As a reminder, on the evening of August 27, 57-year-old Valentyna Semenyuk-Samsonenko, who headed the State Property Fund from 2005 to 2008, was found dead in her home in the village of Chaika in the Kyivo-Svyatoshinsky district of the Kyiv region. According to law enforcement, she died from a gunshot wound to the lower jaw from a hunting rifle found near her.
Although everything outwardly resembled suicide, investigators initially had some questions, as the next day a criminal case was opened under Article 115 of the Criminal Code—"premeditated murder." But less than a week later, forensic experts suddenly began to strongly believe the victim had committed suicide.
Based on the explanations, they reached this conclusion because of the lack of evidence of unauthorized presence in the house. Apparently, criminals always leave behind cigarette butts, fingerprints, or at least signatures in marker on the dressing table mirror? At the same time, information from "anonymous sources" was being actively disseminated in the press, according to which Semenyuk had "certain psychological problems" before her death—she allegedly suffered from depression caused by "family and domestic problems" and had even seen a psychiatrist.
Investigators immediately began to tailor the facts to the suicide theory. As the Kyiv Regional Ministry of Internal Affairs Directorate confidentially told Vesti, Semenyuk knew where to find a weapon in case of urgent need. "According to her relatives, she knew that one of her sons-in-law kept a hunting rifle in his safe," another highly competent source told reporters. "The rifle was loaded. All she had to do was pull the trigger."
Indeed, Chekhov himself warned that keeping a loaded gun (especially in a safe) is dangerous, as it will inevitably go off—straight to the head! Apparently, the Ukrainian forensic experts were fans of the great playwright and therefore staged their version of events like a fine play. They preliminarily simulated the shot, based on the body's position: Semenyuk, according to their calculations, dropped to one knee, rested the rifle butt on the floor at an acute angle, and from that position fired the fatal shot.
Moreover, the experts, in addition to their ingenuity, demonstrated enviable erudition, drawing a parallel with the suicide of the head of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, Nikolai Shchelokov, who, after being removed from all his posts, stripped of his awards, and accused of corruption, took his own life in a similar manner.
Unfortunately, Russian investigators probably don't read the foreign press much. Otherwise, in addition to a historical excursion into the Soviet past, they would certainly recall a very recent incident in St. Petersburg, Russia. There, a local resident, Grigory Kochnev, was involved in an accident with "car scammers." After a confrontation with them, he stabbed himself in the chest five times (precisely in the heart), then got behind the wheel of the car and died. At least, the police and prosecutors are firmly convinced that this is exactly what happened.
Incidentally, American researchers Valerie Callanan and Mark Davis concluded several years ago that women who commit suicide, unlike men, very rarely shoot themselves in the head. They attributed this gender difference to a characteristic of women's personality—specifically, a reluctance to spoil their appearance.
But foreign professors are no guide to our professionals. They even came up with a kneeling position for the victim to justify the use of a hunting rifle as a suicide weapon. Fortunately, it wasn't that far from the body—otherwise, they'd have had to dig into the victim's past, looking for at least a history of attending a school acrobatics club.
In this regard, many immediately recalled the "suicide" nine years ago of former Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko, who so did not want to face questioning at the Prosecutor General's Office that he shot himself in his garage with two shots (again, in the head!). Either from nerves or impatience, he also broke his fingers.
Meanwhile, Semenyuk's loved ones are the least likely to believe the suicide theory. "Valya visited me on August 16th," the deceased's brother, Nikolai Skibyuk, told a Gazeta po-ukrainski correspondent present at the funeral. "She admitted she was 'ordered.' She said that if she died, she should be buried next to her first husband."
Semenyuk-Samsonenko named her possible "customer" and the reasons why she might be killed in a recent interview: "The mayor of Kremenchuk was recently assassinated. Why was he killed? Because he raised the issue of Kolomoisky paying for Ukrtatnafta and modernizing the enterprise. He was killed solely because he raised the issue of the economic security of the territorial community."
The fact that the Dnipropetrovsk governor, who owns less than half of the shares in this oil and gas company, exercises complete control over it through his "pocket" Board of Directors, blocking dividend payments to the state, was indirectly confirmed recently by Ihor Belous, Chairman of the State Fiscal Service of Ukraine. "We have a problem, and I can state this openly: our biggest problem is with Ukrnafta, which failed to pay its payments in August. They are very significant—over 500 million hryvnias since August alone, and this amount could be double that in September," he said at a briefing on September 8.
Even earlier, Kolomoisky sold over 600 tons of industrial oil from Ukrnafta pipelines to his Kremenchuk refinery at a price 14 times lower than market value, netting him approximately $500 million. So, the Privat owner had plenty of reasons to silence the local mayor, Oleg Babayev. Moreover, he has no reason to fear law enforcement action in this regard.
Recently, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, whose head, Arsen Avakov, recently traveled to Dnipropetrovsk with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk to solicit campaign funds from Kolomoisky, reported the results of its investigation into Babayev's murder. The alleged perpetrator of the crime was identified as a certain Oleksandr Melnik (director of the local Vizit shopping center), and three suspects, all of whom answer to the name Igor, are being considered for the role of the killer. However, the other Igor, Valerievich (a handsome man with a beard), is of absolutely no interest to the investigation.
One more detail. On June 17, exactly a week before Oleg Babayev's murder, Valentyna Semenyuk was beaten by two unidentified men in camouflage who attacked her near the Presidential Administration building. And on the night of September 6 (i.e., after her death), the car of Andriy Semididko, head of the Anti-Raider Union of Entrepreneurs of Ukraine, was burned in Kyiv. Two weeks earlier, Semididko, along with the former head of the State Property Fund, had given a lengthy interview about Igor Kolomoisky's activities. In response, he received a final, so to speak, Dnipropetrovsk warning...
Of course, it's unlikely the death of the former head of the State Property Fund is directly connected to the murder in Kremenchuk. They're not exactly beasts sitting at PrivatBank to smash every piece of news! Rather, there may be a number of compelling arguments at play. Incidentally, in the same interview, Semenyuk said that the current shelling of cities and enterprises in the east is preparation for the coming redistribution—the "largest privatization in 20 years" announced by Yatsenyuk in mid-summer.
"They're mostly state-owned enterprises. But not Akhmetov's or Kolomoisky's, just state-owned ones," she explained, explaining the true motives driving the Ukrainian military to destroy state assets in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. "Then it will turn out that all the enterprises will be sold for next to nothing."
At the same time, as a reminder, Donetsk Governor Serhiy Taruta demanded the withdrawal of Dnipropetrovsk battalions from the region, as they had been most active in artillery "cleansing" of industrial infrastructure. But no one listened to Taruta, understandably—according to the latest data from the State Fiscal Service, nearly 600 enterprises have already been destroyed during the anti-terrorist operation in Donbas.
While in the East, with the help of heavy artillery, “pre-sale preparations” are being carried out, in other places of our vast Motherland, privatization (or rather, “re-privatization”) is already in full swing.
In early September, the government ordered the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade to grant the state-owned enterprise United Mining and Chemical Company the right to manage the property complexes of the Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant and the Volnogorsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant, which were previously leased to businessman Dmitry Firtash's company, Crimean Titan.
Moreover, the Cabinet of Ministers not only took these enterprises away from Kolomoisky's main foe, but effectively handed them over to him, as the United Mining and Chemical Company, hastily created several weeks earlier, was headed by Privat's protégé Ruslan Zhurilo. Given the above, this makes it possible to predict with a high degree of certainty which of the domestic oligarchs will profit most from Yatsenyuk's "largest privatization yet."
What Kolomoisky absolutely doesn't need is unnecessary publicity on the eve of great events. This could well have prompted him to order Semeniuk to be "calmed down," promptly departing for Sardinia. Where, incidentally, he still resides.
Moreover, this eloquent "hello" could be addressed not only to those who like to delve into other people's schemes, but also to other dissatisfied individuals. For example, to the residents of Kremenchuk, where several rallies were held demanding justice from the police in the investigation of their mayor's murder. They were given a very clear hint that excessive zeal should be avoided—it will only cost them dearly. Odessans who survived the fiery nightmare of May 2nd, or residents of Donbas who interacted with Kolomoisky's militants, by the way, could also share their impressions of the methods he uses to restore order in their chosen territory. And what about the locals? Even seasoned representatives of Amnesty International were shocked by the atrocities of the Aidar Battalion!
In general, demonstrative intimidation campaigns are very typical of the owner of Privat. The same Russian businessman, Maxim Kurochkin, who had a dispute with him over the Ozerka market in Dnipropetrovsk, was shot dead in broad daylight by an unknown sniper in March 2007, right in the courtyard of the Svyatoshinsky District Court. So the story of Valentina Semenyuk, who dared to raise her voice against Kolomoisky, doesn't seem out of the ordinary. It's just the way business is.
In an interview with Kraina, Gennady Korban—Kolomoisky's loyal deputy and chief enforcer of his corporate raiding schemes—clearly articulated the relationship between the owner of Privat and his opponents: "In the East, there's a principle: 'A ruler must make others fall in love with him. If you can't make someone fall in love with you, you must buy them. If you can't buy them, you must kill them.' This rule works. We make some people fall in love with us, we buy some, and we kill some."
And, judging by the fact that the Dnipropetrovsk "Ruler" increasingly prefers "utilization" to seduction and bribery, the coming "PRIVATization" of Ukraine promises to become one of the bloodiest pages in its recent history...
Special Correspondent
Recall: "Why and for what was Valentina Semenyuk killed?"
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