Sergey Semochko: A Cynical Intelligence Officer. Part 1
Serhiy Semochko's career is a shining example of the depths to which Ukraine's law enforcement and security services have sunk under President Poroshenko. But it's possible the new government will break through this bottom by recruiting Semochko and giving him a new, even more senior position. After all, Zelenskyy's team warmly welcomes "disenfranchised" people who worked for their predecessors. This is especially true if they claim they were unlawfully dismissed based on false accusations or resigned out of principle, protesting corruption and arbitrary rule.
Perhaps we'll soon hear this from Semochko, who was dismissed from his position as First Deputy Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Service by presidential decree on April 12, 2019. He had served there for only six months, since August 2018, having been appointed there by Poroshenko himself. The reason for his dismissal was a journalistic investigation by the program "Nashi Groshi with Denys Bigus," whose materials were confirmed by SBU and NABU investigations. The family of the modest Ukrainian officer, who declared only his salary, was found to own real estate worth over $8 million!
However, the NABU quickly closed the case against Semechko , citing the Constitutional Court's overturning of criminal penalties for illicit enrichment. However, other factors also testified against Semechko, including the presence of close relatives with Russian citizenship and Crimean registration. Overall, he was deeply embroiled in a scandal, started by journalists on one side and supported by Zelenskyy's team, which included Semechko's dismissal as point #7 of its demands to Poroshenko.
However, rumors were already circulating that Semochko was secretly negotiating his employment with the new president, and could easily transform from a corrupt official and FSB agent into an unrecognized hero and patriot. This is especially true since Semochko and Zelenskyy share a common patron in the owners of Privat. And that's not the only thing Ukrainians didn't yet know about Serhiy Semochko.
Secrets of Madame Choly
As befits a former top intelligence official, Semochko has no past—meaning his official biography has been painstakingly scrubbed of all details. It begins with the fact that Semochko, Sergei Oleksiyovych, was born on November 1, 1972, in Yalta, and that he has a younger brother, Andriy. And then there's a complete blank until 2014, when Semochko, a former Crimean SBU officer, suddenly materialized out of thin air, having left the annexed peninsula and taken a job as deputy head of the Odesa regional SBU.
But there's also an unofficial biography of Sergei Semochko. Based on miraculously surviving scraps of information and various rumors, it reveals that Ukrainian counterintelligence and intelligence were led by a man very far removed from the moral character of Stirlitz. He's more comparable to the notorious Lev Zadov, who came to the GPU from the ranks of the "Makhnovists." However, even Zadov worked for the good of the state—unlike Semochko, he was always motivated solely by personal gain.
Semochko erased his childhood and youth from his official biography, which is rather odd, considering he could at least boast of an A in mathematics. Apparently, this is because Semochko was very reluctant to reveal the names of his classmates and friends from his youth. However, information about his life in the early 90s is contradictory. According to one version, after the army, he went into business, then joined criminal organizations where his friends were already involved, and in the mid-90s, he decided to join the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Another version says Semochko joined the police immediately after demobilization, and only later, wearing epaulets, did he establish connections in semi-criminal businesses and the criminal underworld. But all versions clearly indicate that Sergei Semochko rose to fame through what is colloquially known as "shaggy gold." And we're not talking about mink pelts.
Prostitution in the resort town of Yalta existed even during Soviet times, and by the early 90s, it had become "legalized"—meaning it was simply ignored. Legally, it wasn't, but everyone and their dog exploited it. Criminal gangs profited from it, corrupt cops profited from it, and, what's more, prostitutes and their haunts traditionally served as sources of information for law enforcement. And it was there that the young Sergei Semochko began his career.
Yalta, Oreanda Hotel, early 90s.
The Oreanda Hotel, built during the Tsarist era, was considered an elite hotel throughout the 20th century: after the Civil War, it served as a Central Executive Committee rest home, before the Great Patriotic War, an NKVD sanatorium, afterward a Ministry of Defense sanatorium, under Khrushchev, it was handed over to Intourist, and in independent Ukraine, for a long time, it was Yalta's only five-star hotel. It was there that the famous film "Assa" was filmed, which, by and large, accurately depicted what took place in its rooms at the time. After the collapse of the USSR, the hotel was no longer under the control of the KGB, but the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) was greatly interested in it, as the Oreanda became a resort destination for newly minted businessmen, thieving officials, and gangsters. According to Skelet.OrgThey were pleased by the "girls" of Natalia Zagitova, a pimp known by the nickname "Mama Choli" (after a character from a Mexican television series), who launched her service in Oreanda. And it was Mama Choli who became the first step in Sergey Semochko's career.
According to media reports, Sergei Semochko started out as a warrant officer in Directorate No. 7 (surveillance and investigation) and was appointed as an intelligence officer at Oreanda. However, it's unclear which agency he served in, as the "Seven" existed in both the Soviet KGB (though this department was called differently in the SBU) and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Furthermore, young KGB-SBU officers without a higher education typically started out as warrant officers, while in the Ministry of Internal Affairs they were given sergeant ranks. At the same time, by 1996, Semochko was definitely already an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Ultimately, one can only guess, as Semochko himself carefully conceals his career history from everyone.
So, let's turn to unofficial information from various sources. As we've already mentioned, some claim that Semochko first started working at Oreanda, getting a job there through friends, and was later recruited by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and became a member of the "Seven." Others disagree, saying Semochko was sent to Orenda as a rookie operative. But they do agree that Semochko worked alongside Mama Choli—either helping her keep an eye on the "girls," or... well, he was a good-looking guy, and Mama Choli's clients weren't just interested in women. But that's pure rumor! However, the claim that Semochko was even formally married to Ms. Zagitova, although she was indeed old enough to be his mother, has been repeated by many Skelet.Org sources . Perhaps this was his official assignment, or perhaps he was planning to get his hands on her inheritance...
While carrying out this so-called mission, Sergei Semochko amassed his first fortune and made a slew of useful connections among officials, businessmen, and criminals. Then something happened: Semochko somehow acquired a fake higher education diploma and earned the coveted lieutenant's epaulettes. However, he didn't wear them for long, and in 1996, he was summarily expelled from the Ministry of Internal Affairs—officially for this fake diploma. Many media outlets covered this incident from Semochko's past. But what really happened? There were only fragmentary rumors about it.
Maxim Kurochkin (Max the Mad)
Alexander Babakov
Secondly, by that time, the young lieutenant Semochko had become so entrenched in his role as a corrupt official and "werewolf in uniform" that he stopped properly respecting his police superiors and sharing profits with them. He began playing his own game, exploiting his established connections, information, and money. Incidentally, this became a hallmark of Sergei Semochko's character—he repeatedly overrode his immediate superiors, conning and scamming them for his own gain. Apparently, this is precisely why he never lasted long anywhere.
After his scandalous dismissal, Semochko spent two or three years working for some "private entities." Again, his official biography makes no mention of this. Perhaps because these entities belonged to well-known people, with whom Semochko would have found it difficult to reveal his connections. It's not hard to guess who these people were: the new owners of the Oreanda, Maxim Kurochkin and Alexander Babakov. Not only did they not oust Mama Choli, her "girls," and her young "husband," but they also took her under their protection, so Zagitova's business flourished at the Oreanda until Kurochkin's murder in 2007. And since the new owners likely needed some kind of hotel security service or a private security company with "titushki" (illegal hit men) to seize Crimean real estate, Sergei Semochkin had no problem finding employment.
That's how Semochko began working for the Luzhniki gang, which became known in Ukraine under the brand name "Russian Club," which they founded in 2004 to provide political support to Viktor Yanukovych. The "Russian Club" brought together a team of Russian political strategists led by Gleb Pavlovsky. Behind their backs, under the watchful eye of the club's vice-chairman, Kurochkin, operated aggressive Russian business raiders, seizing control of Ukrainian regional power companies, hotels, and markets.
Privatovsky's son-in-law
Soon, the leadership of the Yalta Department of Internal Affairs changed, and Sergei Semochko acquired enough money and patrons to regain his police rank and even climb the ranks. Whether he earned a real diploma, even from some commercial "academy," is unknown—it's possible he still has no law degree, or even any higher education.
And then he experienced yet another shift in his interests, during which he abandoned both his previous employers and even his first fiancée. Here's what happened: in the early 2000s, a young and handsome police officer named Sergei Semochko, who showered money and boasted of his connections, and who knew all the intricacies of the Kama Sutra not from pornographic films, managed to charm a Yalta resident named Tatyana Nikolaevna Lysenko. Born in 1963 (Semochko always favored older women), Tatyana Lysenko already had two children from a previous marriage, Stanislav and Anastasia, who now have their own families. So, during the aforementioned journalistic investigation, it was possible to make public a fact that Semochko had until recently carefully concealed: Tatyana Lysenko is a relative of the wife of Elena Bogolyubova, the wife of oligarch Gennady Bogolyubov, an equal partner of Igor Kolomoisky and co-owner of the Privat Group. How they met is anyone's guess: perhaps it was a chance encounter and love at first sight, or perhaps when Semochko received information that a divorced relative of the oligarch's wife lived in the same city, he decided not to miss his chance. In short, that's how Bogolyubov acquired his first swindler son-in-law (his second was later his daughter's husband, Dmitry Chernyavsky ).
Ilya is the third and youngest child of Sergei Semochko and Tatyana Lysenko. He is considered Sergei Semochko's son, but whether he is also Tatyana Lysenko's son is unknown—oh, such secrecy! Adding to the confusion is the fact that Ilya previously even signed his blogs with his father's surname, but now he officially uses the Lysenko surname. Why, I wonder?
Journalists have unearthed a wealth of material about the long-standing close relationship between the Lysenko and Bogolyubov families. Photos of Tatyana Lysenko and her children near and inside the Bogolyubov home in Kozyn (Koncha-Zaspa), information that Semochko and Lysenko purchased an apartment in Kyiv in the same building as Bogolyubov's wife and daughter, and evidence that Tatyana Lysenko sold a plot of land in Livadia to Elena Bogolyubova back in 2013.
Tatyana Lysenko with her children in front of the Bogolyubovs' house.
The fruits of the affair between a modest Yalta policeman and the family of an influential oligarch were not long in coming. Immediately after the first Maidan, Serhiy Semochko was appointed advisor to the new Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuriy Lutsenko , who, as we know, also lacks a legal education. As the saying goes, "one of our own"! But that wasn't the most interesting part. Let's recall the events of 2006-2007: the war over the Dnipropetrovsk Ozerka market between Maksym Kurochkin and the Privat Group, which ended with the arrest and subsequent murder of Maksym Beshenyy. Back then, the Minister of Internal Affairs, Yuriy Lutsenko, who retained his post until December 2006, was on the side of the Privat Group, and Serhiy Semochko was his advisor. And it's not hard to guess that Semochko not only advised "Yura the Terminator" to arrest Kurochkin but also leaked a considerable amount of incriminating information about his former boss.
And then Kurochkin was killed—in part because he might have started talking and, among other things, revealed the goings-on at the Oreanda Hotel. Considering that Kurochkin's killer was never found, and a former Interior Ministry special forces officer was charged, many interesting theories arise. Moreover, according to Skelet.Org , Kurochkin's murder was orchestrated by his own people—the Luzhniki gang.
By the time of this murder, Lutsenko had already resigned, handing over his post to Vasyl Tsushko. Serhiy Semochko was hired by the SBU, which in early 2007 was headed by the cunning rogue Valentyn Nalyvaichenko . Well aware of the political preoccupations of then-President Viktor Yushchenko, Nalyvaichenko appeased him with exhibitions of the Holodomor (featuring fake photos taken from the Nansen and American Great Depression archives) and the rehabilitation of the OUN-UPA, while he himself launched a vigorous corruption operation. Serhiy Semochko, appointed to the SBU in Crimea, employed the same methodology: he developed a close friendship with the leaders of the Crimean Tatar "Mejlis," who had the support of the Kyiv "orange" government, and pretended to combat radically pro-Russian movements in Crimea. Meanwhile, he was actively developing his family business in tourism, real estate, and passenger transportation. According to SKELET-info sources , he also routinely supplemented his income with bribes, kickbacks, information leaks, and participation in land raids.
Even with the change of power in Kyiv, Semochko's fortunes continued to flourish. He rose through the ranks, joining the leadership of the autonomous region's Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and in 2011, he wasn't ashamed to take a company apartment in Yalta, which he immediately privatized, 50/50, with his then-underage son, Ilya. Apparently, his relationship with Tatyana Lysenko, the owner of a substantial property portfolio, hadn't yet been formalized.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Sergei Semochko: A Cynical Intelligence Officer. PART 2
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