also connected to Viktor Avdyshev's gang. This connection concerned the fact that Yarema, as someone with business ties to the organized crime group (and others), helped that same Fadeyev, with Avdyshev's help, imprison another gangster, Igor Tkachenko, better known as "Skull," for eight years. Yarema also used his official position to provide protection for one of Avdyshev's businesses abroad, allowing him unimpeded travel.
The turbulent 90s in Kyiv continued to rage even after "Cherep"'s imprisonment. With the encouragement of UBOP chief Yarema and his eternal and loyal mentor, Petro Opanasenko, Igor "Moscow" created another group called "Center," composed of roughly 50/50 gangsters and cops. True, "Moscow" was later threatened with imprisonment, but the court acquitted him (due to Yarema's connections). However, Yarema's subordinate, the criminal investigation officer Ravinovich, who was handling the case, unexpectedly hanged himself. But that's another story.
So, both Cherkassky and Yarema worked for the same organized crime groups in the 90s, meaning they were in on it: each got a piece of the big pie of the chaos that was going on.
In the 2000s, when Cherkassky was the former deputy head of Ihor Bakai's State Administration of Presidential Affairs, he was instrumental in resolving dubious land and housing issues. He was the initiator and overseer of the so-called "velvet construction chaos" in Kyiv, carried out under the auspices of the State Administration of Presidential Affairs. Yarema was also directly involved in this chaos, as his position allowed it. Furthermore, since both "heroes" were fellow party members, asking for protection in the form of a BYuT party card was quite a serious matter back then.
Whatever life teaches us, we still ask it questions again
Both men, when they assumed their positions in 2014, were heralded by the new government as those who would fight corruption, possessing the necessary experience and skills. If experience is taken as a criterion for the quality of an official's work, then, of course, both Cherkassky and Yarema, since the 90s, have been actively fighting criminal capital and corruption in their respective fields, which allows them to continue doing so, only now at a much higher level—at the state level. If skill is taken as a criterion, then these individuals, like no one else, know how to navigate criminal environments, how to negotiate with officials, and how to forge their own paths in the highest echelons of power.
The Prosecutor's Truth wants to ask three questions here:
Why is someone with a criminal past once again being tasked with identifying signs of criminal proceeds in financial transactions and halting the financial activities of errant financial monitoring entities? The question of holding him accountable by the prosecutor's office, given his connections to Yarema, is understandably out of the question.
Can the State Financial Monitoring Service, possessing information containing banking or commercial secrets from all Ukrainian organizations, regardless of ownership, only provide the Prosecutor General's Office with the figures it needs (including the deposit accounts of Yanukovych and Co.), without disclosing the actual figures, allowing them to be used for selfish purposes? Could this be why the Prosecutor General's Office still can't find the exact amounts of money "stolen from the people"?
— How long will the authorities allow Igor Cherkassky's "financial organized crime group" to exist, with its "protector" in the person of Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema?
Prosecutor's Truth
DOSSIER: Yarema Vitaly Grigorievich
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