Through Chebotarev and Co., a chain of connections is being built with Yanukovych's "family," which, hoping to return to power, serves the Kremlin regime. In other words, we have a "fifth column" in the Prosecutor General's Office of the country that has occupied part of our territory.
Vitaliy Yarema's office is currently being criticized by everyone. Yanukovych's cronies are still at large, the murderers of the Heavenly Hundred have not been punished, and corruption remains rife. Moreover, some of the prosecutor general's vocal critics are linked to those he should have jailed long ago. It's hard to disagree with much of the criticism. And Yarema could have avoided it if he had taken a closer look at his inner circle.
So, meet Viktor Nikolaevich Shokin, Deputy Prosecutor General and Head of the Main Directorate for Supervision of Criminal Proceedings. In terms of influence on any criminal case in the country, only the Prosecutor General himself and God himself are more powerful than him. Incidentally, not long ago, when the new government was being formed, Viktor Shokin was tipped to take over Yarema's position, but something didn't work out.
Viktor Shokin
According to the Law on the Purification of Power, Viktor Mykhailovych was not subject to lustration. After all, this kind-eyed old man hadn't served under Yanukovych, and before the victory of the Revolution of Dignity, he hadn't held any official employment, yet he earned almost half a million hryvnias a year. Well, let's say he sold some greens from his garden.
Shokin is a veteran of the prosecutor's office, having served since the early 1980s. He oversaw numerous high-profile criminal cases. Some of them fell apart (like the case against Kolesnikov, a member of the Party of Regions), while others ended in the deaths of the main defendants (like the case of the "werewolf" Goncharov). But that's not the point.
Let's move on to the most interesting part.
Yuri Ivanyushchenko
Last week, it became known that the Prosecutor General's Office is allegedly not investigating any criminal case against Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, a former parliament member and oligarch close to Yanukovych. At least, that's the document Yuriy Yenakievsky's lawyers received in response to a request from the Prosecutor General's Office. This document will allow the semi-criminal mogul to unfreeze his Swiss bank accounts and freely access the millions he stole.
Alexey Chebotarev
Several months earlier, the name of underground oligarch Alexei Chebotarev, known in criminal circles as Leshik and Cheba, disappeared from the criminal case concerning the kidnapping and murder of Euromaidan activists. While still an opposition member of parliament and one of the Maidan's political leaders, current Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema claimed that Chebotarev was behind the gang of "titushki" (thugs) who kidnapped and tortured activists Igor Lutsenko and Yuriy Verbitsky (the latter died from beatings and hypothermia, joining the Heavenly Hundred).
It's worth noting that Ivanyushchenko is also directly linked to the Maidan killings. The militant wing of his group, led by Armen Sarkisyan (aka Armen Gorlovsky) , fought shoulder to shoulder with Leshik's thugs against unarmed activists. Specifically, a thug from Gorlovsky's gang shot and killed journalist Vyacheslav Veremiy.
Armen Sargsyan
And it gets worse: Alexey Chebotarev and Vyacheslav Ivanyushchenko have a joint business. This involves the production of counterfeit alcohol on an industrial scale. In the counterfeit vodka market, the interests of Yura Yenakievsky, who is based in Monaco, are represented by a colorful character named Ivan Avramov . Last year alone, this "consortium" stole nearly 100 million liters of alcohol from state-owned distilleries, worth approximately 5,7 billion hryvnias. Clearly, after the alcohol was "processed" into counterfeit vodka and sold, the profit increased by 1,5-2 times.
Ivan Avramov
The question arises: what does the gray-haired veteran prosecutor, Viktor Nikolaevich Shokin, have in common with this conglomerate of crooks and murderers? It's simple – family ties and, obviously, money.
They slander that Viktor Nikolaevich is either Cheba's uncle or godfather. At the very least, informed sources claim that Prosecutor Shokin has always harbored almost paternal feelings for the bandit Leshik.
The website TEMA reported that in 2005, economic crime officers from the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GUBOP) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, based on information they had gathered, submitted documents to the Prosecutor General's Office for approval to conduct searches. The case concerned a vodka scam involving Chebotarev. The GUBOP documents landed on the desk of Deputy Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin. Shokin, unable to think of anything better to do, dialed Leshik's number and warned, "They're targeting you here. Searches are possible. Get out of here." At the same time, GUBOP was wiretapping several defendants in the operational search operation. Leshik's phone was on the "letter" number, and the recording of Shokin's conversation with the suspect was recorded and must be preserved in the GUBOP's files.
This isn't the only time Shokin's godfather saved his godson from prison. In 2006, the same UBOP was investigating Lishchenko's group, which included Chebotarev. And not just a member, but his right-hand man. Suddenly, the UBOP was requested by the Prosecutor General's Office, even though the Prosecutor General's Office had conducted an investigation into the case a week earlier and found no violations. But the Prosecutor's Office handed the UBOP over to the SBU, where it disappeared without a trace, and the UBOP officers investigating the case were brought to trial.
Under Yanukovych's regime, Shokin was not in the Prosecutor General's Office. But, as mentioned above, Oleksiy Chebotarev aligned himself with the "Donetsk gang." Among his patrons were then-Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko and SBU head Oleksandr Yakimenko. And so, the regime fell, but Chebotarev's case lives on and thrives.
Moreover, as CRIME.in.UA reported, a couple of months ago, "titushki" from Chebotarev's gang, led by his loyal assistant Andriy Akimenok (Leshik's right-hand man and a former tax official), carried out a hostile takeover of two distilleries in the Rivne region (the Shpanivske EZHE State Enterprise and the Zirnensky Distillery State Enterprise) and the Chernihiv Distillery. To date, the dealers have amassed tens (if not hundreds) of millions of hryvnias worth of bootleg vodka from the distilleries seized from the state.
Where are the law enforcement agencies? As expected, they're investigating. However, it's somehow suspicious. Case No. 22014000000000470, opened on September 27 of this year under Part 2 of Article 204 of the Criminal Code against the "service groups" of the seized enterprises, is strangely migrating between various agencies and departments and has already been handled by the SBU, the Prosecutor General's Office, and the local financial investigation department of the Ministry of Revenue. It's impossible to organize such a mess without the assistance, or at least the connivance, of the main oversight body in criminal proceedings. Does anyone remember the full title of Viktor Shokin's position in the Prosecutor General's Office? If you haven't, return to the beginning of the article.
Incidentally, a source close to Chebotarev's entourage claims that Leshik's right-hand man, Andrei Akimenko, while drunk, bragged that he and Cheba had "brought in" $5 million for the appointment of a "godfather" to the GPU. Our source is silent on where and to whom the "vodka kings" went with the "Xerox box."
But if you think that Prosecutor General Yarema is the recipient of the "alcohol" millions, you're likely mistaken. Ukrainian prosecutors general have never had 100% autonomy in choosing their deputies. Such matters are ultimately decided in the Presidential Administration and behind the scenes in the Verkhovna Rada. This means that Shokin's appointment was the work of someone who strongly recommended this "shady" candidate to Petro Poroshenko.
But to hell with the five million. Something else is worse. Through Chebotarev and Co., a chain of connections is being built to Yanukovych's "family," which, hoping to return to power, serves the Kremlin regime. In other words, we have a "fifth column" in the Prosecutor General's Office of a country that has occupied part of our territory.
Ivan Pomidorov, CRIME.in.UA
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