Rainin Igor Lvovich
Official biography
Born on August 6, 1973 in Kharkiv.
From 1990 to 1993, he worked as a gas equipment adjuster at the Naladchik Cooperative, and as an adjustment engineer at the Techservice Engineering and Consulting Center, a state-owned enterprise.
From July 1993 to January 1996, he was a site manager at the Agris production and commercial firm, then until April 1998, he was Deputy General Director, General Director of the Training and Research and Production Center “Labor Protection” LLC.
In 1997, he graduated from the Kharkiv Zhukovsky Aviation Institute with a degree in process engineering. In 1997, he graduated from the Zhukovsky Kharkiv Aviation Institute as a mechanical engineer (aircraft engines and power plants).
In April-August 1998, he worked as a specialist at the Kolomak District State Administration.
In 2000, he graduated with honors from the Kharkiv Branch of the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine (Master of Public Administration).
From July 2000 to March 2001, he was the Executive Director of the Training and Research and Production Center “Labor Protection” LLC.
From March 2001 to April 2002, he was Head of the Department for Coordination of International Technical Assistance Projects at the Main Department of Economics of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration (KRSA).
April 2001 — March 2010 — Deputy, First Deputy Head of the Main Department of Economics of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
2002 — Deputy of the Kharkiv Regional Council of the VI convocation, head of the largest deputy group of the Regional Council — “Unity of Kharkiv Region”.
In 2003, he received a PhD in Public Administration, is the author of seven monographs and more than 50 scientific papers on public administration, economic and budgetary development.
Since 2010, he has been in opposition to the regime of Viktor Yanukovych.
In 2010, he was appointed Director General of the National Research Center “Institute of Metrology”.
July 2010 — March 2014 — Deputy Director of Syntoflex LLC.
From April to November 2014 — First Deputy Head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
From November 17, 2014 to February 3, 2015 — Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.
From February 3, 2015 — Head of Kharkiv Regional State Administration.
From February 2015 to May 2016, he headed the Kharkiv territorial organization of the party “Solidarity — Petro Poroshenko Bloc”.
August 29, 2016 — by the decree of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, he was appointed Head of the Presidential Administration, replacing Borys Lozhkin.
2016-2019 — Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine
On May 19, 2019, President Petro Poroshenko dismissed the Head of the Presidential Administration Ihor Rainin.
Ihor Rainin is married and has a son. His wife runs a small business. His son Anatoliy was ranked 34th among juniors in the European tennis rankings, but has not participated in competitions since 2016. Anatoliy also states on his Facebook profile that he is a student at the Moscow Higher Institute of Management, although he was officially enrolled at the Kharkiv National Law University named after Yaroslav the Wise.
Since 2010, Rainin has been a member of the Kharkiv Regional Council, a member of the opposition along with Aresn Avakov and Ivan Varchenko.
After Viktor Yanukovych’s team came to power in 2010, he left the regional administration and became a deputy of the regional council from the then opposition Batkivshchyna, while also running a business (deputy director of Syntoflex LLC).
Rainin returned to the regional administration in March 2014, when Kharkiv, along with other regions, was shaken by separatist movements. He was appointed acting deputy to the newly minted governor Baluta, and in April he became a full-fledged deputy. Among other tasks, his functional responsibilities included overseeing the work of the Department of Economics and International Relations, the Department for Improving the Region’s Competitiveness, the Department of Social Protection, the Department of Science and Education, and the Department of Agriculture.
In November, Raynin was offered a position and transferred to Kyiv as deputy head of the Presidential Administration. This step was quite logically justified, since at that time the Presidential Administration was headed by his fellow countryman, a Kharkiv resident, Borys Lozhkin.
During his time at the Presidential Administration, Rainin had proven himself well and had become a rather important link, so Lozhkin had no particular desire to lose such a staff member. But there was a need to strengthen the important Kharkiv region, and as a result, Rainin was recommended for the post of governor. His candidacy was convenient and concise in the context of the hidden confrontation between the Presidential Administration and the Cabinet of Ministers, as Rainin had good relations with both Arsen Avakov and Lozhkin, while Baluta was a one hundred percent Avakov’s creature. In addition, the Cabinet of Ministers had allegedly already pre-approved Rainin’s candidacy for this position.
03.02.2015 Ihor Rainin was appointed head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration. He took over the post of governor, replacing Ihor Baluta.
During one of his official visits to Kharkiv, President Poroshenko emphasized the region’s strategically important geographical location, its importance for Ukraine, and the need for the most effective management of the region: “Kharkiv region is a strategic pillar of Ukraine in the fight against the aggressor and terrorism. It is a buffer zone between Donetsk and Luhansk regions and Russia. It is important that it is headed by a strong person. I have decided to appoint Igor Rainin to this position.”
A number of media outlets and public figures expressed the opinion that Ihor Rainin had a love affair with his deputy in the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Yulia Svitlychna. In the summer of 2015, private correspondence between the governor and his first deputy was leaked to the Internet. Rainin called the posted materials a fake.
But despite this, this information gained enough publicity in the Kharkiv region that, naturally, on Valentine’s Day 2016, Kharkiv websites and blogs were filled with humorous congratulations on the subject, directed at Rainin and Svitlychna. Later, when Rainin moved to the post of head of the Presidential Administration, Svitlychna became the head of Kharkiv region, becoming the youngest governor in the history of Ukraine (32 years old). According to Kharkiv journalists, after the article about the hacked mail was published, representatives of the Kharkiv regional administration began to put pressure on them, as Rainin suggested that journalists might be collaborating with the DPR, and as a result, under pressure, the press was forced to remove the material from the site.
At the moment when the public learned about Rynin’s appointment as governor, information began to appear on the Internet that this appointment was lobbied by one of Kharkiv’s businessmen, Yevhen Cherniak (often confused with E. Cherniak, the owner of the Khortytsia trademark and the Megapolis trading house), whose interests included joint business ventures with Hennadiy Kernes. Thus, the opinion was formed that Rainin would be loyal to the odious mayor of Kharkiv, which, in turn, did not suit the public.
In August 2016, the following decision was made and Rainin was appointed as the Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. It was noted that Vitaliy Kovalchuk was considered the main contender for the post of the new head of the Presidential Administration, but he did not accept Petro Poroshenko’s offer to head the Presidential Administration. Valeriy Chaly, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States, was initially considered a likely candidate for this position, but according to confirmed information, he also refused the offer to take up the post.
Declaration
According to his declaration for 2013, Ihor Rainin earned UAH 13 thousand as Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. He received another UAH 123 thousand as interest and dividends, and kept UAH 10 thousand in his bank account. The official declared only two small apartments as his property.
In 2015, Ihor Rainin already declared UAH 923 thousand, of which UAH 128 thousand was salary, and the rest was income from the alienation of movable and immovable property. The head of the Presidential Administration owned an apartment of 74.3 square meters. Mr. Rainin also listed cash in the amount of 30 thousand dollars, 200 thousand UAH and 15 thousand euros. His wife Anna had 10 thousand dollars and 50 thousand UAH in cash as personal savings.
A big jump in just three years!
In his 2018 declaration, Ihor Rainin indicated ownership of a 74-square-meter apartment in Kharkiv and a room rental at the Ukraina Hotel. His wife Anna had the right to use a 64-square-meter apartment in Kharkiv owned by Zinaida Byalkovska.
In 2018, Rainin received an income of UAH 382 thousand, and his wife Anna earned UAH 60 thousand. The family’s financial savings amounted to: 52 thousand dollars, 20 thousand euros, 388 thousand UAH.
In his declaration for January-May 2019, before his dismissal, Rainin indicated the same two apartments in Kharkiv, a hotel room in Kyiv, a salary in the Presidential Administration of UAH 360 thousand, and substantial personal savings: UAH 68,000 in a bank account, as well as UAH 25,000, USD 40,000 and EUR 20,000 in cash, and a scholarship of over UAH 22,000 for being an honorary citizen of Kharkiv region.
The official’s wife earned UAH 60 thousand during the reporting period, and kept UAH 70 thousand and USD 12 thousand in cash.
Dirt and rumors
It is noteworthy that during Ihor Rainin’s tenure in the civil service, his family’s company won dozens of public tenders worth hundreds of thousands of hryvnias.
Thus, the first confirmed evidence of lobbying of the family’s interests was the fact of purchasing parts for the production of hydraulic and steam turbines by the strategically important enterprise of the Kharkiv region «Turboatom» from a company associated with the family of the then regional governor Rainin.
Also, during the period of Raynin’s leadership of the region from 2015 to 2016, the company «Training and Scientific Production Center «Labor Protection», owned by the wife and father of the then-governor, made a number of illegal deliveries to large enterprises in the city. In addition, Rainin’s mother and the same Yulia Svitlychna worked at this enterprise. Thus, throughout the year, Turboatom purchased goods worth UAH 654 thousand from Okhrana Truda. After checks, it became known that the prices for some goods were an order of magnitude higher than the prices published in open sources. The same scheme was used by Kharkivoblenergo, which purchased goods worth UAH 200 thousand, but the prices for the goods were not published at all.
In 2016, according to the public finance website E-Data, the LLC «UNPC «Labor Protection» received UAH 207 thousand from various state and municipal enterprises and institutions of Kharkiv region.
Rainin systematically pointed to the rather modest lifestyle of his family, which was confirmed by the declaration he regularly submitted. However, this information is easily refuted when mentioning the official’s son, who, according to information from the Internet, does not know what it means to live modestly. According to information posted by him personally on social media, Rainin Jr. does not deny himself anything: he smokes hookah, wears branded clothes, and vacations abroad, as evidenced by numerous photos taken with his new iPhone.
Think about the following fact: the son of the then-governor of the region bordering the aggressor indicated on his Facebook page that his place of study was the Higher Institute of Management located in the aggressor’s capital, Moscow, although shortly before that, there was information on the network that Rainin’s only son had become a student at the Kharkiv National Law University named after Yaroslav the Wise. However, his name was not on the lists of applicants and enrollees.
Let’s recall the scandalous affair between Rainin and Yulia Svitlychna, who, by a strange coincidence, later took a leadership position at the age of 32.
According to the declarations submitted by Rainin, there has been a rather rapid increase in the family’s wealth, even relative to the positions he held.
In February 2017, the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center published a decision of the Kharkiv City Council that the housing cooperative Syntobud (where Rainin worked in 2014) could take possession of a 1.5-hectare land plot within the city for free for construction. At the same time, the list of founders of this company includes businessmen from Rainin’s entourage — Oleg Bazarenko, Valeriy Kutsenko, Denys Ostapenko, Vitaliy Yatsyuk. At the same time, Oleh Bazarenko holds the position of director of Stirolteks LLC, and Denys Ostapenko is the head of Trade-Plast LLC. Among the founders of both of these companies are Andriy Kryuchkov and Stanislav Skrypay, who are also the founders of Syntoflex, a company not unknown to Rainin.
In addition, Andriy Kriuchkov was listed as a founder of Dornit when the head of the Kharkiv Regional State Administration, Yulia Svitlychna, worked there. He was also an advisor to Ihor Rainin when the latter was the governor of Kharkiv region.
After this information was made public, in order to avoid a scandal, Syntoflex for some unknown reason refused the desired site.
From the point of view of a sober mind, Rainin’s position and the attitude of the country’s leadership to the fact that he changed parties is not clear. Thus, Ihor Rainin, a native of the border region, who was the head of the Presidential Administration under Petro Poroshenko, turned out to be a member of the pro-Russian party Opposition Platform — For Life and even headed its branch in Kharkiv.
One of the leaders of the OPFL, Yuriy Boyko, officially introduced the politician to his fellow party members in Kharkiv during a regular meeting, while explaining that Rainin had been cooperating with this political force for a very long time, but that this fact could not be disclosed before.
To summarize, let’s return to Rainin’s family ties. In his 2015-2017 declarations, Rainin indicated that his wife Anna uses an apartment in Kharkiv owned by Zinaida Byalkovska, who happens to be her mother, and that Rainin himself has never mentioned this. Bialkovska is also the head of the housing management of the building where the apartment is located. Andrii Bialkovskyi, Anna’s brother and Rainin’s brother-in-law, is also registered and lives with her.
A number of companies are registered for Bialkovsky, two of which — Modus-Instrument LLC and NPP In-Solution LLC — are involved in money laundering and tax evasion cases. These companies organized the supply of equipment to the Kharkiv-based Electrotyazhmash plant, whose head, using his official position, withdrew the plant’s money to private companies, totaling about UAH 500 million, 2 of which went to the companies of Bialkovsky. Another criminal case concerns NPP In-Solution LLC and money laundering, i.e. the work of a «conversion center», one of whose clients was the said Bialkovsky’s company.
And of course, despite the tarnished reputation, to put it mildly, this did not prevent Modus-Instrument LLC from winning tenders for the supply of equipment to state-owned enterprises in 2018 worth UAH 7 million 300 thousand.