Former Kyiv Oblast Deputy Prosecutor Oleksandr Korniets, who is accused of accepting a particularly large bribe and whose family's inexplicable wealth has been repeatedly reported on by CN, has managed to garner nearly all the public's attention with his numerous media performances.
Meanwhile, the second defendant in this scandalous case, Vladimir Shapakin, First Deputy Head of the Main Investigative Department of the Prosecutor General's Office, who was released from custody on bail of 6,4 million hryvnia, has remained in the shadows this entire time.
Today we'll try to shed some light on this shadowy prosecutorial genius and, at the same time, get to the bottom of his personal accounting.
This is Shapakin's track record, from which one can easily conclude that he is a fairly experienced prosecutor, so he could not help but be aware of what he was doing.
Many of you probably don't even realize what the position of First Deputy Chief of Investigative Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office means in the prosecutorial system. Given the type of cases the Prosecutor General's Office investigates, this person is practically omnipotent. Korniets, who actively milked the Kyiv region, is nothing compared to Shapakin, who until recently oversaw all the most high-profile criminal cases of our time, including those related to corruption involving very high-ranking officials. In short, he is a very influential person, not burdened with much publicity, unlike the Prosecutor General, who is often denied a proper rest by persistent journalists.
Well, let's forget for a moment Korniets, who is chanting his innocence from every television studio in the country, and take a closer look at the "quiet one" Shapakin.
This is a fragment of one of the documents that appears in the “diamond” criminal proceedings.
Prosecutor Shapakin had 40 (forty) bank accounts in five different banks, through which more than 16 million hryvnias passed in less than five years. Interestingly, his salary was only 560 hryvnias. It's hard to imagine how much time must be spent monitoring the flow of funds across 40 bank accounts, and even working while doing so.
Judge for yourself: at PJSC Finbank alone, Shapakin had 20 (twenty) deposit accounts and one current account, through which consistently large and meticulously round sums circulated with enviable regularity: 200, 300, 500 thousand hryvnias. Occasionally, however, this flawless monetary cycle experienced glitches. For example, on November 7, 2011, a sum simply outrageous by his financial regulations—3,584,470 hryvnias—was deposited into Shapakin's current account. But that was a one-off. Mostly, everything was orderly and smooth.
2011, the second year of Donetsk's absolute hegemony in all spheres, was generally a successful one for Shapakin. According to the Central News Agency, in December of that year, Shapakin paid 1,6 million hryvnias in cash to M-Budinvest through Credit Dnipro Bank as payment for an apartment purchase and sale agreement.
Shapakin's well-being was remarkably stable until his arrest. One of the CN's sources claims that our hero's PrivatBank accounts also processed substantial tranches totaling over 4 million hryvnias.
More than 1 million hryvnias passed through two of Shapakin’s seven accounts at Raiffeisen Bank Aval.
Thus, you can see that a leadership position in the Investigative Directorate of the Prosecutor General's Office is a very lucrative position, allowing you not only to earn money but also to run a business.
Here is a receipt showing that on May 15, 2015, on a Friday, i.e. a workday, Shapakin simply and routinely borrowed 350,000 US dollars or 7,2 million hryvnia from citizen Ryabchenko.
Incidentally, the same citizen Ryabchenko would later post bail for Shapakin in the amount of 6,4 million hryvnias—a touching example of unbreakable male friendship. And according to some sources, Shapakin would use the aforementioned 7 million hryvnias to purchase a spa in Zhytomyr. I don't know why Shapakin needed a spa in Zhytomyr, although the assumption that this simple method was used to legalize yet another bribe is obvious.
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At the end of the article, with your permission, I will allow myself to share with you my subjective opinion.
Today, rewatching the segment from Shuster's latest show featuring Korniyets, I didn't even try to listen to his arguments, as legal casuistry is a very ephemeral thing that can explain anything. But I looked closely at his face. And do you know what I saw? I saw that he wasn't the least bit ashamed. A public servant, a prosecutor exposed for corruption, lies to an audience of millions without the slightest twinge of conscience, without a blush.
I can imagine that the underground millionaire Shapakin isn't particularly worried either. That's precisely why this criminal case is a litmus test for modern Ukraine. If it, too, is hushed up, another social upheaval will become irreversible. Because the country simply can't handle so many unscrupulous people in power.
Sergey Ivanov for "Censor.NET"
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