Gerasymiuk Olga Vladimirovna
Official biography
Chairman of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting
Place of birth. Education.
Born in Pyriatyn, Poltava region. In 1981, Gerasymiuk graduated from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Faculty of Journalism.
Personal life
Olga has been married twice. Her first husband is not reported in the press.
The writer Vasyl Herasymiuk became Olga’s second choice.
In 1982, the couple had a son. The parents named him Ruslan.
According to the journalist, she has not yet met the man of her dreams. Olha also notes that not everyone can find true love.
Career
- From 1981 to 1983, she worked as a correspondent for the newspaper Komsomolets Poltavschyny.
- From 1983 to 1990, she worked as a correspondent at the Komsomolskoe Znamya newspaper.
- From 1990 to 1991, she worked as an editor in the department of the magazine “Man and the World”.
- From 1991 to 1992, she worked as a department head at the newspaper Nezalezhnist.
- From 1992 to 1994, she worked as a deputy editor-in-chief and co-editor at the weekly Respublika.
- From 1994 to 1995, she worked as an editor at UNIAN.
- From 1995 to 1996, she worked as the head of the social problems department at the Novaya Myslova (New Language) TV company.
- In 1997, she started working for the 1+1 TV channel, and began hosting the program Against the Night (Russian: На ночь глядя). Then she hosted the programs: “Special View”, “Versions”, “No Taboo”, “I Want and Will”, “I’m Coming to You”.
- In July 2005, she became the general producer of the Studio 1+1 TV company.
- On July 4, 2014, she was elected a member of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting.
Politics
In the 2006 parliamentary elections, Gerasymiuk, a non-partisan, received a mandate as a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the Our Ukraine bloc (No. 4 on the electoral list). She became a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information.
In the 2007 early parliamentary elections, she was included in the list of the pro-presidential Our Ukraine — People’s Self-Defense (NUNS) bloc under No. 6. In the parliament, she headed the subcommittee on cooperation with NATO of the Committee on European Integration.
In June 2010, she joined Vyacheslav Kyrylenko’s For Ukraine! parliamentary group.
In the fall of 2012, in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of the VII convocation, she ran in the single-mandate district #139 in Odesa region from Vitali Klitschko’s UDAR party (she was the only candidate from the opposition forces), but lost to the Party of Regions member Oleksandr Presman.
In July 2014, Olga Gerasymiuk became the first deputy chairman of the National Council of Ukraine on Television and Radio Broadcasting.
Dirt on her
After entering politics, Gerasymiuk never tired of repeating that it was very important for her to support the implementation of Viktor Yushchenko’s election program “10 Steps Towards People”. She actively supported the president’s initiative to deprive MPs of substantial social benefits.
According to observers, the well-known TV journalist was in the first ranks of Our Ukraine and then the NUNS bloc, not least because of the popularity and high ratings of her talk show “No Taboo”, which talks about the big problems of small Ukrainians.
According to the politician herself, she was removed from the party’s election lists by Arseniy Yatsenyuk himself. In an interview, she said that the politician did so without Tymoshenko’s knowledge.
During the election campaign, when the journalist was running in Odesa region, she did everything possible to cause discontent with the local authorities. She accused the authorities of actions that led to the blooming of the sea, and that they prohibited the placement of advertisements for the UDAR party in the Odesa region.
Failed attempt to communicate with voters
Olha Herasymiuk organized a meeting with voters in the village of Peremozhne and got into a conflict with a local activist.
Traitors from the National Council and how Inter’s license was extended
From the blog of activist Semen Kabakaev:
In 2018, the National Council met and voted to extend the license of the Inter channel, which is in fact a Russian residence in Ukraine. Apparently, all this time there were negotiations about shares and who would get how much.
The problem is that this TV channel will continue to brainwash the citizens of our country. Hostile propaganda, based on the manuals from Moscow, will continue to be broadcast for another 7 years.
Over the past 4 years, the National Council has not found any hostile broadcasting, or rather did not want to find it and issue the required number of warnings to the TV channel. The system works in such a way that 2 warnings are issued first and only then the license is not renewed. Inter now has one warning, meaning that they deliberately waited until the license renewal date came up, leaving one warning, and extended the license with the justification that there were no legal conditions for not renewing it.
Here are the people from the National Council who were directly involved in this corruption scheme:
First Deputy Head of the National Council — Olga Gerasymiuk
Chairman of the National Council — Artemenko
Deputy Chairman of the National Council — Uliana Feshchuk
Executive Secretary of the National Council — Oleksandr Ilyashenko
Member of the National Council — Valentyn Koval
Member of the National Council — Kostynskyi Serhii Anatoliiovych
Member of the National Council — Oleg Chernysh
Each of them is personally responsible for the activities of Russian TV channels and the propaganda they pour into the ears of the population.
I forgot about the account and the contribution. Acting Head of the National Council Gerasymiuk under investigation by NABU
The first deputy head of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, formerly a popular TV presenter, Olga Gerasymiuk, failed to declare funds totaling more than UAH 6 million.
Lawyer Yuriy Zakharchenko found evidence that Gerasymiuk had undeclared funds. Earlier, he initiated an investigation into a bribe the official was suspected of receiving.
Thus, in her annual declaration for 2015, Gerasymiuk did not indicate a bank deposit in the amount of USD 147.7 thousand in the Commercial Bank Financial Initiative PJSC, but only salary, insurance and cash in the amount of USD 210.2 thousand.
In 2016, the official indicates in her declaration, in the section “Income, including gifts,” the funds received from Extraar LLC under the assignment agreements. However, she forgets to mention an account with Raiffeisen Bank, which appears in the 2017 declaration.
Gerasymiuk indicated interest in Raiffeisen Bank Aval JSC in the amount of UAH 6.5 thousand as a source of income, but there are no bank accounts in the section «Monetary assets» in the mentioned bank. The data on bank accounts at Raiffeisen Bank Aval first appeared in the official’s declaration only in 2018, when she indicated a deposit account totaling UAH 305.2 thousand.
Thus, Olga Gerasymiuk, in her capacity as First Deputy Chairman of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, provided deliberately false information, thus committing a criminal offense under Article 366 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. For this, she may face liability up to imprisonment for up to two years, and at best a fine of 2,500 to 3,500 tax-free minimums or community service.
Zakharchenko’s lawyer filed a criminal complaint with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau on February 10, but eight days later it remained unexamined. As a result, Zakharchenko complained about the NABU’s inaction to the High Anti-Corruption Court.
By a decision dated March 4, the HACC upheld the lawyer’s complaint and ordered the NABU to enter data on criminal offenses into the Unified Register of Pre-trial Investigations.
Illegal position
On April 22, 2020, the members of the National Council held a meeting at which they elected OLGA Gerasymiuk as the chairman of the National Council. As a reminder, on October 31, 2019, the Parliament voted to dismiss all three members of the National Council (Gerasymiuk, Ilyashenko and Chernysh) who had expired their five-year term, and almost six months after their dismissal, Ms. Gerasymiuk was elected as the Chair of the National Council, contrary to the law and common sense.
It is hard to imagine a greater absurdity.
The state is in a situation where the Constitutional Special Body has had three illegitimate members since July 2019, one of whom is the chairman of this body. This can have truly terrible consequences for the whole country, as all decisions over the past two years made by the National Council, which includes three illegitimate members, will also be considered illegitimate. The National Council has issued, extended or re-issued hundreds of licenses for television and radio broadcasting, and in fact, all of these decisions are illegal.
It has become known that various lawsuits are currently underway to recognize these members and the chairwoman, Ms. Gersymiuk, as illegitimate, and that her efforts are apparently delaying the consideration of these cases in the courts as much as possible, but the consequences will be even more dire if the courts recognize the illegitimacy of the chairwoman and two members.
Zeonbud
Almost since the beginning of 2020, the entire media market has been waiting with bated breath for a resolution to the situation with the renewal of the license of the only Ukrainian nationwide digital television operator, Zeonbud. The situation around this company has always raised a lot of questions throughout the 10 years of its license, starting with who its real owner is.
The National Council did not have any formal complaints about the ownership structure of this company, but had complaints about its activities.
In particular, they mentioned violations of the license terms regarding nationwide coverage and numerous complaints from consumers from all over Ukraine about the lack of signal. When in December 2019 the National Council even decided to create a new digital multiplex MX 7 on the basis of the state-owned RRT Concern, many experts began to talk about the possibility that Zeonbud might not be able to renew its license.
However, unexpectedly, everything ended very well for Zeonbud, as on October 29, 2020, the National Council quickly and even somewhat casually renewed all four licenses. At the meeting, the chairman of the National Council proposed to add additional obligations for Zeonbud in the license, although it was obvious to everyone that the issue had already been resolved.
But that’s not all. In February 2021, the court overturned the decision of the National Council to create a new state multiplex MX 7, which could create real competition for ZEONBUD. And again, silence from the head of the National Council. Where are the statements to law enforcement agencies? Where are the press conferences? Absolute silence. How well everything is going for ZEONBUD. The only possible competitor has been removed by the court, and through the same court, another 24 million can be obtained from the National Council.
We have such a calm, systematic game on the part of the National Council in favor of ZEONBUD. In words, it seems to be strict, but in reality, everything is as it should be. And all this in silence. It’s so much calmer. Big money loves silence. But it seems to us that in this situation, besides ZEONBUD, there may be another beneficiary. And his name is Olga Gerasymiuk.
Summary
Olga Vladimirovna was a role model for many people. Everyone knew her talk show “No Taboo” and admired her success and sensitivity as a journalist. But like most “valiant politicians,” she sold out. She sold out to the authorities for a lot of money. And now there is nothing left of that bright image of the former Gerasimyuk.