Ivan Gennadievich Bakanov
Official biography
Born on May 2, 1975, in Kryvyi Rih, Dnipro region, in the family of a teacher.
Education.
In 1997, he graduated from the Kyiv National Economic University named after V. Hetman. Graduated from the Kyiv National Economic University named after V. Hetman.
2006 — Graduated from the Academy of Labor, Social Relations and Tourism with a degree in Court, Advocacy and Prosecution.
Career
- 2013 — Head of Kvartal 95 LLC and Studio Kvartal-95 LLC, their founder and ultimate beneficiary is Green Family Ltd, registered in Cyprus, Nicosia, with two directors — Oksana Lazarenko (Bakanov’s wife) and Marina Togetherova-Georgia.
- From January 2017 to May 2019, he was the head of the Servant of the People party. Chief of Staff of V. Zelenskyy during the election campaign.
- In May 2019, he was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, due to the need to obtain a security clearance and be appointed to the position of First Deputy Head of the Security Service.
- May 2019 — appointed to the position of First Deputy Head of the Security Service of Ukraine — Head of the Main Department for Combating Corruption and Organized Crime of the SSU Central Directorate.
- In May 2019, he was appointed a member of the National Security and Defense Council.
- In June 2019, during the vacation of Vasyl Hrytsak, he was appointed acting head of the SBU.
- July 2019 — Member of the National Council on Anti-Corruption Policy.
- Since August 2019 — Head of the SBU.
Family.
He is married to Oksana Lazarenko (a Russian citizen with a residence permit), and they have two sons: his eldest son Arthur (a student of the Kyiv National Economic University named after V. Hetman from 2014 to 2018) and his youngest son Stepan, a schoolboy. Since 1998, Oksana Lazarenko has been a permanent resident of Ukraine, and has not traveled to the territory of the Russian Federation since 2013. Bakanov noted that his wife has not yet received a Ukrainian passport because of the “corrupt system”: “Obtaining citizenship has been a corrupt trough for some officials for many years. We have never involved ‘firms’ or intermediaries in the process and will not address the president with such a request.”
He has close friendships with Volodymyr Zelenskyy — they are childhood friends, studied at the same school and university (KNEU named after V. Hetman).
Kompromat
A few words about the “quarters,” Bakanov’s publicity and the relationship between the eponymous series and the political force. As previously mentioned, Ivan Bakanov is the owner of Studio Kvartal-95 LLC and Kvartal-95 LLC, the latter has its roots in Cypriot offshore companies, and its founder is Green Family Ltd, a company registered in Cyprus, Nicosia. According to reliable media reports, its directors are Marina Razomova-Georgiou and Oksana Lazarenko (Bakanov’s wife).
Ivan Bakanov avoids publicity as much as possible, and for this reason he does not post personal photos on his Facebook profile and tries not to show his face in the photos. Despite this photo, which was taken during the first major congress of the Servant of the People party, according to Volodymyr Zelenskyy himself, Bakanov can still be seen.
During the interview, Bakanov explained that from the very beginning of the creation of the Servant of the People series, there was absolutely no idea of its political prospects and the creation of a political party using its main meaning, although the idea for the series appeared about 10 years ago, while the Servant of the People series itself began to be filmed only in 2015. The party of the same name was registered at the end of 2017.
Later, in an interview with BBC-Ukraine, Bakanov confirmed that the party he leads will run in the upcoming parliamentary elections: “We expect to participate in the parliamentary campaign and enter the parliament. Then it will be easier.”
As for the compromising facts and rumors about Bakanov, it is worth mentioning the situation when the company of the future head of the SBU, Oksana Lazarenko, was involved in a criminal case of the SBU on embezzlement of state property in 2011. Thus, the criminal case was initiated under Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code (misappropriation, embezzlement or seizure of property through abuse of office). The case concerned embezzlement by civil servants of the regional office of the State Property Fund of Ukraine in Kyiv region and CJSC Kyivoblenergo NPP. The state property in question was the property of the Bohuslavska and Dybynetska HPPs worth UAH 3.8 million.
The offense was committed by prior conspiracy with officials of Ecoinvest LLC and Energotek LLC.
It was established that Dybynetska and Bohuslavska HPPs belonged to Kyivteploenergo, which, in turn, was reorganized in 2004 into Kyivoblenergo NPP, which was no longer state-owned.
In 2006, the Ministry of Fuel and Energy approved a list of real estate that became part of the authorized capital of Kyivoblenergo NPP during its corporatization. “The list did not include Bohuslavska and Dybynetska HPPs, which remained on the balance sheet of the company as state-owned property.
In 2007, the regional office of the State Property Fund in Kyiv region organized a tender for the right to lease the two HPPs, even though it was prohibited by law to lease HPPs. However, as a result of the tender, the company PPS Energotek LLC won, which at that time had a single founder, director and signatory — Oksana Lazarenko, the wife of the future head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov.
According to investigators, later, officials of Kyivoblenergo NPP CJSC, by agreement with officials of the regional office of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, as well as by concluding a sale and purchase agreement with Ecoinvest LLC, sold the equipment of Boguslavska and Dybynetska HPPs, which are part of their integral property complexes. At the time of the illegal transaction, the owner of Ecoinvest LLC was and still is the Scottish company Carat consulting & trading limited.
After that, in September 2008, Ecoinvest LLC sold the equipment of Dybynetska and Bohuslavska HPPs, which was part of their integral property complexes, to Bakanov’s wife VPS Energotek LLC.
In November 2010, the State Property Fund drew up a report on violations of the law during the conclusion of lease agreements for the Bohuslavska and Dybynetska HPPs, which contained information that led to the opening of a criminal case. According to the investigating authorities, the illegal sale of the property of the above facilities caused the state to suffer losses of UAH 3.88 million, which is a particularly large amount.
At the end of 2011, the Fund sold Dybynetska and Bohuslavska HPPs to Energia-1 LLC, owned by Yulia Liovochkina and businessman Ihor Tynnyi.
In 2012, a court ruled to terminate the lease agreement with Energotek, which required the company to return both hydroelectric power plants. In the same year, the SSU transferred the HPPs to Energia-1 LLC for safekeeping through the court in case No. 168.
At the same time, in 2013, Bakanov’s wife’s company unsuccessfully tried to ban Energorynok from transferring money to Liovochkin-Tynnyi’s company, arguing that both hydroelectric power plants were owned by Energotek LLC. Currently, Dybynetska and Bohuslavska HPPs are controlled by Energia-1 LLC.
The head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Ivan Bakanov, has a “secret” luxury mansion in the village of Khodosivka near Kyiv. According to the registers, Ivan Bakanov has an apartment in Kryvyi Rih. In Kyiv, the Bakanovs own two apartments at once, and judging by the numbers, they are located one above the other. The first belongs to Ivan Bakanov himself, the second to his wife Oksana Lazarenko.
According to the data obtained by Watchdogs, Ivan Bakanov’s estate is located in the village of Khodosivka near Kyiv. Formally, according to the register of property rights, Ivan Bakanov owns only a small piece of land — four hectares — and his wife owns another nine hectares, and they have to pay taxes for these plots. But, as it happens in real life, everything has a different picture, into which it fits, there is a private lake located on the said territory with a small park and a two-story cottage on a total plot of about half a hectare. The market value of such an estate can range from UAH 7 to 8 million. The described cottage in Khodosivka appears on the social networks of Bakanov’s relatives, namely on the Odnoklassniki page of his father-in-law, Yevhen Lazarenko, and on the Instagram page of Bakanov’s eldest son, Artur.
The fact that a Ukrainian politician has a house of this magnitude can hardly be called outrageous or indicative, and it will not surprise anyone. In 2013, Bakanov registered the land for the house — this was before he became a civil servant. About a year later (January 2014), landscaping work began on the site where the forest used to be, and two months later (March 2014), an excavator dug a lake in place of the forest. It is noteworthy that the data for this period coincide with such national events as the Revolution of Dignity, Maidan, hundreds of civilian casualties as a result of clashes, Yanukovych’s escape, a little later the Russian aggression and, as a result, the annexation of Crimea, the capture of Sloviansk by Girkin’s militants in early April, etc. But during this entire period, Ivan Bakanov, without showing a principled civic position, was engaged in the construction and improvement of his cottage, apparently not even thinking about national security issues…
But leaving aside the question of Bakanov’s moral and ethical qualities, as well as the degree of his professional suitability for the post of head of a law enforcement agency, let us draw attention to the fact that the cottage mentioned above does not legally exist. It does not belong to Ivan Bakanov or any of his relatives… formally, there is no house there. In fact, the situation is exactly the opposite: a land plot and a house parked in front of the house of Bakanov and his wife.
In early November 2019, the media reported a conflict between the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov, and the head of the Presidential Office, Andriy Bohdan, which ended in a banal fight and resulted in Andriy Bohdan losing a tooth. There was no factual confirmation of this information and it was later denied by both parties.
Another interesting fact that indirectly indicates the level of understanding of the need to comply with the position was a gift worth 15 thousand UAH,
To be more specific, during the celebration of his birthday, Hryhoriy Surkis gave all the guests Fendi photo frames worth UAH 15 thousand, one of which went to Ivan Bakanov, and which he, of course, accepted, not realizing that this could and should be regarded as a corrupt act. Unfortunately, the NACP did not see any grounds for taking any action in the journalist’s report on this fact either.
According to his 2019 declaration, Ivan Bakanov owns a 56m2 apartment in Kyiv and a third of an 85.8m2 apartment in Kryvyi Rih.
As for his income, in 2019, Bakanov received 107 thousand 1414 dollars for his work at Kvartal 95 Bakanov received UAH 107,714 for his work at the Kvartal 95 studio. As the head of the SBU, Ivan Bakanov received UAH 536,559 in seven months.
The wife of the SBU head, Oksana Lazarenko, also owns an apartment in Kyiv with an area of 56.3 m2. It should be noted that Bakanov’s wife was a Russian citizen, and in 2019, the SBU head claimed that his wife’s Ukrainian citizenship was in the process of being granted.
he wife of the SBU head also received income from entrepreneurial activities — UAH 240 thousand. She also received UAH 27 thousand from the Kyiv College of Communications.
Oksana Lazarenko also owns a land plot in Kyiv-Svyatoshynskyi district with an area of 2834 m2. The head of the SBU also owns several plots of land of 43m2, 891m2, 1502m2 in the same district. A residential building was being built on one of the plots.
The Bakanov family owns two cars: A 2012 Volkswagen Touareg for his wife and a 2010 Volkswagen Passat for Bakanov.
The Bakanovs have 233 euros, 16 dollars and 548 UAH in their bank accounts. They keep 170 thousand dollars in cash.
Ivan Bakanov’s declaration does not indicate any type of related activity. At the same time, according to the journalists’ investigation, he has been the head of Nueva Tierra Verde Sociedad Limitad in Spain since 2015, and according to an extract from the Spanish register of legal entities, Bakanov is the head of the said commercial firm, and also holds the position of “administristrador único” — “sole administrator”, a person authorized to act on behalf of the company, which in itself is a violation of the anti-corruption legislation of Ukraine, according to which public officials cannot hold senior positions in private structures.
Another situation that did not play into Bakanov’s hands was the day of the terrorist attack in Lutsk in the summer of 2020. The whole country watched as an armed criminal held hostages and threatened to detonate explosives. Despite the tension of the situation, which eventually ended safely, the head of the SBU Bakanov did not even consider it appropriate to go to the scene! As a result of this attitude to his duties, members of the public appealed to the President of Ukraine to replace Bakanov.
In conclusion, it can be said that Bakanov does not give the impression of a hardened corrupt official, but he is definitely not fit for his high position for a number of objective reasons. Based on the above, Bakanov’s stay in office is clearly beneficial and interesting to someone… the only question is what and to whom?