Yuriy Boyko – "Untouchable"
Yuriy Boyko is Dmytro Firtash's main partner. Unlike his godfather, however, Yuriy Anatolyevich has no legal troubles and sits comfortably in the Verkhovna Rada. Boyko has traveled a thorny path from a factory foreman to Minister of Fuel and Energy. He exemplifies diligence, loyalty, and determination. And the fact that even after the Euromaidan, he remained a key player in Ukraine's political strife speaks volumes about his power and the potential for a full-fledged comeback against Yanukovych's men.
With over a decade of involvement in Ukrainian politics, Yuriy Boyko can confidently be called one of the most influential and serious players in the country. Having assumed the helm of Naftogaz Ukrainy in 2002, he not only consolidated his position but also rose to the highest echelons of power. One thing that Boyko possesses is an ability to select the right partners. First, Oleh Dubyna recommended Boyko for the position of head of Naftogaz in 2002. Subsequently, he established contact with Dmytro Firtash , for whom ideal conditions for gas supplies were created. In 2007, he merged his Republican Party of Ukraine with the Party of Regions and became one of the country's most high-ranking figures.
Constant criticism for his collaboration with Dmytro Firtash, his involvement in the RosUkrEnergo scandal, his open war with Yulia Tymoshenko, and the infamous oil rigs—Yuriy Boyko has endured so much. But, no matter how much it contradicted the law and common sense, he emerged from each scandal unscathed.
And now a logical question arises: why isn't the post-Maidan government seeking the conviction of the infamous Yuriy Boyko, now the leader of the Opposition Bloc? Everything points to this being another "deal." The key point of the "non-aggression pact" between the new government and Yanukovych-era officials was mutual neutrality. The Opposition Bloc helps push through necessary laws, and in return, prosecutors turn a blind eye to the "past achievements" of Yuriy Boyko, Dmytro Firtash, Serhiy Lyovochkin , and others.
Why has a prominent member of the Party of Regions, who was involved in corruption schemes and was and is an outspoken lobbyist for Russian interests in Ukraine, never been brought to justice? This is a rhetorical question, and it should be addressed to the current government. After the victory of the Maidan and the flight of Yanukovych, most of the population expected the arrest of corrupt officials and the restoration of order in all branches of government, but the reality turned out to be different. By and large, none of the prominent officials from the Yanukovych era have been held accountable.
Today, Yanukovych's exiled entourage is probably scratching their heads, asking the absurd question: "Was it really possible to just stay and not even leave the trough?"
Yuriy Boyko demonstrated by his own example that our country has a selective justice system, and that it's entirely possible to negotiate preferential treatment and stay afloat with the post-Maidan government. Even after your ship seemed to be shattered by a storm.
Yuriy Boyko. Biography
Yuriy Anatolyevich Boyko was born on October 9, 1958, in Horlivka, Donetsk Oblast. He was an only child and attended Horlivka Secondary School No. 4. Because Yuriy Boyko has not spoken publicly about his parents, Skelet.Org does not have any detailed information about them.
Yuriy Boyko has a solid higher education – he has two. In 1981, he graduated from the Mendeleev Moscow Institute of Chemical Technology with a degree in chemical engineering and engineering, and in 2001, from the East Ukrainian University with a degree in engineering and economics.
Family. Yuriy Boyko has a wife and six children. His wife, Vera Dmitrievna Boyko, is a Master of Sports in gymnastics. Yuriy and Vera met in college, where they were in the same class. In her third year, Vera transferred to Moscow State University. The change of university didn't affect their relationship. Therefore, in their fifth year, Yuriy and Vera got married. After graduating, the newlyweds moved to the Luhansk region.
Yuriy Boyko with his wife Vera
Yuri and Vera Boyko have six children: three sons – Anatoly, Yuri and Nikolai and three daughters – Yaroslava, Ulyana and Maria.
Career. From 1981 to 1999, he worked at the Zarya chemical plant in Rubizhne, which specialized in the production of explosives. Starting as a foreman in one of the production sections, Yuriy Boyko eventually became the plant's general director.
In 1999, he transferred to work as the general director of one of the largest processing enterprises in the Luhansk region - OJSC Lisichansknefteorgsintez (abbreviated as LiNos).
In 2001, Yuriy Boyko moved to Kyiv. There, he became CEO of Ukrzryvprom. At the same time, he was appointed Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Transnational Financial and Industrial Oil Company Ukrtatnafta.
From February 2002 to March 2005, Yuriy Boyko headed the national joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy. As Boyko himself recounted in an interview, he was recommended for the position by Oleh Dubina, then Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister. "We shared similar views on life, and we had a good working relationship," Boyko said in an interview with Fakty.
Yuriy Boyko's first steps in politics date back to July 2003, when he was appointed Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy. At the time, the government was headed by Boyko's fellow countryman, Viktor Yanukovych. After assuming the deputy minister's post, he remained in his position at Naftogaz Ukrainy. It was during this period that Boyko's fateful rapprochement with Dmytro Firtash took place.
In November 2004, he joined the Supervisory Board of UkrTatnafta CJSC.
In March 2005, Yuriy Boyko was dismissed from his post as Deputy Minister of Fuel and Energy. Following the Orange Revolution, he also lost his position as head of Naftogaz Ukrainy.
After this, Yuriy Boyko briefly retreated from serious politics. In 2006, he ran in the parliamentary elections, but was unsuccessful. He ran on the ticket of the "NE TAK!" bloc, created from the SDPU(o) party. The SDPU(o), as is well known, was led by Viktor Medvedchuk, a friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin . As a result of the elections, NE TAK failed to cross the 3% threshold, failing to enter the Verkhovna Rada.
But fate was kind to him: Viktor Yanukovych's government decided to appoint Yuriy Boyko as Minister of Fuel and Energy.
In 2007, Boyko ran for the Party of Regions in the snap parliamentary elections, receiving the 49th position on the party list. However, to pursue a career in the Party of Regions, he had to resign as head of the Republican Party of Ukraine. Following the election results, he successfully became a member of parliament. In the newly formed parliament, he was appointed to his special committee, the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Fuel and Energy.
April 2008 – Yuriy Boyko headed the Federation of Employers of Ukraine.
September 2008 – Climbs the career ladder in the Party of Regions and becomes deputy head of the party.
On March 11, 2010, the Cabinet of Ministers was completely reshuffled. Mykola Azarov became Prime Minister , and Yuriy Boyko returned to the post of Minister of Fuel and Energy. On December 9 of that year, the Ministry of Fuel and Energy and the Ministry of Coal Industry were reorganized, and the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry was created in their place, with Boyko appointed as its head.
December 24, 2012 – Yuriy Boyko becomes Deputy Prime Minister for Fuel and Energy Complex and Coal Industry in the newly elected government of Mykola Azarov after the parliamentary elections.
Minister Yuriy Boyko
After the victory of the Maidan, on February 27, 2014, Yuriy Boyko was dismissed from the post of Vice Prime Minister by decision of the Verkhovna Rada.
In the spring of 2014, he ran as a candidate for President of Ukraine in the early elections that took place on May 25, 2014. He received 0,19% of the vote.
Already in the fall of 2014, Boyko became the number one candidate on the Opposition Bloc list for the snap parliamentary elections. Upon entering the Verkhovna Rada, he became the leader of the Opposition Bloc faction.
On May 27, 2016, the Opposition Bloc held its congress. Following the congress, Boris Kolesnikov and Yuriy Boyko became co-chairs of the party.
Boris Kolesnikov and Yuriy Boyko
Yuriy Boyko. Scandals
NAK Naftogaz
During Yuriy Boyko's tenure as Naftogaz's manager (2002-2005), the company's revenue growth, the repayment of gas debts, and successful cooperation with foreign suppliers were widely praised. However, the opposition, which later became the "orange" government, accused him of dubious and economically damaging natural gas supply schemes from Russia and Central Asia.
Experts agree that Yuriy Boyko is directly connected to RosUkrEnergo (RUE). RUE was dubbed the "Ukrainian-Gazprom" company, which practically single-handedly controlled the domestic natural gas market. It faced a barrage of criticism almost from the very first day of its existence. The problem is that a 45% stake in this company belonged to Yuriy Boyko's godfather, Dmitry Firtash.
RosUkrEnergo
RosUkrEnergo AG was a gas reseller in Central and Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. The company was registered in Switzerland in 2004. RosUkrEnergo was founded as a joint venture between the financial institutions Gazprombank Group (50% owned by the Swiss-registered ARosgas Holding AG) and Centragas Holding. The latter's owners were listed as Yuriy Boyko's godfather, Dmytro Firtash, and Ivan Fursin . Firtash owned 90% of Centragas Holding.
Dmitry Firtash and Yuri Boyko
In 2005, the US Department of Justice published an investigation into RosUkrEnergo. The Americans claimed that the company's owners included Yuriy Boyko and Russian mafioso Semyon Mogilevich, who is on the FBI's Most Wanted list. The published documents revealed that Boyko and Firtash were Mogilevich's proxies in Ukraine.
"Boyko Towers"
Yuriy Boyko's name figured in a massive corruption scandal in 2011, when a tender was held for the purchase of two offshore drilling rigs. At the time, the state-owned company Chornomornaftogaz, which was subordinate to Boyko's ministry, purchased the rigs through offshore intermediary companies. The scam is estimated to have cost $400 million.
Ukraine's budget allocated $400 million for each tower, but Skelet.Org discovered that the cost of each was double that of the previous one.
Boyko's towers
When this scheme became known, the then opposition began demanding that the Prosecutor General's Office open a case, but the Prosecutor General's Office, headed by the odious Pshonka, never took up the matter.
There are indications that the Prosecutor General's Office, even after the change of power, has deliberately neglected and openly sabotaged Yuriy Boyko's case. As Ostap Semerak, a People's Front MP, stated, prosecutors contacted him in February 2015 to investigate the "Boyko towers" case and punish those responsible.
During Yanukovych's presidency, the Prosecutor General's Office simply ignored the theft of $400 million in budget funds. It would seem that after the victory of the Maidan and the change of power, those responsible would be punished. And one of the first on the list of those who should receive a substantial prison sentence is Yuriy Boyko. After all, in 2011, as a result of a conspiracy between Chornomornaftogaz, Naftogaz, and the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry, headed by Boyko, drilling rigs were purchased at twice their nominal value.
Experts are convinced that even though Boyko didn't personally sign the tender documentation, he was complicit in the scheme. After all, the entire scam was carried out by Chornomornaftogaz and Naftogaz, two companies accountable to his ministry.
When investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office began investigating Boyko in the spring of 2014 and an arrest warrant was already being prepared, the case was quickly dropped. Ostap Semerak revealed that, to avoid being implicated in a high-profile criminal case, Yuriy Boyko urgently began negotiations with the authorities. Ultimately, the Prosecutor General's Office didn't even bother to submit a petition to the Verkhovna Rada to lift Boyko's parliamentary immunity. As we can see, the negotiations were successful, and he safely avoided punishment.
In July 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case related to a scandalous tender for drilling rigs. It was then revealed that, in addition to the rigs being purchased at inflated prices, a fraudulent scheme had also been carried out in the procurement of transport tugboats. The embezzlement of budget funds was estimated at $60 million.
The final clues in the "Boyko rigs" case were laid to rest in December 2015, when the Russians moved both offshore drilling rigs closer to Crimea, which, in effect, can be considered outright theft. The rigs themselves remained at the Odessa gas field after the peninsula's occupation.
Moreover, some of the documents for the purchase of "Boyko's rigs" remained in Crimea. Therefore, the Russians now hold all the cards in this corruption case.
Yuriy Boyko's associate, Yevhen Bakulin, who served as head of Naftogaz at the time of the controversial tender, also escaped punishment. He was briefly held in custody in the spring of 2014. But now, without any legal troubles, he sits peacefully in the Verkhovna Rada as a member of the Opposition Bloc faction.
The Prosecutor General's Office assures that an investigation into the embezzlement of $400 million during the purchase of drilling rigs is underway. The explanation for why the investigation is dragging on for so long is quite simple: it's due to interactions with foreign authorities through inquiries.
Yuriy Boyko and the Sanctions Lists
The Party of Regions' collaboration with the new government began in the very first days after the Maidan victory in the winter of 2014. A telling example was the situation when, in the spring of 2014, the Prosecutor General's Office prepared a sanctions list for the European Union, which included 22 key officials from Viktor Yanukovych's entourage.
Yes, as you may have guessed, neither Boyko, nor Firtash, nor Levochkin, nor even Yevhen Bakulin, the former head of the Naftogaz of Ukraine National Joint Stock Company, made it in.
According to MP and journalist Serhiy Leshchenko, this is due to the fact that post-Maidan Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky did not add RosUkrEnergo defendants to the sanctions list, in favor of his fellow Svoboda party member Ihor Krivetsky , also a close friend of Dmitry Firtash.
Yuriy Boyko and liquefied gas
No less resonant was the case of the sale of "liquefied gas" under a scheme involving Sergei Kurchenko.
The story takes us back to 2010. Then, Fuel and Energy Minister Yuriy Boyko, along with Oksana Mass, First Deputy Director of the state-owned company Gaz Ukrainy, artificially inflated the demand for liquefied natural gas in seven regions of the country. To meet this demand, auctions were held to sell additional volumes of the energy source. They decided to sell it at a special price – 20% of the actual cost.
The "generous" buyers were 12 fictitious companies owned by Sergei Kurchenko. These companies then resold the purchased gas at market prices.
Sergey Kurchenko
As stated in the petition filed by investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office, Boyko was aware of the nature of the liquefied gas scam. As minister, he ensured that all necessary procedures were carried out by the Ministry of Fuel and Energy and the enterprises subordinate to it.
In the summer of 2015, the Prosecutor General's Office once again prepared a motion to lift Yuriy Boyko's immunity and arrest him. However, the case never moved beyond the initial stage.
Yuriy Boyko. Impact on the Gas Market
Following the victory of the Maidan protests in the winter of 2014, Yuriy Boyko was removed from power. But even though he nominally held no high government positions, his influence on the gas market remained. He was assisted in this by his son-in-law, Serhiy Gorovoy, who headed and currently heads PJSC Kyivgaz.
Sergey Gorovoy
Having assumed the post of Minister of Fuel and Energy in 2010, Yuriy Boyko helped his daughter's husband become the head of Kyivgaz. In December 2010, an extraordinary meeting of Kyivgaz shareholders was held, at which Serhiy Gorovoy was elected Chairman of the Board. He remained in office until June 2016. An attempt was even made to hold a shareholders' meeting in the spring of 2016 to remove him from office. However, the meeting was disrupted, so Yuriy Boyko's son-in-law remains in his comfortable position.
Gorovoy's performance at the helm of Kyivgaz has been dismal. In May 2015, the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities (NKREKP) conducted an inspection of Kyivgaz's compliance with its license conditions. Following the inspection, the company was fined 800 hryvnias.
To summarize, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine reported that, as of early 2016, they had no criminal cases involving the head of the Opposition Bloc, Yuriy Boyko.
Yuriy Boyko's current state of affairs
Yuriy Boyko survived the critical years of 2014 and 2015 for the former Party of Regions without any problems. His income declaration for those years speaks volumes.
According to his 2014 property declaration, he and his family members own four plots of land ranging from 600 acres to over 2 hectares. Boyko and his family also declared two residential buildings and three apartments. The Boyko family's annual income for 2014 was over 9 million hryvnias. Add to this their bank account assets of 27,5 million.
Yuriy Boyko's land in the village of Vishenki near Kyiv
In his 2015 declaration, Boyko indicated his family's total income was almost 5,7 million hryvnias. The amount of land, houses, and apartments he owned remained the same. However, the amount of funds in Yuriy Boyko's and his family's bank accounts increased to 39,5 million hryvnias.
And these are only the official figures that he was not afraid to indicate in his declarations.
Recently, Yuriy Boyko has taken on the role of a merciless critic of the current government, as befits the leader of the Opposition Bloc.
In April 2015, Boyko saved his associate Dmytro Firtash from extradition to the United States. Arriving in Vienna for trial, he testified, portraying Firtash as a victim of political repression by the post-Maidan regime. Perhaps this is what saved Boyko's friend from extradition and, most likely, a serious prison sentence.
Boyko at Firtash's trial
In June 2016, Boyko made a public appearance at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. On the sidelines of the event, the leader of the Opposition Bloc declared that he had come to normalize relations between Ukraine and Russia because it would be better for both peoples. Moreover, reconciliation with Russia is the official position of the Opposition Bloc in Ukraine. He also added that his political force was experiencing persecution from the current government.
Eduard Karasev, for Skelet.Org
On topic: Kremlin gang on Inter. Stolyarova, Deserted, Nikitin
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