Kravtsov Evgeny Pavlovich
Official biography
Yevhen Pavlovych Kravtsov is a Ukrainian lawyer, top manager and civil servant, former Chairman of the Board of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia, First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine from May 25, 2016 to August 9, 2017.
Education.
Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Master of Laws (with honors).
European University, Master of Management in Foreign Economic Activity (with honors).
Center for International Trade Development, Certificate Program in Trade Policy and Commercial Diplomacy.
Fulbright International, International Commercial Law course.
Career. From 2006 to 2007 — Consultant at the International Chamber of Commerce (National Committee in Ukraine).
From 2008 to February 2014 — Associate at Asters Law Firm, Kyiv.
From March 2014 to January 2015 — Partner at Asters, Kyiv.
From January 2015 to March 2015 — Advisor to the General Director of Ukrzaliznytsia.
From March 2015 to May 2015 — Head of the Department of Reform and Corporate Development of Ukrzaliznytsia.
From May 28, 2015 to November 30, 2015 — Director for Reform, Property and Legal Policy of Ukrzaliznytsia.
From October 2015 to May 2016, he was a member of the Management Board of PJSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
From March 30 to May 25, 2016 — Acting Chairman of the Board of PJSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
From May 25, 2016 to August 9, 2017 — First Deputy Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine.
From August 2016 to August 2017 — Chairman of the Supervisory Board of PJSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
From August 10, 2017 to January 10, 2019 — Acting Chairman of the Board of PJSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
On January 10, 2019, the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Yevhen Kravtsov as Chairman of the Board of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia.
In January 2019, the Supervisory Board of Ukrzaliznytsia terminated the contract with Yevhen Kravtsov. On January 29, the Cabinet of Ministers approved the dismissal of Yevhen Kravtsov from the position of Chairman of the Board of Ukrzaliznytsia.
Family.
He is married and has two sons. His wife’s name is Olena, and his sons are Pavlo and Lev.
Dirt on him
According to media reports, while still at Asters, Yevhen was involved in “successfully running shadowy mergers and acquisitions schemes, using the classic raider debt buyout and changing creditors in bankrupt companies.”
While at Asters, Kravtsov met Mykhailo Beilin, who would later be called an unofficial “watchdog” over the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Agriculture. According to press reports, it was Beilin who lobbied for Kravtsov’s appointment to Ukrzaliznytsia.
It is noted that the main task of the young lawyer was to monitor “privatization processes at the railroad — the sale of non-core assets of UZ, which serve passenger and freight transportation.”
Kravtsov helped his “people” get on the boards of investment-attractive companies.
“They study the financial documentation, develop schemes to increase the debt burden, bring the price of assets to an absurdly low level, and then their people can buy the object for a penny.”
In October 2019, railroad workers protested outside the President’s Office. Ukrzaliznytsia employees demanded “higher salaries, better working conditions, prevention of mass layoffs and, most importantly, the dismissal of the head of UZ, Yevhen Kravtsov.”
Members of the parliamentary transportation committee also criticized Kravtsov’s work. The MPs “expressed outrage that the company does not invest in rolling stock, but only reports on profits and efficiency.”
In addition, they were outraged by a significant imbalance in the level of salaries of ordinary employees and central staff. For example, UZ employees receive a maximum of UAH 8,000, while the salary in the central office, which has almost doubled since Kravtsov’s arrival, is several tens of thousands.
At the end of 2019, the State Bureau of Investigation became interested in Kravtsov’s work as head of Ukrainian Railways.
“Employees of the State Bureau of Investigation of Ukraine have opened criminal proceedings against the former head of Ukrzaliznytsia, Yevhen Kravtsov, and the chairman of the supervisory board of UZ, Shevka Adzhuner.”
Criminal proceedings against the top officials ofUkrzaliznytsiawere opened under Part 2 of Article 364 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of power or position).
According to the Telegram channel “UN — Plums and Pears”, “Shevki and Kravtsov spend considerable budget money not on raising salaries for UZ employees, not on solving the problem of depreciation of the company’s rolling stock, but on entertainment, riding on a company ship, ordering catering in the amount of 200 thousand hryvnias and at the same time buying elite cigars and alcohol for Ukrzaliznytsia’s money.”
It is reported that the mere launching of this ship for “a voyage with entertainment costs Ukrzaliznytsia an average of half a million hryvnias for five hours on the Dnipro.”
The Ukrzaliznytsia scam: who is trying to steal 21 million for an existing ticketing website
The groundwork for this unprecedented scheme has been in the works for a long time. Journalists managed to detect a clone of the booking.uz.gov.ua service, which was hosted on the official state domain of UZ travel.uz.gov.ua and the servers of the GIOC long before the contract was signed. When the scandal began to gain momentum, access to the site was closed.
The journalists also found out that on September 20, 2018 (again, the contract was not yet signed), UZ officials, namely the Department of Passenger Transportation, the Department of Information Technology, and the SIGC, visited the office of VITES to test how the copied Bookings system worked.
A week later, during the presentation of the new UZ logo, VITES introduced a self-service terminal for purchasing tickets for the Kyiv Boryspil air express. Later, without realizing it, Kravtsov, the acting chairman of Ukrzaliznytsia, Oleksandr Voitko, the director of the GIOC, and Yevhen Serebryanyi, a representative of VITES and former deputy director of the IT department of UZ, actually confirmed their participation in the scheme by posting on Facebook.
These individuals are the most direct beneficiaries of the scheme worth UAH 21.4 million. The direct mastermind behind the fraud is Serhiy Kravets, who is the founder and co-owner of VITES and the Tickets.ua service. VITES is a rebranding of the company Automated Systems of Control and Maintenance (ASKIO), which was caught by the Control and Audit Department (CID) stealing developments from the Design and Engineering Technology Bureau of UZ (DECTB) and reselling them to the SIC. And after the rebranding, the same people are promoting the same scheme, only now they are stealing from the SIC and selling them to the CCD!
It was Kravets who, using his old Lviv connections with Infrastructure Minister Omelyan, persuaded Kravtsov to take over the e-ticketing system. And the creation, or rather cloning, of the current booking.uz.gov.ua system was supposed to be the starting point for its replacement.
By the way, it is well known that Kravets has direct access to Minister Volodymyr Omelyan and regularly attends meetings at the Ministry of Infrastructure. Kravets is personally patronized by Omelyan.
The implementation of the contract signed between CCD and VITES for the supply of a copy of Booker was suspended by the court, as the case on its illegality is being considered. The State Audit Service of Ukraine (SASU) monitored the procurement, confirming violations of the law and the illegality of using a negotiation procedure instead of open bidding. PZZ was obliged to make changes to the procedure, but UZ did not comply. On February 12, 2019, an on-site inspection of the SASU was scheduled at Ukrzaliznytsia.
Kravtsov has turned Ukrzaliznytsia into a bottom
Oleksandr Skichko, MP from the Servant of the People party, says that under the leadership of Yevhen Kravtsov, there is no concern for the people working at the bottom, there is a discrepancy between the salaries of top and bottom management, and there is no funding to actually improve working conditions and the state of Ukrzaliznytsia.
There is a lot of evidence for his words. It’s not just a high salary for his favorite person. In addition to disrespect for UZ employees, there is also disrespect for passengers (UZ users)
Here are the claims of ordinary users:
1. “Eco-train Zaporizhzhia-Berdiansk”. Passengers of the Zaporizhzhia-Berdiansk train were impressed by a new service from Ukrzaliznytsia — mushrooms grew from under the window frame right in the carriage. The photos were posted on social media by Ruslan Kamyshenko, who was traveling on the train. This was reported by Tanusha Laguta on her Facebook page, according to Yegor Checherinda (2018).
2. Ukrzaliznytsia’s cattle carrier — Social media has been outraged by the condition of Ukrzaliznytsia’s «new» train, which was launched in time for the holiday season from Volyn to Odesa. Facebook user Kateryna Zolotareva called the train a «cattle carrier,» and dozens of people commented that the condition of the passenger train was far from ideal.
3. The broken Boryspil express had to be pushed by hand to be repaired. The express train to Boryspil, which was launched by Ukrzaliznytsia on November 30, has since broken down twice: On December 1 and 4. A video was posted online showing a group of men pushing it for repairs after the second breakdown.
And this is not all people’s complaints. If you walk through the cars of Ukrzaliznytsia, you can see what corruption looks like and what Kravtsov saved for his next vacation abroad.
NAPC issues a notice to Ukrzaliznytsia’s acting CEO Kravtsov
The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC), following an unscheduled inspection of compliance with the Law on Prevention of Corruption, decided to issue an order to the acting chairman of the board of Ukrainian Railways (Ukrzaliznytsia), Yevhen Kravtsov, for failing to assess corruption risks during the period of the anti-corruption program of the company.
The inspection revealed violations of the requirements of Part 2 of Article 61 of the law, as well as Part 5 of Article 62 and Part 1 of Article 64 of this law, the NACP press service reports.
The NACP reminded that Part 2 of Article 61 stipulates that the head, founders (participants) of a legal entity ensure regular assessment of corruption risks in its activities and take appropriate anti-corruption measures. A similar provision is provided for in the anti-corruption program of PJSC «Ukrzaliznytsia», which was put into effect in July 2016 with the established frequency — annually by February 1.
At the same time, no assessment of corruption risks was conducted during the period of the anti-corruption program of PJSC Ukrzaliznytsia (as well as before its adoption).
Fatal accident
Yevhen Pavlovych was also suspected of a fatal car accident. In 2011, law enforcement officers opened a criminal case, but it was closed after a while. According to media reports, in 2019, the police began a second investigation into the incident.
According to media reports, Kravtsov violated traffic rules and fatally hit a motorcyclist. The guilt of the head of UZ was proved, but a settlement agreement was reached with the relatives of the deceased, and Kravtsov himself turned from a culprit into a victim.
Fired Kravtsov boasts of compensation from Ukrzaliznytsia
He announced this on Facebook, saying that “the company is currently experiencing one of its best times.”
Kravtsov said that the supervisory board had allegedly been considering his performance report for several months, but “there were no formal grounds for dismissal.”
“Yesterday, the employer decided to terminate the contract early with the corresponding monetary compensation to the head. She didn’t have it, I’ll say right away. But this is the shareholder’s decision. For my part, I was ready to continue working in the transportation sector without any monetary payments under the contract,” he wrote.
Income
The second multimillionaire is the head of Ukrzaliznytsia, Yevhen Kravtsov. On average, he earned UAH 812.4 thousand per month in 2018. In a recent interview, he said his salary was significantly lower than last year.
«In 2018, I declared UAH 9.7 million in income. But I was paid my salary for the five months of 2017 in 2018, because the contract was signed with me only in early 2018 due to bureaucratic procedures. Therefore, UAH 9.7 million is not a salary for 12 months, but for 17 months,» he explained in a commentary to journalists back in August.
But for a long time, Kravtsov’s salary was classified, and Ukrzaliznytsia refused to answer media inquiries about his salary:
Summary
Yevhen Kravtsov ruthlessly squandered Ukrzaliznytsia’s money. Thanks to his activities, UZ turned into a poor, looted state-owned enterprise. And while ordinary UZ employees worked for 10,000 hryvnias a month, Kravtsov carefully concealed his earnings from the very beginning, saying that they were low. As it turned out, his salary, including bonuses, exceeded UAH 1 million per month, which is more than Donald Trump’s salary. For what merits, I would like to ask? Maybe for the rusty, disgusting cars, or maybe for the “eco-train” in which poisonous mushrooms grow, or maybe for the decommissioned trains from Germany that break down at every turn…. All in all, Yevhen received a suspicion of embezzlement of state property, and along with it, compensation for his dismissal in the amount of 800 thousand hryvnias.