Ruslan Bodelan: What did the former owner of Odessa not repent of? Part 1
For two decades, Odessa was torn between corrupt and criminal clans vying for power in the city: one was led by former Communist Party official Ruslan Bodelan, the other by former "democratic communist" Eduard Gurvits. The "Odesa elections" were synonymous with lawlessness and fraud. The methods they used to gain power made readers of crime reports shudder. Their allies, thanks to their control of ports, were listed by Ukrainian and European law enforcement agencies as members of the international mafia. However, none of them ever received the punishment they deserved.
After Ruslan Bodelan fled Odesa in 2005, he was virtually unseen in Odesa for over a decade, visiting his homeland only occasionally and virtually incognito. But in 2016, the former governor and former mayor appeared at a public event at the Literary Museum, where, in a small circle of old acquaintances, officials and businessmen, he presented his latest book, "Forgive Me, Odessites." Published in a print run of 2,000 copies, it never became a bestseller. Perhaps because the cover, with its catchy title, contained not a candid confession from one of Ukraine's most corrupt mayors, but, as noted by... Skelet.Org, another dose of political chatter about nothing, lamenting "lost victories." Odessa's former ruler has shown no inclination to truly repent for his sins against her...
Rusl Bodelan's book of repentance never became a bestseller.
Ruslan Bodelan. The Komsomol Tribe
Ruslan Borisovich Bodelan was born on April 4, 1942, in the village of Berezovka in the Odessa region (then part of Romanian Transnistria) to schoolteachers Boris Fokich and Galina Petrovna Bodelan. His early life is replete with oddities, bordering on absurdities. For example, at 17, after graduating from high school, Ruslan Bodelan became a physical education teacher at a school in the village of Gvozdavka in the Lyubashevsky district. At 23, he became the first secretary of the Kiliya district committee of the LKSMU. Bodelan, however, only graduated from the pedagogical institute at 26, in the distant city of Petropavlovsk, Kazakhstan, after which he returned to Ukraine and began working for the LKSMU Central Committee. All of this can be explained by the young Bodelan's exceptional organizational skills: from his school days, he excelled at leading Pioneer and Komsomol meetings, party committees, and business planning sessions. This was precisely why he was put in charge, so his teaching diploma was merely a formality. His second higher education was the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Thus, as neither a specialist nor a professional, but merely a gifted chairman, Bodelan carved out a distinguished leadership career for himself in the USSR.
In 1973, he became head of the Odessa Regional Committee of the LKSMU, in 1979 he became First Secretary of the Central District Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine in Odessa, and in 1984 he became First Secretary of the City Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, becoming the city's rightful ruler. It was then that Bodelan established all the valuable connections that would prove useful in the 90s. These connections included not only company directors, port directors, law enforcement officers, and customs officials, but also connections with Odessa's criminal underworld, which was diverse and already oriented toward foreign interests.
Not only did perestroika not sweep Bodelan from his post by the winds of change, but in 1990, it elevated him to the position of First Secretary of the regional party committee—a remarkable career in Soviet times, with higher positions available only to republican governments or to Moscow. However, the Soviet system was already crumbling, and in January 1991, Ruslan Bodelan prudently became head of the Odessa Regional Executive Committee, and in 1992, in the by-elections in Kiliya District No. 311, he won a seat as a people's deputy (he would also win the 1994 elections there).
But his subsequent flight from Odessa to the Verkhovna Rada was not a consequence of the overthrow of the Communist Party master of Odessa “from below,” but rather of the established relationship with the “top,” with the president. Leonid KravchukIn March 1992, Valentin Symonenko was appointed to replace Bodelan as head of the region, but he quickly departed for Kyiv for a promotion. Meanwhile, Bodelan languished for two years until he won the 1994 gubernatorial elections (the first and last in Ukraine's history), taking 57,96% of the vote and beating Vladlen Ilyin, his former subordinate who had headed the regional administration from 1992 to 94. Even that election was characterized as an extremely close race: despite the fact that Bodelan, Ilyin, and several other candidates had come from the Soviet-era Odessa regional and city committees, each had their own factions in Odessa behind them, and each had found protection in Kyiv.
Almost no one remembers the details of the dispute between Bodelan and Kravchuk in early 1992. Surviving sources Skelet.Org Several possible reasons are cited. Firstly, after the Crimean region secured autonomous republic status (within Ukraine) in 1991, ideas of autonomy arose in the minds of the leaders of Donbas, Kharkiv, Transcarpathia, Lviv, Odessa, and Kherson. Only a few dared to directly blackmail Kyiv, only those who had self-reliance, such as the "miner's leader." Efim ZvyagilskyAt the very least, Ruslan Bodelan then floated the idea of a federation of autonomous regions and the status of a "free city" for Odessa. He could easily have gone from fantasies to unsubstantiated demands, angering the first president. This allegedly also angered the Rukh party, whose leaders began demanding that Kravchuk remove Bodelan, a "pro-Russian separatist," from his post.
Ruslan Bodelan: What did the former owner of Odessa not repent of? Part 1
Furthermore, Bodelan was also accused of tacitly but actively supporting the separatists of Transnistria, which had been in rebellion since 1989. Moreover, Bodelan's dismissal from his post occurred just a few days before the start of Moldova's military operation against the PMR.
The second possible reason cited was the beginning of the division of post-Soviet property, primarily the Black Sea Shipping Company (BSSC). The former Komsomol member wasn't at all upset with the country, but Bodelan had his own interests in the BSSC property, primarily its coastal properties. Meanwhile, as early as late 1991, high-ranking officials in Kyiv were elbowing each other to lease a couple dozen BSSC ships to offshore companies. Furthermore, Odessa is home to two major cargo seaports, through which huge flows of cargo, including contraband, passed. Officials, rapidly growing businesses, and criminals, including international ones, all sought to control it. And it was precisely the latter that played a major role in the life of Odessa in the 90s.
Ruslan Bodelan. The Bloody Decade
Bodelan's return to the governor's chair in the Odesa region occurred against the backdrop of a division and redistribution of spheres of influence in the region. It was a monstrous tangle of interconnected organized crime groups, business groups, and official clans, attracting allies from all over: Kyiv, Moscow, America, and Israel. One of the focal points of this bloody standoff was the oil district of the Odesa port and the Odesa Oil Refinery, the struggle for which largely determined the balance of power in the city for the next twenty years.
Ruslan Borisovich has a very old and very close acquaintance, Ivan Grigorenko, who also made a meteoric rise in the 80s, from a local police officer to the head of a department at the regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Since 1990, Grigorenko has supervised a crime boss released after a 12-year sentence. Alexandra Angerta (nickname Angel), which, according to a number of sources Skelet.Org, received parole for his willingness to cooperate with the authorities. In the early 90s, Angert became a "vassal" of Viktor Kulivar (nicknamed Karabas), the most respected Odesa crime boss at the time. But at the same time, Angert began building his own "brigade" and established close ties with international mafioso Leonid Minin, who was involved in arms and drug smuggling, metal exports, and petroleum product trading. This is how Minin's criminal organization emerged, controlled by him and comprised of Alexander Angert (an "authority"), Alexander Zhukov (a businessman and friend of Minin and Angert), and Gennady Trukhanov (He headed the security, trained militants and formed titushki squads).
Ivan Grigorenko
Minin-Angert-Zhukov needed the Odessa oil port and refinery, but they were also claimed by the Chechens – emissaries of Dudayev's Ichkeria, which had declared independence and needed to sell its oil. The Chechens in Odessa itself relied on the new mayor. Eduard GurvitsIn Kyiv, they relied on the "Rukh" factions of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, representatives of the American embassy, and the head of KPMG's Ukrainian branch, Kateryna Chumachenko (Yushchenko's wife). The Minin-Angert organized crime group also needed support. Until 1993, they tried to find common ground with Eduard Gurvits (Angert, in particular, was in constant contact with Gurvits's people), but he had already chosen another side. So they relied on Ruslan Bodelan, whom they had been introduced to by Ivan Grigorenko.
Thus, in the mid-90s, two warring alliances formed in Odessa. One united around the mayor, Gurvits, and included Chechens (parts of the local diaspora and dear guests from Ichkeria), and people from another international mafioso, Semyon Mogilevich (Vakhtang Ubiriya, later Alexander Presman), as well as UNA-UNSO activists, and later "Brotherhood" activists who settled in Odessa—who caused more noise than action. Their alliance with some of the local criminal elements was also significant: for example, in the early 90s, Gurvits was supported by the organized crime group of Georgiy Stoyanov, which had initially been at odds with Angert's group. According to rumors, well-known Skelet.Org, the "thief in law" Antimon Kuhilava and Viktor Kulivar were leaning towards an alliance with Gurvits - which ended quite tragically for the latter: in 1997, Kulivar was killed, and Angert became the main "authority" of Odessa, maintaining shadow power over the city for the next twenty years (until his death from cancer in early 2017).
Georgy Stoyanov
In the mid-90s, Ruslan Bodelan, through his friend Grigorenko, whom he appointed head of the regional police department in 1996, formed an alliance with Angert's group, which had its own international criminal "roof" and its own "brigades." However, they had another common ally, one they later tried to forget: Vasily Mariyanchuk, the leader of a bloody gang of killers, which, according to numerous sources, Skelet.Org, acted as "liquidators" for Angert's group, and also carried out assassinations on behalf of Grigorenko and Bodelan. As Odessans put it, the "Bodelan regime" at the time relied on funds from Angert, Trukhanov's militants, Grigorenko's corrupt cops, and Mariyanchuk's hitmen. Between 1994 and 1998 (when Bodelan headed the regional administration) and 1998 and 2005 (when he served as mayor), numerous high-profile contract killings took place in Odessa. Among them were those said to be beneficial to Ruslan Bodelan and his closest business partners:
- Murdered Odessa businessman Semyon Guralnik attempted to compete with the Bodelan family's grain export schemes, which were carried out through Agroteks LLC, Dzherelo LLC, Ukrgrain CJSC, and the offshore company Intercore Ltd (Virgin Islands).
- On August 11, 1997, Borys Derevyanko, editor of Vechernyaya Odesa, was murdered right in the city center. His anti-corruption articles had thwarted many, including Bodelan and Gurvits, and one of the members of Mariyanchuk's gang was accused of his murder.
- In February 1998, Ihor Svoboda, chairman of the Zhovtnevy District Executive Committee of Odessa, was kidnapped and never seen again. Law enforcement authorities declared him dead.
- In March 1998, Sergei Varlamov, head of the legal department of the Odessa City Executive Committee, was kidnapped. It was later discovered that Varlamov had been immediately murdered and his body bricked up in the foundation of a garage, where it was found only seven years later. Thus, the killers "withdrew him from the mayoral race," in which he was running. Moreover, immediately after his kidnapping, media outlets close to Bodelan leaked information claiming that Varlamov had fled abroad with his mistress and a large sum of foreign currency.
- On May 16, 1999, Boris Vikhrov, chairman of the Odessa Regional Arbitration Court, and Igor Bondar, director of the AMT television company, were executed together. Both were considered to be associates of Mayor Gurvits, who had failed to reach an agreement with his successor, Ruslan Bodelan. Specifically, Vikhrov refused to close the case of a fraudulent scheme involving the attempted sale of the passenger airliners Taras Shevchenko and Odessa-San to pay off Black Sea Shipping Company debts, orchestrated by Bodelan's associates, as well as cases involving the transfer of funds from companies and banks abroad through fraudulent loan schemes.
- On August 7, 2001, Yevhen Zadorozhny, head of criminal counterintelligence at the SBU in Odessa Oblast, fell victim to hitmen. He was searching for the masterminds behind a string of contract killings, as well as the high-ranking officials who helped Oleh Yakimenko, a hitman from the Mariyanchuk gang, escape from pretrial detention. Three weeks earlier, his deputy, Sergei Masagarov, had disappeared without a trace. Before his disappearance, he had fallen into depression and resigned from the force. It was suspected that certain "professionals" working for the secret service might have been involved. Gennady Trukhanov.
- On December 2, 2002, Odessa businessman Valeriy Kravchenko, the owner of a fishing company, was murdered. He had promised to tell journalists about the extortion of entrepreneurs and the monopolistic "family" schemes of Bodelan and his entourage.
Of the crimes proven by the courts alone, the Mariyanchuk gang has committed 28 murders, 9 attempted murders, 13 armed robberies, and 6 kidnappings. However, those who ordered these attacks were never identified, because every time the investigation closed in on specific individuals, some force majeure occurred, or witnesses and investigators were murdered again.
Vasily Marianchuk has settled comfortably into his pretrial detention facility!
That's why the gang members arrested between 1999 and 2002 (sources reported that they were simply being disposed of) remained in pretrial detention until 2016, awaiting their sentencing. Moreover, their conditions in the notorious Odessa pretrial detention center were much better than those of ordinary prisoners: spacious four-bed "rooms" with televisions, and even carpets for Mariyanchuk, who had converted to Islam and Caucasian customs. But while the gang leader received a life sentence, most of his accomplices were released after their trial under the "Savchenko Law."
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Ruslan Bodelan: What did the former owner of Odessa not repent of? Part 2
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