Volodymyr Pakhniuk
Official biography
Born on April 26, 1967, Rokytne village, Rivne region — Major General, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine in Zakarpattia region (2018-2019), Vinnytsia region (2017-2018).
He received two higher education degrees — military, graduating with honors from the military school in 1988 with a degree in engineering and economics, and law, graduating from the National University of Ostroh Academy in 2001.
He has been working in state security agencies since the establishment of the Security Service of Ukraine.
According to the Decree of the President of Ukraine of October 13, 2014, Volodymyr Pakhniuk was appointed Head of the Security Service of Ukraine in Zhytomyr region.
As of mid-2018, he was the head of the SBU office in Vinnytsia region.
On October 26, 2018, against the backdrop of deteriorating relations with Hungary, Poroshenko appointed Volodymyr Pakhniuk as the head of the SBU in Zakarpattia region instead of Oleh Voevodin. He was dismissed from the post on June 11, 2019.
Family.
His wife is Olena Pakhniuk,
His son, Petro Pakhniuk, is an athlete; Petro’s wife, Ainur, has two children and a dog.
Dirt
Undeclared estates and family business of Zhytomyr SBU Head
For the first time, we are revealing the secrets of the wealth and lifestyle of the head of a special state structure — the Security Service of Ukraine in Zhytomyr region. A detailed analysis of Volodymyr Pakhniuk’s declarations reveals his involvement in land fraud, concealment of his family business and an elite cottage near Kyiv.
Undercover agent
In October 2014, he was appointed by Presidential Decree to head the SBU in Zhytomyr region. Reporting on the results achieved during his first year in office, Volodymyr Pakhniuk proclaimed this time a period of uncompromising fight against corruption.
However, the structure headed by him did not want to get acquainted with the income declaration of the security officer. The regional office, citing its special status, refused to provide the journalist from the 20 Minutes newspaper with copies of the requested documents. Only after we appealed to the central office of the SBU did the information finally cease to be secret. The declaration of property, income and expenses of the head of the SBU in Zhytomyr region, according to the information received, shows that Volodymyr Pakhniuk owns two land plots of 10 acres each and a share in a three-room apartment.
The co-owner of the apartment is his wife Olena Pakhniuk, who also owns non-residential premises, a car and five buses. In 2014, Volodymyr Pakhniuk’s salary, including allowances, amounted to UAH 149 thousand. The income of the official’s wife from business activities amounted to UAH 538 thousand. Last year, they earned UAH 243.5 thousand and over UAH 1 million, respectively.
But not all the property and valuables owned by the family have been declared.
About the son of a traitor
In the spring of 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, it became known that Petro Pakhniuk, along with another Ukrainian athlete, Oleh Stepko, played for the Azerbaijani national team. In June 2015, at the first-ever European Games in Baku, both were represented as ex-citizens of Ukraine. For Azerbaijan, the fact of the competition was so significant that Vladimir Putin arrived at the opening ceremony.
It is worth noting that the local Gymnastics Federation is headed by the First Lady of Azerbaijan, Mehriban Aliyeva. At the same time she manages the President Heydar Aliyev Foundation, she generously spends huge amounts of money on her favorite sport. The athletes are immediately given an apartment, a car, and a monthly salary of $3,500. Since Pakhniuk’s son won four silver medals for his “new homeland,” he was awarded an additional reward for each of them, about $50,000. For comparison, the “silver” in the treasury of the Ukrainian team is estimated at 20 thousand UAH.
Despite the good training conditions and high pay, Petro Pakhniuk did not win the desired victory when he participated in the Olympics in Brazil for the national team of another country.
Petro Pakhniuk’s decision to join the Azerbaijani track and field team was discussed with his father. From a moral and ethical point of view, it is a shame for a son who has renounced his homeland, and a shame for a father who raised such a son.”
The land scandal
No less interesting is the story of the head of the Zhytomyr SBU receiving a land plot next to a pond in the elite area of the village of Sofiyivska Borshchahivka near Kyiv. By the decision of the 38th session of the Sofiyivska Borshchahivka Council of the 5th convocation of July 7, 2010, No. 17, Volodymyr Pakhniuk was granted permission to develop a land management project for the allocation of land for the construction and maintenance of a residential building, outbuildings and structures with an area of 0.1014 hectares at 11 Vasnetsova Street.
The land was allocated at a session where the deputies did not even know what they were voting for. After the regular elections in October 2010, the newly elected village head, Yuriy Denysenko, at the request of more than 500 villagers, initiated the creation of a deputy commission to investigate the legality and expediency of the land allocation in 2006-2010.
As a result of the inspection, the deputies prepared a report that showed numerous violations during the land allocation. A separate paragraph in the report refers to the land plot granted to Pakhniuk: “The articles of the laws of rural areas mentioned in the preliminary conclusion of the State Committee of Land Resources of 29.07.10. No. 12238, were deliberately not fulfilled by the village head Kreets S. V., and none of the sessions of the Sofiyivsko-Borshchahivska village council made adjustments to the village’s General Plan regarding the lands of historical and cultural significance located in the area of pond No. 10 of the Niva River.
In June 2011, the report of the deputy commission of the Sofiyivsko-Borshchahivska village council was sent to all controlling services, from the prosecutor’s office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine to the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. Instead of an adequate legal assessment, next month the whole country will learn about the raider seizure of the village council building. The former governor of the Kyiv region, Anatoliy Prysyazhnyuk, was directly involved in this through his protege Oles Kudryk, who was later appointed head of the Sofiyivsko-Borshchahivska village council.
When we tried to search the Unified Register of Property Rights, we could not find the described land plot of Volodymyr Pakhniuk. Only after a thorough review of the plots adjacent to Vasnetsova Street were we lucky enough to find its actual location.
What a surprise it was to see a huge house and a massive fence behind which were the even larger estates of Margarita Razvadovska. The 20-hectare plot was granted to the daughter of MP Viktor Razvadovsky by Volodymyr Pakhniuk, by a decision of the Sofiyivka-Borshchahiv village council.
It is not known for certain whether Margarita Viktorivna mentioned her luxurious house in her declaration when she worked in the Verkhovna Rada as her father’s staff assistant. However, her neighbor, the head of the Security Service of Ukraine in Zhytomyr region, did not declare anything in the “Houses” column in 2014 or 2015…
Pakhniuk family business
Olena Pakhniuk, the wife of the SBU Head, has been doing business since 2004. The businesswoman chose passenger transportation as her main business, for which she purchased five buses listed in her declaration.
The absence of any mention in the submitted declarations of shares in the companies created by his wife is the reason why the head of the SBU may well become involved in an even bigger scandal. We are talking about several companies created at different times by Olena Pakhniuk herself with different co-founders. In October 2008, the Istok Transport Company was founded at 4 Ostap Veresai Street in Kyiv. The founders with equal shares were Olena Pakhniuk, Oksana Pakhniuk and Volodymyr Syzonenko, a Kyiv resident.
At the end of September 2010, Olena Pakhniuk founded the Transport and Trade Company Life LLC at her apartment in Kyiv. In addition to her share in a privatized apartment in the capital, the wife of the head of the SBU office in Zhytomyr region fully owns a 58.2 square meter apartment on S. Bandera Street in Kyiv. It is here that the branch of the said transportation company is registered.
An apartment in an ordinary five-story building was converted into an office. We decided to contact the Rivne City Council, trying to find out the previous history of the premises. And again, we were shocked by the answer we received! The Executive Committee of the City Council informed us that it had not issued the certificate of ownership listed in the State Register as the basis for Olena Pakhniuk’s registration of the premises in Kyiv. Interestingly, the Transport and Trade Company Life, like Olena Pakhniuk, has long owned a number of bus routes. According to the register of permits issued by the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety, they operate interregional transportation from the capital Kyiv to Rivne, Dubno, Pochayiv and other cities. According to an extract from the electronic register of vehicles of the Traffic Safety Department of the National Police of Ukraine, the carrier company does not have any vehicles assigned to it. One can only guess whose buses are actually transporting passengers and under what conditions.
The list of companies founded by the talented businesswoman does not end there. In April 2013, two companies were registered one after the other. “They are registered at the same address and with a minimum authorized capital of 100 hryvnias. The main activity of the company “Auto-Transfer” is the provision of taxi services. The owners in equal shares are the aforementioned Oksana and Olena Pakhniuk. The co-owner of the next company, Auto-Life, in addition to Olena Volodymyrivna, is Serhiy Aleksiyevets, a resident of Rivne.
Both organizations are located on the territory of the former Kyiv Motor Transport Enterprise at 7/9 Kaisarova Street, which is currently being actively built up with another residential complex. At the same address is the Invest-Project company, which in May of this year restored its previously granted right to develop 1.69 hectares on the Pechersk Hills in Kyiv through the court. By the way, according to the court decision, it was the SBU that helped the company win the case, having previously lifted the seizure of the land plot.
A forester was shot
On January 17, the Zhytomyr-Online website published an article stating that the head of the Romanivka District Council, Kondratiuk, organized a hunt during which a forester was “shot” and that “honored guests” took part in the hunt, including the head of the SBU Office in Vinnytsia Oblast, Volodymyr Pakhniuk, one of the heads of Kyiv-based Alpha, and a Romanivka businessman and member of the regional council, Khodak. On the Zhytomyr.info website, Ihor Khodak and Oleksandr Kondratyuk denied the information.
The fact that a forester was seriously injured in the Romanivka district was indeed registered by the police, but not on January 3, but on January 2. However, the information about the organizer and participants of the hunt is not true. In particular, Ihor Khodak, a deputy of the Zhytomyr Regional Council, considers this the beginning of a “dirty” election campaign.
Smuggling
The Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Ruslan Ryaboshapko announced the dismissal of a number of heads of SBU departments, including the head of the SBU office in Zakarpattia region Volodymyr Pakhnyuk. Along with him, the heads of the SBU departments in the border regions of Odesa, Lviv, Chernivtsi, and Vinnytsia, as well as the head of the SBU in Vinnytsia region, were also dismissed.
According to Ryaboshapka, the reason for his dismissal is the unsatisfactory situation with smuggling. After all, civic activists have repeatedly claimed that it is SBU officers who “cover up” smuggling.
Head of the Zhytomyr SBU Office fined by police for parking in the wrong place
In Zhytomyr, police fined the driver of the head of the regional SBU office, Volodymyr Pakhniuk, for improper parking. Zhytomyr blogger Oleksandr Kolibabchuk wrote about this on his Facebook page.
“Pay attention to the work of the new police. Even the head of the SBU is fined for violating parking rules! Great job!” says Oleksandr Kolibabchuk.
“I went to Maidan for this. Zhytomyr police fines the head of the regional SBU! It’s beautiful,” wrote public figure Serhiy Hula.
“He broke the rules, he should be held accountable like all law-abiding citizens, that’s why people came to the Maidan,” comments Valera Piven.
However, as Zhytomyr Journal has learned, according to other witnesses to the incident, the head of the SBU, Volodymyr Pakhnyuk, left without a fine. “The confrontation between the police and the SBU ended in friendship,” wrote civic activist Natalia Kurkchi on Facebook.
Summary
It is reasonable to assume that Pakhniuk is not an accidental figure in politics, and was a benefit to the then-President Poroshenko. Given the fact that Volodymyr Vasylovych was accused of “covering up” smuggling, it is not difficult to understand how and why Pakhniuk was useful. But he was not only famous for smuggling. His wife, Olena, is also dirty. Suspicious hidden business, raider attacks, illegal privatization of land… I think Olena and Volodymyr are a perfect couple — two criminal authorities.