Vera Ulyanchenko
On July 1 of this year, the Prosecutor General's Office filed charges against the former head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Vira Ulyanchenko is accused of committing a crime under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code, "Illegal seizure of state property on an especially large scale, using official position." The former ardent participant in the Orange Revolution and ally of the "hope of the nation," Viktor Yushchenko, is charged. She is accused of illegally transferring the Sukholuchye hunting grounds to Viktor Yanukovych.In principle, there's nothing surprising in the very fact of the strong friendship between the 2004 Maidan protesters and Yanukovych's "criminal regime." Nor is there anything surprising in this team's penchant for the unbridled theft of state property. It's enough to recall the leader of PORA, Vladislav Kaskiv, or the BYuT member, Andriy Portnov (Read more about it in the article Andrey Portnov: A Raider's Story). But Vera Ivanovna is a particularly interesting case.
Ulyanchenko started out in the Komsomol. She was a member of the Radyansky District Council in Kyiv. This isn't surprising. Many politicians of a national Ukrainian persuasion, from Yulia Tymoshenko to Iryna Farion, attended the Komsomol school and held party membership cards. Things got interesting when the Soviet Union collapsed and these remarkable young people, now former communists and Komsomol members, gained access to state assets. And that happened in the 90s.
Vera Ivanovna was no exception. Her "front of operations" was the infamous company "ChMP-Blasko." She headed its Kyiv office. This company was created through the reorganization of the Black Sea Shipping Company into a joint-stock company. Before the collapse of the USSR in 1990, this shipping company had 234 vessels and a profit of 270 million rubles and foreign exchange earnings of $788 million. By 1993, 160 vessels had been towed and re-registered to offshore companies in various countries, and the company's revenues were also transferred there. "ChMP-Blasko" took out loans using its vessels as collateral and was gradually driven toward bankruptcy. In 1994, a parliamentary investigative commission was created under the leadership of Yuri Karmazin. As a result of its work, almost the entire company's management was jailed. Except for Vera Ivanovna, who managed to escape to the United States.
It is said that Ulyanchenko's friend, Ekaterina Chumachenko, the future wife of Vera Ivanovna's future "political patron," helped her escape to the United States in time. Some defendants in the 90s cases, such as former Mykolaiv Oblast Governor Oleksandr Sadykov, claim that neither he nor Ulyanchenko had anything to do with the embezzlement of funds from ChMP-Blasco. Vera Ivanovna herself claims she went to the United States to give birth, citing health issues. However, this "childbirth" dragged on for five long years. Meanwhile, in Ukraine, she was accused of embezzling 320 million rubles; the case was opened on October 3, 1995. She is also implicated in another case, alleging the embezzlement of several million karbovanets.
Vera Ulyanchenko and Katerina Chumachenko
But by 2000, all these matters were somehow hushed up. Perhaps at the instigation of Viktor Yushchenko, who by then had become Ukraine's prime minister, having married two years earlier to Vira Ivanovna's friend, Kateryna Chumachenko. It was said that she had planted an assistant on her husband, who would keep an eye on the "handsome man" and handle organizational matters while the prime minister himself was busy with "gleychiks" and "bdzhols." In 2001, the hapless prime minister was ousted from his post, and in 2002, he entered parliament as the head of "Our Ukraine." "Verivanna" also remained, taking up the position of head of the "Our Ukraine" secretariat.
But "Baba Vera's" true triumph came when Yushchenko became President of Ukraine. Incidentally, according to NU-NS staff, she received this nickname around the same time. Her influence grew especially toward the second half of Viktor Andreevich's term. Then, the "messiah" completely transformed into a political loser, whose approval ratings were approaching zero. The "hope of the nation," apparently finally realizing that the people he had inherited were not at all what he had dreamed of, retreated into the "political astral plane" for good. And to avoid being disturbed, he surrounded himself with women—Vannikova, Gerashchenko, and, of course, Ulyanchenko. All journalists remember how touchingly, maternally, she straightened the President's tie and dusted his jacket before his public appearances.
Vera Ulyanchenko and Viktor Yushchenko
But this was only the visible side of her work. Almost all communications with the President went through Vera Ivanovna. In other words, every document that landed on Yushchenko's desk went through "Baba Vera." And such services, as we know, are well paid. Furthermore, Ulyanchenko was Viktor Andreevich's main communicator with his political opponents from the Party of Regions. And they desperately needed these connections back then. And they were willing to pay for it, since they had the money but no influence. Ulyanchenko never hid her good relations with Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych. And, perhaps as a sign of this good relationship, she gifted then-Prime Minister Yanukovych 17,48 hectares of the Sukholucha nature reserve through the companies "House of the Forester" and the "Kedr" hunting club, both associated with him. Incidentally, this land was leased for 49 years, but there was no rent. These hunting grounds were, as it were, “assigned” to the hunting farm.
Today, the Prosecutor General's Office has taken up this wonderful "gift." Judging by recent developments within the agency, the "Baba Vera case" has potential for prosecution. The only thing prosecutors should keep in mind is that Vera Ivanovna has experience "escaping" abroad, and she and Kateryna Yushchenko, the former Chumachenko, are supposedly still friends.
Denis Ivanov for SKELET-info
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