Boris Filatov
Official biography
Born on March 7, 1972 in Dnipropetrovs’k.
1993 — 2000 — Enterprises of various forms of ownership — legal counsel; Academy of the Customs Service of Ukraine — lecturer of civil law.
2000 — 2005 — practiced law.
2005 — 2010 — TV program “Gubernski Chronicles” — author and presenter.
2010 — 2012 — author and presenter of the TV program “Gubernskiye Prognozy”, Dnipropetrovs’k Oblast State Television and Radio Company (DODTRK).
04.03. — 20.11.2014 г. — Dnipro Regional State Administration — Deputy Head.
27.11.2014 г. — 24.12.2015 г. — Member of Parliament of Ukraine of the VIII convocation.
Since 19.11.2015 — Mayor of Dnipro.
Related parties
November 27, 2020 — re-elected mayor of Dnipro.
Participant of the international space project Virgin Galactic under the number 145. He planned to make a suborbital flight on the SpaceShipTwo in 2012 as the first space tourist from Ukraine.
Education.
Dnipro State University, 1993, history and social science, law.
Odesa National Law Academy, 1997, theory and philosophy of law.
Candidate of Law.
Family.
He is married to Maryna Filatova, and has a daughter Kateryna.
Compromising evidence
Past affairs
There is very little information about Boris Filatov’s past. He carefully conceals the period of his life before he became a journalist. But based on the fragments that he has shared, we can already draw interesting conclusions.
From the SKELET-Info investigation:
Let’s start with the UESU. Filatov mentioned that he had known Oleksandr Vilkul since 1994. It was then that they were given a “ticket to life” by Yulia Tymoshenko.
The YESU appeared in 1996 after the collapse of the Sodruzhestvo corporation, and if Filatov did not lie about working with Tymoshenko, it means that in 1994 he was part of this corporation.
But Yulia Vladimirovna was still practically a nobody there. «Sodruzhestvo was founded in 1992 by two family businesses: «Pinchuk and Arshav’s Interpipe and Tymoshenko’s Ukrainian Gasoline. The latter was run by Hennadiy Tymoshenko, and Yulia Tymoshenko was only his daughter-in-law at the time. But a close friend and patron of the Arshava family was the then governor of Dnipro, Pavlo Lazarenko, who became the «roof» of first the Sodruzhestvo and then the UESU. That is, in fact, Pavlo Ivanovych was in charge of both Sodruzhestvo and the YESU, and thus lawyer Filatov and manager Vilkul worked for him, even when Yulia Tymoshenko was appointed head of the YESU in 1996. The specifics of Filatov’s work at Sodruzhestvo and the EESU were described as follows: he was not involved in drafting commercial contracts, but in privatization, acquisitions and raider seizures of enterprises, of which the corporation had more than twenty by 1998, including a research institute, an airport and several banks.
In 1998, on the initiative of Leonid Kuchma, the UESU corporation was raided by tax and law enforcement agencies, and the business virtually stopped, and in early 1999, Pavlo Lazarenko himself was arrested. Filatov escaped. Various sources reported that Filatov did not escape from the UESU empty-handed, but with an armful of original and copies of documents, as well as valuable information about the weak legal points of Lazarenko’s destroyed empire. And he ran straight to the Privat group.
Cooperation with the Privat Group
As a businessman, Kolomoisky is ready to cooperate with anyone and ally with anyone — if it benefits him. And the Filatov file looked promising at the time! In addition, it should be borne in mind that Kolomoisky and Boholyubov did not embrace Filatov and make him a shareholder in Privat, they did not even deal directly with him, but sent him to Korban.
Filatov actively helped Privat take over Lazarenko’s former business, and one of the first big “squeezes” was the fight for the Southern Mining and Processing Plant (GOK). It started in 1999 and lasted for two years. At first, Tymoshenko tried to sell 60% of the shares in Southern GOK to oligarch Novinsky, but an attack by Privat raiders disrupted the deal. Then Korban and Filatov managed to get a part of the GOK shares for Privat, and then they used “dilution,” buyouts and other raider tricks. And everything culminated in the fall of 2001 with a traditional “unscheduled” shareholders’ meeting, which ousted the old supervisory board of the GOK, which was left over from the YESU (including Yuriy Vilkul, Oleksandr Vilkul’s father), and replaced it with a new supervisory board headed by Korban. However, Novynskyi’s thugs tried to take back the office of the GOK, and Corban’s thugs counterattacked, but this did not change the main thing: The YESU lost the plant. Soon after, Oleksandr Vilkul lost his job there (deputy head of finance) and found a position at Central GOK, thus going to “serve” Rinat Akhmetov. But the fight for Lazarenko’s legacy did not end there.
Here is a video in which Filatov’s team is already planning a raider seizure of the ATU:
Euromaidan cases
Filatov and Korban were tasked with organizing Euromaidan in Dnipropetrovs’k, the center of which was to be the Passage shopping center owned by them. They had already set up the screen and started preparing the stage… but then Filatov and Korban changed their plans and in January 2014 announced their intention to leave Ukraine due to political persecution by Vice Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul. They did not go through with the emigration, but the self-promotion was good. But much more interesting was the political and psychological transformation of Borys Filatov, who in February 2014 appeared as a radical and ruthless “patriot” with a bias towards “Russian-speaking Ukrainian nationalism,” who also began to be rude and abusive.
The newly appointed vice-governor of Dnipropetrovs’k (Kolomoisky’s deputy), Borys Filatov, began to actively blog and wrote the following: “no landings from Maidan, no extremist statements, we need to give the scum any promises, guarantees and make any concessions… And hang them… we will hang them later”. The suggestion to hang political opponents from an alleged supporter of “European integration and democracy” sounded wild. But the worst part is that the call to hang, coming from a representative of the new government, was immediately heard by the media in Russia, Crimea and Donbas, and it was immediately hyped up, fueling panic and anti-Ukrainian sentiment in the south and east of the country. Filatov did not care, as he and Korban took care of the Right Sector and its leader, Dmytro Yarosh.
Things got even worse. Sources reported that several provocative raids by the Right Sector (in jeeps with machine guns) on separatist checkpoints near Sloviansk in April 2014 were intended to provoke the outbreak of hostilities, which is exactly what happened. This was allegedly done in order to disrupt the dialogue between the militants and the Ukrainian military, to prevent them from “fraternizing” and further advancing toward Dnipropetrovs’k. Whether this is true or just a rumor, in 2014 the actions of the Right Sector and the emerging Dnipro battalion were actually led by their sponsors and curators, Filatov and Korban. And as one of the combatants later told the media, Corban gave the fatal order to capture Ilovaisk as soon as possible (which ended in a terrible “boiler”) on August 5, 2014, at a military meeting of the commanders of the volunteer battalions. The bitter paradox is that Korban was only a “chief of staff of the head of the regional state administration” at the time, and his experience in combat was limited to commanding “titushky” who stormed the offices of enterprises.
There is also a version of the Kolomoisky-Korban-Filatov connection in the smuggling of organs that were successfully “extracted” by Yarosh on the battlefields.
An even greater paradox was the creation of the UKROP party, which began with the factional association of several MPs elected in the fall of 2014: the raider Boris Filatov, surrounded by the «right-wing» Yarosh and Bereza, and the «patriotic gopnik» Parasyuk. At the same time, Hennadiy Korban soon became the leader of the party!
In 2015, Filatov became the mayor of Dnipro.
Journalists watched Filatov and found it very difficult for him to be kind and decent. He was able to hold on to this image for only two days, and that was before the election:
The victory turned Filatov’s head even more. Not only did he continue to publicly insult his opponents (writing in Oleksandr Vilkul’s blog «in your heart you are a scum, a complex, hysterical, narcissistic scum»), but he also finally lost his political shores. Soon, a scandal would break out all over Ukraine: the founder of the UKROP party, the best friend of the Right Sector leaders, Borys Filatov, hired the bandit Yevhen Taran, whose «titushky» beat up Euromaidan in Dnipro in the winter of 2014, as his head of security. Filatov also made another criminal mastermind, previously convicted of robbery and assault of Mykhailo Lysenko, one of his deputies.
In general, the story of Filatov’s deputies is also worthy of attention. Several deputies were involved in a corruption scandal. And this is not surprising. If you look at the list of Filatov’s deputies and assistants, you will notice that some of them have already served odious and corrupt officials, for example:
Oleksiy Salkoch was an assistant to Svyatoslav Oliynyk, the odious “Servant of the People” and a close associate of Kolomoisky.
Vasyl Astion was in the service of Vitaliy Khomutynnik, a big businessman and partner of Ihor Kolomoisky.
No wonder corruption is rampant in Dnipro.
At the same time, Filatov says in his interview with Gordon that neither he nor Hennadiy Korban stole a single penny from the budget….
Self-promotion for budget money
Mayor Filatov decided not to spend a lot of money on platforms, but rather on online PR. In 2108, Borys Albertovych told everyone that he was against such PR and was helping voters without party flags and without any noise. But if you do a little investigation, you can come to the conclusion that Mayor Filatov is a big liar.
Let’s take the code of the organizational and analytical service of the city council and go to the Prozorro website to see what tenders have been made by this ME.
And this is what we find:
This company spent money on advertising, allocating money from the budget (yellow highlighted purchases for advertising).
And over the past year, there have been a lot of such purchases. And each time the amount was more than UAH 1 million. Over the past three years, according to Anatoliy Shariy’s estimates, more than UAH 100 million has been spent on self-promotion from the budget.
What exactly did this money go for?
For personal articles and various interviews:
How much money is allocated for the organizational and analytical service of the city council?
The document states that more than 57 million was allocated for the organizational and analytical service.
Tender fraud in the procurement of PR advertising is also worth talking about.
From this screenshot, we can see that a certain sole proprietor Oleynikov Oleksiy Olehovych won the tender, defeating a certain Bila Tetiana Serhiivna. The winning sole proprietor is given the opportunity to advertise in the media. This list includes Dnipro TV channels:
Who is this individual entrepreneur and why was such a huge amount of money allocated to him, and how will he place Filatov’s ads? If you look at the activities of this individual entrepreneur through the Clarity Project, you will see that this entrepreneur is very successful, because all his tenders are won for the utility company.
But there is an interesting fact here. This sole proprietorship appeared in 2017, and before that Oleynikov was a plumber.
Now, quite suddenly, he is winning such tenders with exorbitant amounts. And the sole proprietor mentioned above is Tetiana Serhiivna Bila. This time, she won a tender from a certain sole proprietor Mykhailenko.
What did she win the money for? That’s right — to place 150 PR materials about Filatov and his team on websites: OBOZREVATEL, Nashe Misto, Komsomolskaya Pravda, etc.
And here’s another tender for 5 million.
And a certain individual entrepreneur Gorchakov won it.
The document states «to place 200 materials on Censor.net, OBOZREVATEL, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Open TV, Nashe Misto, 600 publications on Gorod.dp.ua, Depo.ua and others.
Also, one of the tenders was won by a certain individual entrepreneur Salata Olga Viktorovna.
The document lists 125 materials to be published in Arguments and Facts, Zorya, Misto, Nashe Misto, and others.
It seems that all individual entrepreneurs participating in tenders are fictitious and created only for the PR of Mayor Filatov and his team.
By the way, here is another example of Filatov’s failed PR:
The police fined the driver of Borys Albertovych’s Mercedes, and Filatov rewarded them with “gratitude” for this, saying that everyone in the city is equal, and everyone is responsible according to the law, including him as mayor. But, as it turned out, the “gratitude” was dated the 25th, and the incident with the Mercedes happened 2 days later (on the 27th). And it became clear to everyone that it was all a self-promotion staging.
Shariy tells more about this story:
Filatov promised to break Dubinsky’s face
A threatening conflict between Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov and MP from the Servant of the People party Oleksandr Dubinsky has emerged online. According to Censor.NET, the conflict arose on Facebook.
MP Dubinsky allegedly published a screenshot of Boris Filatov’s post that the city authorities of Dnipro would shoot animals that did not have the appropriate registration with the ZooControl.
Dubinsky later claimed that Filatov had removed the post from his page and insulted Filatov.
For his part, Filatov called the order published on his behalf a “fake”.
And later he promised Dubinsky to “beat the f##k out of him.
Beating of former head of the housing office Serhiy Varfolomiy
The Babushkinsky District Court of Dnipro found city resident Serhiy Varfolomiy guilty of beating up Deputy Mayor of Dnipro Mykhailo Lysenko.
It should be noted that Bartholomew had previously stated that he had been beaten by Mayor Boris Filatov and Deputy Mayor Mikhail Lysenko right in the latter’s office. At the same time, according to him, the mayor’s security did not allow police officers to enter the deputy mayor’s office. The conflict occurred in April 2017 in Lysenko’s office during a discussion of the city’s program to support condominiums. The former head of the housing office, Bartholomew, accused the mayor’s office of corruption, after which, according to the activist, Lysenko hit him in the face. Bartholomew also claims that Mayor Borys Filatov took part in the fight. As a result of the fight, Bartholomew needed the help of paramedics.
According to him, they took away his phone, which he was using to record what was happening. At the same time, Mykhailo Lysenko said that Bartholomew himself had beaten him. Boris Filatov said that he did not touch the activist. The criminal case file states that it was Serhiy Bartholomew who beat Mykhailo Lysenko, and that the official is the victim.
In particular, Bartholomew scolded Lysenko, after which he punched the deputy mayor three times in the face. Lysenko tried to push Bartholomew away, causing both to fall to the floor. According to the investigation, officials who were in the reception area immediately entered the office and pulled Bartholomew away from the vice mayor. During the attack, Bartholomew tore Lysenko’s jacket. After that, the deputy mayor called the police and then went to the hospital. Lysenko himself stated that this action was aimed at provoking him into a fight.
According to a hospital certificate, Lysenko was diagnosed with a head injury and concussion. The court took into account the information provided by the witnesses, city council employees, and found the defense’s arguments unfounded.
Mayor of Dnipro doused with brilliant green
This afternoon in Dnipro, Mayor Boris Filatov was attacked as he was holding a meeting with local residents.
This was reported by Dnipro Operativnyi on Saturday, September 5.
Reportedly, the meeting with the citizens took place in one of the residential yards on the left bank of the Dnipro River. While he was talking to people, an unknown person ran up to Mayor Boris Filatov and doused him with brilliant green. Other people were not injured, and the attacker was detained on the spot by the citizens present at the meeting.
Unfulfilled promises
The mayor of Dnipro did not fulfill his promise in 2018 to create a veterans’ center for ATO fighters in the city, where they would be able to help with setting up their own business, retraining and employment.
In addition, Filatov has completely forgotten about his promise to reconstruct all the historic buildings on Dmytro Yavornytsky Avenue by mid-2020. He spoke about this in December 2017, but since then, reconstruction work has not even begun. By the end of 2019, the mayor did not have time to repair all the broken elevators in the city, 23 of them. “Today, only 16 elevators in the city are out of order. Yes, we promised to do everything, but I repent, I am a sinner,” Filatov commented on the results of fulfilling his promise.
The promises made by Filatov immediately show that he plans to stay for another term. For example, the mayor promised to complete the reconstruction of the Ice Arena in 2021: “Unfortunately, in the context of underfunding due to the curtailment of decentralization, it is difficult for us to carry out the reconstruction. But I can say that next year everything that is planned will definitely be completed.”
Filatov also promised to complete the construction of the Dnipro metro, and the process is now in full swing. Filatov also has a nice promise from last year to buy a mobile operating room on wheels for animal rights activists. So far, this has not been done due to the lack of funds in the city budget due to the epidemic and the economic crisis in the country.
Criminal proceedings
Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov was suspected of illicit enrichment, but the case was closed. He is now charged with declaring false information, allegedly concealing UAH 50 million in income from offshore companies under his control, as well as UAH 1 million in undeclared property in 2016-2017.
Word and Deed:
Bribing voters
On the initiative of Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov, the most vulnerable citizens received blessed Easter cakes at home during the coronavirus pandemic. Filatov also noted that a total of 38,000 Easter cakes would be delivered.
Filatov and Hennadiy Korban, chairman of the Public Council at the Dnipro City Council, also handed over a new laboratory for PCR testing for COVID-19 to the regional laboratory center.
Activists held a rally “Dnipro without Filatov”
On Sunday, June 28, the anti-corruption platform Dnipro without Corruption held a rally “Dnipro without Filatov”. As part of the rally, an appeal to President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi was announced.
The event was attended by up to five hundred Dnipro residents, including volunteers, activists, ATO veterans, and entrepreneurs. The main slogans of the rally were “Dnipro without Filatov” and “No to the parking mafia.” The activists demanded the resignation of Dnipro Mayor Borys Filatov, UNIAN reports.
Oleksandr Snisar, head of the NGO Anti-Corruption Human Rights Council, was outraged that “today all citizens are sick of corruption — corruption has always been there, but theft on such a scale has never been observed under any government.”
Oleksandr Slavnyi, a participant of the rally and a journalist, complained that Dnipro City Hall is closed to the media:
“There are a lot of questions: millions of dollars of embezzlement for no one knows what, poor quality long term repairs of the embankment, poor quality long term repairs of the new bridge, or, for example, a very closed city hall from journalists — it is simply impossible to get a comment from the mayor.”
But in July 2021, the locals gathered to “rid” the city of Filatov and fulfill his cherished dream of going into space!
A large number of helium balloons were assembled into a rocket, and a balloon of an astronaut with the face of Borys Filatov was tied to it, and they happily sent it into the sky, just away from Dnipro:
In Dnipro, Mayor Borys Filatov decided to use public utilities to get rid of political rivals by destroying their advertising business.
The scandalous incident took place on July 2 in the city center, at the corner of Pushkin Avenue and Yuriy Savchenko Street. Journalists of leading local TV channels were beaten at the site of dismantling advertising structures. The reason was that they had come to cover the illegal actions of the municipal authorities. At a recent executive committee meeting of the city council, a decision was made to dismantle a number of advertising structures and billboards belonging to private companies. However, journalists conducted an investigation and found out that there was nothing illegal in the installation of the billboards, and therefore it was the utility companies that violated the law.
In addition, members of the Municipal Guard were present at the site. It was they who began to prevent journalists from doing their job. They used gas canisters, knives and firearms.
As a result, the film crews of a number of TV channels were severely injured.
The cameraman of the D1 TV channel was filming the progress of the work carried out by the utility company and was attacked with physical force. The injured employee was taken to the Mechnikov OKL, where he was diagnosed with a head injury.
Eyewitnesses reported that the attackers beat all the journalists who were present at the scene. They also broke equipment and tried to seize all the footage. Ordinary passers-by were also attacked. The attackers did not touch only the employees of the Dnipro TV municipal TV channel.
National Police officers were also present at the scene. But to the great shock of the victims, they did not react to the arbitrariness of the communal police. Some of them, especially cynical, even filmed what was happening on their phones.
Since the employees of the municipal services directly or indirectly act on the instructions of the mayor, we can safely assume that such actions were authorized from above.
About income and property
It is difficult to describe the property of the mayor of Dnipro in one sentence. Boris Filatov owns three apartments of 1.3 thousand square meters and two residential buildings with outbuildings of 1.9 thousand square meters. In addition, he owns four non-residential premises of 2.8 thousand square meters and nine land plots with a total area of 37.2 thousand square meters.
Filatov has as many as 11 parking spaces, but only 7 cars, as the Toyota Land Cruiser disappeared from the declaration this year, but it remains:
- Mercedes S600L, 2012.
- Jaguar XJS Convert, 1989.
- Mercedes-Benz 200, 1969
- Dodge RAM, 2008
- Porsche Panamera, 2012
- Porsche Cayenne, 2008
- Porsche Carrera 911, 2007.
In addition to cars, Filatov owns two motorcycles — Triumph Scrambler, 2006, and Honda XR250, 1999. And that’s not all, the mayor owns two watercraft and one aircraft — Eurocopter AS350B2, 2007.
He also has no problems with income. During the year, Filatov’s family earned UAH 12.5 million, which is 8.7 million more than in 2019. He keeps only 144.2 thousand UAH in the bank, and decided to keep 1.1 million UAH and 1.3 million USD in cash.
Boris and Marina Filatov are on vacation in New Zealand
For the New Year holidays, Dnipro Mayor Boris Filatov and his wife Marina went on a trip to the other side of the globe — they are vacationing in New Zealand.
The last place Marina Filatova visited was the Devil’s Beach in Wai-O-Tapu. This is an area with high geothermal activity in the south of the Okataina volcanic center.
«And this is the Devil’s bath. The acidic color of the water in it is due to the concentration of sulfur. They say that if you dip into such water, your skin will come off. And the miasma emitted by the geothermal water is simply terrifying,» the mayor’s wife writes.
Conclusion.
The mayor of Dnipro is definitely delusional. He broadcasts to the whole country that he is a decent person, has nothing to do with raiding and embezzlement, but he quietly takes money from the budget for advertising and appropriates local enterprises. And if you reproach him for this and put all the evidence behind the facts, at best you will be covered with a huge amount of swearing and added to the Facebook blacklist, at worst you will be beaten by Filatov’s henchmen who call themselves the “Municipal Guard.”