The past week has been busy for NACP head Alexander Novikov. A new registry of corrupt officials (with mention Sytnik), six protocols for four judges of the Constitutional Court, twelve for the mayor Garden, The cessation of funding for Servant of the People, the summoning of six party leaders to the carpet... Former prosecutor Novikov is tough and ruthless. He'll take everyone by the gills. The only people he has no complaints about are Opposition Platform - For Life deputy Renat Kuzmin and his fellow party member Yuriy Chmyr; he wouldn't have any complaints about former prosecutor Sergei Lensky if he hadn't been lustrated, and former Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka if he hadn't fled. They're all "his own" to him.
Pshonka connoisseur
Last January, the Cabinet of Ministers, led by Denys Shmyhal, appointed Oleksandr Novikov as head of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP). He was born in Sumy and received his higher education at the Yaroslav Mudryi National Law University. After graduating, he worked for eight years in the Sumy Oblast Prosecutor's Office. From 2004 to 2007, he served as an investigator and assistant prosecutor in Sumy, and from 2007 to 2012, he was a prosecutor in the Department for Oversight of Law Enforcement in the Internal Affairs Bodies of the Sumy Oblast Prosecutor's Office.
FILE: Viktor Pshonka: The Rise and Fall of the Prosecutor's Caesar
In 2012, Novikov transferred to the Prosecutor General's Office, taking up the position of prosecutor in the department for the protection of the state's financial and economic interests. He then served as a prosecutor in the department for overseeing compliance with the law in criminal proceedings at the Prosecutor General's Office. In 2015, he applied for the position of head or deputy head of the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office, but failed the selection process. As soon as the competition for the position of head of the National Agency for Corruption Prevention (NACP) was announced, he rushed to fulfill his career ambitions.
Before his high-profile appointment, Novikov had only been implicated in one high-profile case – that of Ihor Likarchuk, director of the Ukrainian Center for Education Quality Assessment (for falsifying the results of 200 external independent evaluations in 2014-2015). Likarchuk called the case a set-up, and his son, Kostyantyn Likarchuk, former deputy chairman of the State Fiscal Service, commented on the meeting of the three-judge panel of the Kyiv Court of Appeals and the state prosecutor with the phrase, "Three idiots and a prosecutor's dog." The dog is Novikov.
Alexander himself considered himself, rather, one of the workhorses on whom his senior comrades dumped all the dirty work. In an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda, he boasted: “If you look at my biography, even though I wouldn’t work, I would be the most effective and the most effective of all – I would always work in ordinary positions. in ordinary villages, they simply load you with food, and you don’t need to share your conscience.”
He goes on to explain who exactly kept the "ordinary prosecutor" busy. It's strange that the selection committee and the Cabinet of Ministers, represented by Shmygal, ignored Novikov's revelations. For example, the phrase about how he repeatedly submitted resignation letters from the prosecutor's office:
“- In what kind of troubles?
– In 2004, when there was a Revolution, all these speeches were raised. I didn’t want to mother a hundred years old to that sovereign apparatus. Tse I just came to the posad, doing the following work.”
Did Novikov mean he disliked the Orange Revolution and the third round of elections on December 26, 2004, which was won by Viktor Yushchenko over Viktor Yanukovych? Yes, that's correct. The rest of the conversation leaves no doubt about it:
“- How were you staged before Viktor Pshonka?
– I’m afraid of the leakage in the plant. He was already a federal prosecutor and a federal administrator...”
Novikov's admiration for Pshonka, which he failed to conceal, is entirely understandable – it was under his leadership that he moved from the backwaters of Sumy to the capital, received a position in the Prosecutor General's Office, found future comrades there for work at the NAPC, and, most importantly, became a member of the Donetsk team under the patronage of the odious prosecutor Sergei Lensky, a loyal ally of Renat Kuzmin.
His start in life was given to him by the former head of the Sumy regional administration, Yuriy Chmyr, appointed deputy head of the Presidential Administration at the height of the Euromaidan. He was responsible for preparing speeches for Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka and Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, introducing censorship for news on national television channels, and also participated in coordinating the "titushki" (illegal armed gangs) abducting participants of the Revolution of Dignity.
On Kuzmin's team
In 1998, Donetsk Oblast Prosecutor Gennady Vasiliev, elected as a people's deputy, retained Viktor Pshonka and brought Rafael Kuzmin with him as his assistant. Rafael's cousin, Renat Kuzmin, became the Makiivka prosecutor and then the deputy prosecutor of the Donetsk Oblast.
After this, he was summoned to the capital and appointed Kyiv prosecutor. He brought with him the "contract master" Serhiy Lensky, who had started out as his intern. In Kyiv, Lensky became the Dniprovskyi district prosecutor. In 2004, he became infamous for his role in the raid on the Volya-Kabel chain store and for his attempt to seize control of the Vasilek café in Hydropark.
FILE: Renat Kuzmin: The Family Business of Outlaw Prosecutors
In February 2005, newly elected President Viktor Yushchenko, to the surprise of the democratic public, removed Renat Kuzmin from the post of Kyiv prosecutor, but only in order to reappoint Stetsenko as deputy prosecutor of the Kyiv region.
The whole point was that Kuzmin and Lensky's patron was the eccentric Kyiv oligarch Leonid Chernovetsky, nicknamed "Lenya Kosmos," who was preparing to fight for the mayor's seat. He needed people like the Kuzmin brothers and their adjutant, Lensky. It's reported that Chernovetsky affectionately referred to the Kuzmins and Lensky as "my troublemakers."
While Renat Kuzmin served as Deputy Prosecutor of the Kyiv Region, Chernovetskyi hired Rafael Kuzmin and Serhiy Lenskyi as project managers at Pravex Bank (one can only guess which ones). With the election of Leonid Chernovetskyi as Kyiv Mayor, and then Viktor Yanukovych as President of Ukraine, the close-knit Donetsk team moved to the Kyiv City State Administration (Lenskyi) and the Prosecutor General's Office.
On November 4, 2010, Kuzmin was appointed First Deputy to Viktor Pshonka, the Prosecutor General of Ukraine. He was responsible for the work of the department for the investigation of particularly important cases, law enforcement in transportation, and defense industry facilities.
At the same time, Lensky was "removed" from the Kyiv City State Administration and sent to serve as prosecutor in the unfamiliar Sumy Oblast, where Yuriy Chmyr is governor. At the regional prosecutor's office, the new chief is met by a "native" named Novikov. He willingly becomes Lensky's "workhorse," coordinating his every move with his boss, Kuzmin.
Together, they churn out cases with high-profile and political undertones. But for Lensky, his work in Sumy was a temporary assignment before a promotion. In December 2011, he moved to Kyiv and received a senior position in the Prosecutor General's Office. However, his colleagues couldn't stand him for long, and in August 2012, through a combination of behind-the-scenes intrigue, he was ousted as the Kirovohrad Oblast prosecutor.
But Lensky again considers this a temporary arrangement and wants his own "agent" within the GPU. His demand is granted. Thus, Novikov becomes a prosecutor in the GPU's Department for the Protection of the State's Financial and Economic Interests. There, he is granted a personal audience with Prosecutor General Viktor Pshonka, which for a provincial man was akin to a knighthood.
Our hero eagerly takes up the job and works in the Prosecutor General's Office under the direct supervision of Renat Kuzmin (Deputy Prosecutor General until 2013) right up until the Revolution of Dignity. Kuzmin, transferred to the National Security and Defense Council on the eve of Yanukovych's escape, registers as a presidential candidate in the 2014 elections. Novikov secretly assists him.
He then leaks crucial information to Kuzmin, saying that he is about to be placed on the wanted list on suspicion of orchestrating a deliberately illegal detention (referring to the Yuriy Lutsenko case), and Renat Ravelievich flees to occupied Crimea. On July 27, 2014, the Prosecutor General's Office places Kuzmin on the wanted list. Lensky is soon lustrated. And their henchman, Alexander Novikov, is simply ignored.
Having skillfully completed all the quests, he avoids lustration, remains in the Prosecutor General's Office, even receives a minor promotion, and by 2015, he was already applying for the position of Chairman/First Deputy Head of the SAP. He misses out, remains working at the Prosecutor General's Office, and only in 2020 does he achieve power at the NACP. For his new job, he recruits colleagues from the same Kuzmin-Lensky team.
"Mom's prosecutors" are on the trail
One of the most notorious divisions of the NACP is the Department of Financial Control and Lifestyle Monitoring, whose very name reeks of dreary undertakings. Essentially, it's a surveillance agency that monitors officials, uncovering hidden connections. After the Constitutional Court ruling, they went quiet, but overall, nothing has changed.
People who spy on who's kissing whom, watch children being driven to school and kindergarten, check which card was used to pay for grandmother's tests at the cancer center, and so on, must be "soldiers of the revolution," ascetics, and sinless saints. Otherwise, they have no moral right to spy on others.
But this isn't about Novikov's subordinates. In the aforementioned interview, he is asked about two individuals involved in financial oversight and against whom public activists have raised complaints: Yulia Kulikova and Alexander Ampleev.
Both characters are from the Lensky-Kuzmin team. Kulikova's husband simply ran away with Kuzmin. Therefore, only Ampleev is of interest, as he still heads the aforementioned Department of Lifestyle Monitoring.
Novikov met him at the Prosecutor General's Office, where Ampleev, working on environmental issues, was carrying out Kuzmin's assignment—harassing developers near Lake Telbin in Kyiv. Together with Novikov, they imposed a construction ban and removed the normal bonus for "indulgence," as evidenced by the houses and church built near the lake.
Then Ampleev specialized in “revealing facts of illegal depletion of green spaces at sites improving the Partizanska Glory park and the memorial park of the gardening museum named after T. G. Shevchenko in the city of Kiev.”
From these and other "raids," he managed to earn a luxurious house near Kyiv, registered in his wife's name, and a luxury car, officially owned by a 92-year-old grandmother. This, I remind you, is the person who oversees the "cleanliness" of all Ukrainian officials.
Ampleev became the subject of a segment on the program "Schemes" titled "Mama's Prosecutors." They photographed his house, tracked him in his new car, and caught him near the prosecutor's office. Everything pointed toward his dismissal in disgrace. But then something surprising happened: Ampleev was promoted from the Prosecutor General's Office to Novikov at the NACP.
As Aleksandr Novikov, the author of the Ampleev story in "Schemes," Katya Kaplyuk, explained in the aforementioned interview with UP, "works now under my control." We'd add: with a rather hefty salary. That's why she doesn't mention the subjects of her investigation.
"The food lay in the fact that yo Toyota Camry was on the day at the declaration. Katerina slept yo, whose. Vin said, grandma. Ale really not grandma, yo. In the fierce її having bought, with a microphone they caught him in kvitny. I, of course, declared only the coming fate.
Moreover, 900 million materials were collected here - in fact, all the robots knew these materials. “And if you feed that person, as one person asked in that journalistic investigation, I’ll tell you that Ampleev is a good-hearted and a good person,” Novikov said.
Incidentally, former Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Yuriy Chmyr is also doing just fine. He owns two apartments in the elite Novopecherskie Lipki residential complex. Renat Kuzmin is completely out of the question. He's a member of the Verkhovna Rada and the owner of a controversial estate in Pushcha-Vodytsia, but the NACP has no issues with him. And what issues could Novikov possibly have with his former boss? He understands who he owes his career advancement to. And, what's more, he tries not to anger these people. So, Kuzmin's declaration is clean.
Sergey Nikonov, ORD
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