Shakhov Sergey Vladimirovich
Official biography
Sergei Shakhov was born on May 7, 1975 in the Kazakh village of Sayak, which was part of the Dzhezkazgan region (now the territory of Karaganda region). In 1976, his family moved to Bryanka, and ten years later, in 1986, they settled in Stakhanov.
He began his career in 1993 as a sales representative at Marichka LLC. In 1996, Shakhov became deputy sales director at Ruslan LLC. He worked in this position until 2004.
In March 2006, he was elected a deputy of the Luhansk Regional Council of the 5th convocation.
- From 2007 to 2011, the politician and businessman was officially the deputy director of RIM Law Firm LLC, and since 2011 he has been the head of Luhansk Industrial Group LLC.
- Since December 8, 2010, he has been a member of the Executive Committee of the Stakhanov City Council.
- In 2011, he was awarded for high professionalism by the All-Ukrainian Charitable Organization “Ukrainian Cultural Foundation”.
- In 2012, he led his team in the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
- In the same year of 2012, the authorities fabricated criminal cases against Shakhov for speaking out against the Party of Regions and he was put on the wanted list.
- In 2013, Sergey Shakhov actively supported Euromaidan. He channeled personal funds to support the protesters in the center of the capital. Shakhov facilitated the return of the Luhansk Berkut from Kyiv and helped to transport wounded activists from the capital.
- On October 25, 2015, he was elected to the Sievierodonetsk City Council from the Nash Krai party, but on November 18, the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission of the Luhansk region decided to revoke Shakhov’s deputy mandate.
- On July 17, 2016, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada in the midterm elections. He ran as a self-nominated candidate in the single-member constituency No. 114 (Luhansk region). On August 1, 2016, the Central Election Commission registered Serhiy Shakhov as a Member of Parliament.
- In the 2019 parliamentary elections, he ran as a self-nominated candidate in the 114th constituency.
- On July 21, 2019, he was elected as a member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the IX convocation.
Family and connections
His father is Volodymyr Shakhov, his mother is Valentyna Shakhova.
Sergiy Shakhov is married and has five children: three sons and two daughters. His eldest son, Nikita Shakhov, is also involved in politics and public activities in the Luhansk region.
Titles, ranks, regalia
Member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Rules of Procedure and Organization of Work of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
Leader and founder of the public organization “People’s Trust”.
In 2006, he was awarded the Medal of the Metropolitan of Kyiv and All Ukraine for high achievements and services to the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, as well as the Order of Patriotism dedicated to the 2000th anniversary of Christianity and the Order of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary for his active spiritual position and charity.
In 2008, Shakhov won the Young Person of Luhansk Region contest in the Young Philanthropist of the Year nomination, and in 2009 he became the Man of the Year in Stakhanov.
In 2011, Shakhov received an award for high professionalism from the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation, an all-Ukrainian charitable organization.
Dirt on him
His name is well known to many pensioners in the Luhansk region, who honor Shakhov as a benefactor. After all, as soon as the elections to the Rada or local authorities begin there, Shakhov’s team immediately starts generously distributing money, food packages or sugar to poor voters.
In return, he receives not only their votes, but also their willingness to participate in “pro-Shakhov” rallies. And from his most loyal supporters, he has formed units of warrior grandmothers, using them in his political shows and provocations. However, according to SKELET-info, Shakhov also has real “titushky” and even worse: long-standing close ties with the commanders of the “Luhansk Republic” militants, whom he also “feeds,” according to a number of sources.
Converters and robbers
For appearances, Shakhov entered Vocational School No. 21 to study to become a pastry chef, but in reality, together with his cousin Oleksiy, he was engaged in petty extortion and a little currency exchange in the markets of Luhansk Oblast. At one point, the brothers ran into people who were under the “roof” of an influential businessman, Viktor Topolov. Yes, the same one who would later buy up the assets of fugitive Pavel Lazarenko, stuck in Ukraine, for a pittance.
Shakhov’s new talents were discovered by Stakhanovite Oleksandr Stetsenko (born in 1978), who turned from an incomplete seminarian to a non-ferrous metal buyer and then a criminal financier. He is known as the founder and head of the so-called conversion centers, whose services were used by both organized criminal groups (including drug traffickers) and businessmen of various calibers, from small entrepreneurs to Luhansk oligarchs, including structures.
It was reported that for several years these conversion centers had been operating under the “roof” of criminal authorities Serhiy Kolinko (nicknamed “Tsypa”), who was the “lookout” for Stakhanov, and Volodymyr Polubatko from Alchevsk (nicknamed “Footballer”).
Shakhov and Stetsenko began their active collaboration in 2002, and it is this collaboration that has made Sergei Vladimirovich the wealthy swindler he is today. It should be added that at the same time, the failed priest Stetsenko converted Shakhov to Orthodoxy, opening up the profitable side of close cooperation with the church. Thus, in 2006, Sergei Shakhov received two church orders and a medal from the head of the UOC-MP for spirituality, charity, and patriotism.
The peculiarity of Stetsenko-Shakhov’s conversion centers was their frequent collapses, which left clients without money. According to information available to SKELET-info, at first the reason for this was trivial: the centers were successfully covered by law enforcement agencies several times. At the same time, the bandits lost the money, and, not wanting to listen to Stetsenko and Shakhov’s excuses, they simply put them under the condition of returning the “money” (allegedly, it was a case of “mutual fund”) under pain of death.
And then the cunning Shakhov suggested that Stetsenko find the money by “dumping” his other clients, who were rich but relatively harmless businessmen. They led the police to another conversion center of their own, from which, however, they had previously pocketed most of the money, and the clients were told that the police had confiscated everything. And according to another report, Shakhov “worked off” the money by giving the bandits information about his wealthy clients, who were then robbed or taxed. Another story goes that when Shakhov-Stetsenko’s relationship with the thieves reached an acute stage, they handed over the “crowned” to the OCD. In short, even this illegal business of Shakhov’s was accompanied by “divorces” and “abandonments”.
A new expansion of the Stetsenko-Shakhov conversion business took place in 2006, when Stetsenko, through Fininvest, acquired 49% of the shares in the Chernihiv-based Demark Bank. Another 49% of the bank’s shares were bought by Priority-Inter LLC (in 2011, it sold its stake to an undisclosed buyer). Thus, the partners had the opportunity not only to include a fairly large bank in their schemes, but also to use it to legalize their own “loot”. However, in the following years, Demark Bank did not become a buyer of business assets, but for some reason preferred to work with individuals — whose deposits accounted for 84% of its capital. It was quite strange!
The decline of Stetsenko-Shakhov’s business began in 2009. By that time, they were already serving clients in Kyiv, but then Shakhov, who had been left in the Luhansk region to “look after” their conversion centers, was hit by several heavy blows one after another. First, his cousin Oleksiy, who was transporting a huge amount of cash in rubles and hryvnias in a minibus, was killed in a car accident near Pereyaslav-Khmelnytsky.
A fight on TV with Mosiychuk
Passions flared up on the Ukrainian TV channel Pryamyi. MPs from the RPL, Ihor Mosiychuk and his colleague from the Nash Krai party, Serhiy Shakhov, took part in a political talk show with Mykola Veresen, reports. At first, the parliamentarians exchanged verbal barbs. It did not come to violence until Shakhov announced that radical Mosiychuk was participating in a gay pride parade. “Please don’t go to gay pride parades, be a man,” the Luhansk politician said to his opponent. Mosiychuk stood up and demanded an apology, which was not forthcoming. Passions flared up, and the argument escalated into further insults. Shakhov was the first to strike. For his part, Mosiychuk grabbed his famous cane, which he hasn’t parted with since the attempt on his life.
Nasalik, MP Shakhov and Volynets clash in the center of Kyiv
On July 13, 2018, during a rally of state-owned mine workers demanding repayment of wage arrears, a violent conflict occurred between Shakhov and Minister Ihor Nasalyk near the building of the Ministry of Energy.
Confrontation with Oleksandr Yefremov
In 2012, the non-partisan Serhiy Shakhov and a team of like-minded people ran for the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine in several single-member districts of Luhansk Oblast. They fiercely opposed the proteges of the Party of Regions. As a result, they started a confrontation with the leader of the Luhansk Party of Regions, Oleksandr Yefremov, and the local authorities. During the campaign, Yanukovych’s proteges opened criminal cases against Serhiy Shakhov and his associates. His entire team was put on the wanted list. One day, 37 people were detained. Law enforcement agencies, on the instructions of the Party of Regions, seized documents and confiscated computer equipment in Shakhov’s office in Stakhanov. Despite the fact that the exit polls indicated that Shakhov would win, the former mayor of Lysychansk, a member of the Party of Regions, Serhiy Dunayev, was eventually declared the winner of the election.
Sacks of sugar were distributed by Shakhov’s CF
May 2019, representatives of the Luhansk Regional Charitable Foundation “Luhansk Region is Our Land” and the Serhiy Shakhov Foundation distributed bags of sugar (5 kg) to residents of Bilovodsk and Bilovodsk district of Luhansk region.
Shakhov bribed voters in the 2016 by-elections using a charitable foundation
According to Ukrinform, competitors in the 2016 by-election to the Verkhovna Rada in constituency 114 reported that one of the candidates for deputy may have bribed voters. Thus, “Social cards” of the charitable foundation “Nash Krai”, represented by Serhiy Volodymyrovych Shakhov, were allegedly handed out individually:
«The holder of this card has a priority right to participate in the social programs of the Nash Krai Charitable Foundation and the Peasants’ Defense NGO…».
At the same time, the competing Opposition Bloc representatives claimed that at first the villagers were stupidly paid 200 hryvnias, promising the same reward based on the results of the vote, but then a rumor spread that a secret SBU team was monitoring all cases of bribery in the constituency, and the «chess players» rapidly modernized their «work with the voter,» journalists report.
SHAKHOV RENTED A ROOM IN THE SIEVIERODONETSK CITY COUNCIL FOR UAH 1, WHICH IS CONTRARY TO THE LAW
The agreement was concluded on March 15, 2017, by the former mayor Valentyn Kozakov and an individual, Shakhov Serhii Volodymyrovych. Shakhov paid UAH 1 per year for renting a 61 sq. m. premise. UAH 1 per year and used it allegedly as a reception room of the MP. The MPs recognized that this lease agreement contradicted the current legislation. In particular, clause 10 of the “Methodology for Calculating the Rent for Property” approved by a government resolution contains an exhaustive list of entities for which the rent is set at UAH 1, and MP Serhiy Shakhov is not one of them. Sergiy Shakhov could not enter into a lease agreement in accordance with the procedure provided for in Part 5 of Article 28 of the Law of Ukraine “On the Status of People’s Deputy”, since in this case the agreement is concluded by the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.
In their decision, the deputies instructed the executive committee’s affairs department to return the premises to the use of the Sievierodonetsk City Council, and also instructed the legal department to file a complaint with law enforcement agencies in connection with the material damage caused to the territorial community by the conclusion of a lease agreement with Serhiy Shakhov with a rent of UAH 1.
DUMCHEV AND SHAKHOV BUILD UP A NATURE RESERVE IN THE CENTER OF KYIV
As noted in the TV program “Nashi Hroshi”, the ramparts of the Kyiv Cave Monastery Reserve and the protected zone of the UNESCO World Heritage Site “Kyiv: St. Sophia Cathedral and the adjacent monastery buildings of the Kyiv Cave Monastery” are being illegally built up in the protected zone of the Kyiv Fortress. Although it is possible to build in the reserve area only with the permission of the Ministry of Culture, and in some cases it is not possible at all.
On January 22, 2015, the Kyiv City Council imposed a moratorium on construction in the protected zone of the reserve. Five days after the moratorium, the Kyivmiskbud company received a permit from the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate to build a high-rise building at 13 Leipzigska Street, where the ancient ramparts are located.
SERHIY SHAKHOV PROVIDED VOTERS WITH “CHARITABLE FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE”
According to the information provided in the election monitoring report of the “OPORA”, in June 2012 in the cities of Stakhanov, Bryanka, Pervomaisk, Popasna, Lysychansk, Alchevsk, Rubizhne, Leninsky district. In Luhansk and Krasnodon, the reception offices of the Sergei Shakhov Charitable Foundation provided “charitable material assistance” in the amount of 50 UAH per person. Some of these settlements (Lysychansk, Pervomaisk, Stakhanov, Popasna district) were part of the constituency #107, in which the candidate was running.
Although this information does not confirm the guilt of MP candidate Serhiy Shakhov in committing an offense, it gives good reason to assume and mark a high probability of involvement in indirect bribery of voters on his part.
An accident involving MP Shakhov
Serhiy Shakhov, a member of the Ukrainian parliament from the Will of the People group, confirmed the information that he had been involved in a traffic accident in Poltava Oblast on the night of June 14.
He wrote about this on his Facebook page, according to Slovo i Dilo. According to him, on the night of Wednesday to Thursday, he was driving to work in Zaporizhzhia. His car (a Toyota SUV) collided with another car (a Ford), which was standing across the road with a drunk driver behind the wheel.
«Near Lubny, there is a one-way road with roadblocks. A car with no dimensions was standing across the road in an unlit area. It turned out that the driver was drunk, hit the roadblock and went across the road. From the collision with him, our car was thrown on the roadblock and further — on the curb,» he wrote.
There were no fatalities as a result of the collision. The driver of the Ford was seriously injured and hospitalized. No one was injured in Shakhov’s car.
He was vacationing in Courchevel: MP Shakhov caught a coronavirus.
People’s Deputy from the group “Dovira” Serhiy Shakhov contracted a coronavirus, probably after a trip to the resort of Courchevel (France). Initially, the MP denied the information, but after the media publicized it, he admitted to the disease.
After the first data appeared, OBOZREVATEL contacted the Obukhiv police department, where the officer on duty confirmed that a statement had already been registered on this fact, and law enforcement officers were going to check it out.
Shakhov and Volodymyr Huslavsky
In the 112th constituency, the well-known Volodymyr Guslavsky is running, and he is now trying his best to prove that he did not surrender Luhansk region to terrorists. Although this is a man who personally gave orders to escort armed groups of people, create green corridors for their transportation, and equip the so-called “titushky” with not only cold steel but also firearms.
For example, he personally ordered to hand over the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Luhansk to armed separatists. When the terrorists came to his department, Guslavsky, instead of defending his countrymen, fled his post and handed over law enforcement agencies to the bandits. And today, he is walking side by side with Shakhovoy only because they also have long-standing business ties. He was happy to help Shakhovoy engage in illegal business, cashing in his money. This applied to Shakhov’s mining operations, as well as metal and currency transactions. In general, GUSLAVSKY’s percentage of his assistance was enormous, which allowed him to soar up the career ladder in a matter of years.
Drug use
Serhiy Shakhov bought up old ladies for 200 hryvnias per vote and introduced representatives of more than 50 of his technical candidates to the commissions. In a desperate attempt to annoy the race leader, one of the enemy’s political technologists spread a fake about his death from an overdose at the last minute (hinting at Shakhov’s addiction to “medications”). But this could not stop the winner.
MP Shakhov did not indicate in his declaration his common-law wife and the apartments, cottages, land and business registered in her name — Schemes
MP Serhiy Shakhov from the Dovira group did not list his common-law wife in his 2020 declaration, and with her numerous elite assets registered in her name — cottages near Kyiv, apartments and parking spaces in the center of the capital, land plots and a number of companies. This is the subject of an investigation by the Schemes program (a project of Radio Liberty and UA:Pershyi TV channel).
Using photos on social media, journalists managed to identify the name of Serhiy Shakhov’s common-law wife, Inna Zhurba. She appears in several photos published by the MP himself. In particular, in 2021, she was wishing him a Happy New Year. And also in the photos from 2020 and 2019, when the MP wished her a happy Easter. One of the photos had the caption: «We blessed Easter cakes with the whole family! Happy holiday to everyone! «.
As the journalists found out, Inna Pechal owns a 600-square-meter estate in the cottage town of Sonyachna Dolyna in Kyiv Oblast, the address of which was mentioned in the news about MP Shakhov’s COVID-19 illness in March last year.
At the same time, the journalists note that in the section “Information about family members of the declarant” in MP Serhiy Shakhov’s 2020 declaration, as in previous years, there is no information about his common-law wife. And accordingly, there is no information about her monetary assets, income, and property, including the aforementioned house in the “Sunny Valley”.
According to the register of real rights to real estate, Inna Zhurba owns another large cottage in this town, with an area of 1,330 square meters. She also owns 27 land plots in Kyiv region with a total area of almost 113 hectares. As the journalists found out, in May 2020, Inna Zhurba also became the owner of 8 apartments and 8 parking spaces in an elite high-rise building in Pechersk.
«A square meter of space in this building costs more than $2,000. If we calculate the approximate cost of apartments and parking spaces, Inna Zhurba had to pay almost one million eight hundred thousand dollars for this elite real estate, i.e. 48000000 hryvnias. Did she have enough of her own money for this? » the investigation says.
According to the register of legal entities, Zhurba previously owned several companies and is still a co-owner of a number of companies.
For example, it owns 60% of the authorized capital in the Da Vinci Center, a real estate management company in the capital. The company owns more than half of a building in the center of Kyiv, near the embassies of France, Italy, and Slovakia. It also owns almost three dozen parking spaces in the building.
False information in the declaration is a violation of anti-corruption legislation, which is established by the NACP inspection or NABU investigation.
“We actually have no means of forcing declarants to confess that they live with a particular person or run a joint household,” NAPC head Oleksandr Novikov told Skhema, ”We can confirm these facts, for example, by requesting materials from pre-trial investigation authorities if they conduct pre-trial investigation into other facts and establish actual residence.”
According to the lawyers, for failing to declare his wife with millions in assets, Serhiy Shakhov may face either a fine or restriction of liberty with special conditions.
“If the difference between the declared assets and the actual information is more than UAH 90,000,000, the sanction may be restriction of liberty for up to two years. It is a special open-type institution where the conditions are much milder and where a person can leave the institution,” explained Anton Marchuk, lawyer of the Anti-Corruption Action Center.
“Skhemy asked Serhiy Shakhov and Inna Zhurba for comments and sent them written questions. At the time of publication, they have responded. The editors will publish their answers as soon as they are received.
At the end of 2020, the Constitutional Court abolished criminal liability for entering false information in asset declarations. After that, MPs, including Serhiy Shakhov, passed new legislation that, according to anti-corruption experts, provides for a much lighter penalty for false information in declarations.
Shakhov spotted in intimate correspondence
In June 2017, photographers from the Verkhovna Rada press box were able to capture some spicy posts by Serhiy Shakhov. On that day, the MP corresponded on Viber with a girl named Diana, who sent him intimate photos of herself.
A few days later, Sergei Shakhov commented on the incident: “Yuriy Bek adopted a girl whom I help — I give her 1,500 hryvnias every month.” Shakhov assured that it was Yuriy who sent him the racy photos with naked buttocks from Diana’s phone, as he does not have his own smartphone. According to the MP, it was a “joke”.
How Serhiy Shakhov corrupted Yulia Tymoshenko
Establishing control over the regional center of Luhansk Oblast, the city of Sievierodonetsk, has been a fix idea of Serhiy Shakhov since 2015. He has invested a lot of effort and money to achieve it. However, the results of the 2015 local elections, when his party won only 9 seats out of 36 in the city council, did not allow him to do this in the way known in Ukraine (let alone legally).
Given that most of the deputies elected in 2015 were not going to negotiate with Serhiy Volodymyrovych. And then Shakhov’s team implemented an innovation that had never been seen before in Ukraine: in January-February 2020, they simulated a campaign to recall two-thirds of the deputies of the Sievierodonetsk City Council at once. Allegedly on the people’s initiative.
In fact, there was no people’s initiative — almost only members of the “Sergei Shakhov’s network” who periodically receive material benefits (in the form of sugar and more) on his behalf participated in the meeting to initiate the recall of deputies and in signing the signature sheets.
Both the meeting and the collection of signatures were conducted with numerous violations. For example, the territorial election commission refused to hand over the signature sheets to the police for a random check, and decided to recall the deputies on the basis of a “check” conducted by several people from Shakhov’s team. Fortunately, by purchasing quotas in the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission from the Opposition Bloc and European Solidarity parties, Shakhov’s team formed a majority of 10 out of 17 commission members.
It is clear that the deputies appealed the actions and decisions of the election commission to the court, the first such lawsuit was filed on February 18, 2020. Unfortunately, there is something wrong with the judicial system in Ukraine, and even a preparatory hearing has not yet been held on these lawsuits. And it seems that the court will cancel the illegal decisions of the election commission after the election.
One of those “recalled” was a deputy from the Batkivshchyna party, so the leadership of the city and regional party organizations replaced their members of the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission, including the chairman, to protect his rights. This included its chairman. Resolution No. 37 was adopted by the CEC on February 14, 2020, at the request of the party. The new members of the commission from Batkivshchyna had significant experience in working in elections in the interests of Yulia Tymoshenko. For instance, Dmytro Sharko defended her interests in the 2019 presidential election as a proxy for her “friendly” candidate Mykola Gaber in TEC-113, Dmytro Abramov was a proxy for another friendly candidate Serhiy Taruta in TEC-106, and Oleksiy Kalabkin was a member of the district commission in TEC-106.
The newly appointed members of the commission found serious violations in the work of the “pro-Shakhiv” part of the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission. Thus, it turned out that the commission’s documents and its seal were missing from the commission’s premises, and the police opened a criminal investigation into this fact, and searched the place of residence of the commission’s secretary, Inna Varava. However, the documents were still not found there. According to the SvS editorial board, they (the TEC documents) are in one of the premises that serves as the reception of MP Serhiy Shakhov.
The work of the members of the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission, who were introduced there on the initiative of the city and regional organizations of Batkivshchyna, jeopardized the plan to seize power in Sievierodonetsk by Serhiy Shakhov’s group. And they found an “approach” to the leadership of Yulia Tymoshenko’s party, bypassing local organizations: On April 7, the CEC replaced the members of the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission from Batkivshchyna with proven “fighters” from Shakhov’s team.
Thus, Olena Ruzhyna, who was a technical candidate of Serhiy Shakhov during the midterm parliamentary elections in constituency 114 in 2016, became a member of the TEC under this resolution. She was even issued a warning because she had not opened an election account. Why does a technical candidate need an account?
During the 2019 presidential elections in Ukraine, Olena Ruzhyna was a member of the DEC TEC-106 from Ihor Smeshko, and during the parliamentary elections of the same year, she was a member of the DEC TEC-106 from the Syla Lyudey party.
Pensioner Olha Solovyova also had previous “experience” of working for Serhiy Shakhov’s team.
The SvS editorial team does not know what Serhiy Shakhov paid for Batkivshchyna to replace its activists with representatives of his political force in the Sievierodonetsk City Election Commission. This could be a political settlement. Or banal money. But in any case, it is unlikely that Yulia Tymoshenko can now claim that there is no political corruption in her party.
Vote fraud
On election day, the whistle-blowing with numbers taken from the ceiling amazed observers: at first, voter turnout jumped to 65%. After the fuss was made, it dropped to 40%. In reality, no more than 20% of the residents took part in the voting. Sergei Shakhov began celebrating his victory immediately after the polls closed. By nightfall, when the commissions were supposed to be in full swing, the DEC members quietly went home. “We arrived in the evening (18.07.16 at 21:50) to report massive fraud. The security guards said that the commission was not working, although at that time the CEC website informed that only 15% of protocols had been processed, and the information continued to be updated every hour. I wrote a statement about the crime. It’s a shock — before, the commissions worked all night long,” wrote candidate Vsevolod Filimonenko.
The “phenomenon” was explained simply. 3 hours before the election, there was a massive replacement of the precinct commissions with representatives of technical candidates, who did not hesitate to explain: “We are from Shakhov” (presenting other names on papers). These mercenaries arrived on 7 buses from Donetsk region and expelled legitimate participants in the electoral process, taking their places in the commissions. Without a single document confirming their authority, without the oath of a commission member, which contains, among other things, such important words: “Aware of my high responsibility to the Ukrainian people, I swear to abide by the Constitution of Ukraine, to fulfill my duties honestly and in good faith, based on the principles of the rule of law, legality, objectivity and impartiality, to ensure the exercise and protection of the electoral rights of Ukrainian citizens.”
“In fact, some strange people came in from the street and said that they were now holding elections! This was supported by a call from the district administration and the DEC: “Yes, yes. We have decided to replace the members. We will send you the certificates and the protocol on the replacement of the commission later, and you go to herd cows and do whatever you usually do there,” they tell the legitimate members of the commissions, and they leave. And the impostors, who did not hide the fact that they had traveled a long way to make money, are holding elections and counting votes. There was an illegal decision of the DEC at 5 a.m., although according to the law, replacements are made until 12 a.m.,” says MP Oleksiy Ryabchyn, who witnessed the described processes and is preparing a lawsuit against the CEC.
Credit theft
ZIK journalists unearthed a fantastic fraud involving the theft of funds allocated by the European Investment Bank. Ukraine was given a loan of 4.6 million euros for a project to reconstruct the power grid. But the Ministry of Finance ordered the funds to be transferred to Artem Pshonka’s bank, BG Bank, which soon collapsed.
Before the final collapse, the bank managed to change its owner (the new owner was Svoboda’s sponsor, Pups) and withdraw its assets. The state-owned enterprise Ukrenergo (to which the loan was intended) managed to extract a million from the bank. The remaining 3.5 million euros were happily stolen, and the state will have to repay the loan along with interest.
Among the people involved in the deal, the journalists found people of Sergei Shakhov. And they suspected that it was he who helped the new government complete the crime started by the old government. Moreover, the office of BG Bank and Shakhov’s office are located in the same luxury building owned by Artem Pshonka. In the early fall, as part of an investigation into the theft of bank funds, Shakhov’s office was searched and a conversion center was inadvertently exposed.
Seals of fictitious companies located in Moscow, Crimea and the territories of the fake “republics” were seized. They also seized documents that allowed them to suspect Shakhov of smuggling currency to the occupied territories. The investigators came up with a version that Shakhov’s “cash” business was not only thriving, but was financing terrorism. But the office owner got away with it again, shifting the responsibility to his co-chairmen from Donetsk and Luhansk.
“The Da Vinci List”
On February 23, 2014, in the final confrontation with the government mired in corruption, a crowd of Euromaidan activists visited the building at 35 Honchar Street in Kyiv, where Artem Pshonka’s office was located in the apartments of the Da Vinci Center. They found traces of a real pogrom in his empty rooms, which occupied an entire floor. Someone was destroying documents on a paper cutter, breaking CDs, and erasing the contents of computer hard drives to cover their tracks. The owner was already on his way to Moscow. The amateur sleuths did manage to find something interesting: lists of members of an elite club headed by the office owner, Artem Pshonka. For 20,000 hryvnias a month, the company could regularly gather in a cozy restaurant setting, eat delicacies, have fun, and privately discuss business and news with each other. People called Artem Pshonka’s office a “shop selling prosecutor’s positions,” a “cashing-in center” or a “family watchdog headquarters.” The found list is subject to close scrutiny.
The first in the list, of course, is the owner himself, Artem Pshonka. In the address book of his friend, the current MP Serhiy Shakhov, he is listed as the boss. This is a more correct definition.
An attempt on his life
On November 10, 2016, Serhiy Shakhov’s security guards reported to the Kyiv police that the car in which the MP was traveling was being chased. The police officers who arrived at the scene detained three people who were driving a Mercedes. According to the police, these people were carrying two pistols and showed documents proving their affiliation with the Peacemaker special purpose regiment. As a result of the incident, law enforcement officers opened two criminal cases under Articles 263 (careless handling of weapons, ammunition or explosives) and 182 (violation of privacy). The politician himself called the incident an attempt on his life.
Income.
In 2015, he declared an apartment (almost one hundred and seven square meters) in Kadiivka, Luhansk region. Two more, in the capital (one hundred and sixty-seven square meters and one hundred and twenty-one), belong to his son Mykyta.
Shakhov also owns a 2013 Toyota Land Cruiser-200 worth UAH 600.6 thousand.
The MP owns 100% of shares in the Luhansk Industrial Group and 50% of shares in the management company Nash Dim. The larger apartment was purchased in 2012. The listed value of the property is just over a million hryvnias. The four-room apartment is located in the very center of Kyiv. Back then, the income from business activities amounted to almost a million — nine hundred and eighty-five thousand seven hundred and ten UAH.
The MP’s salary in 2017 amounted to almost two hundred and fifty thousand hryvnias. He declares three charitable organizations and one public association. He does not indicate the amount of money in cash and on his bank account. He is not officially an oligarch, but in 2015 he declared almost a million. On the other hand, he spends a lot of money on charity. Only in 2015 he indicated that he was the ultimate beneficial owner of Luhansk Industrial Group LLC.
Summary
Shakhov is a criminal of the few. Not every politician can boast of so much dirt. Unfortunately, Mr. Shakhov is not interested in the interests of citizens, only his own benefit guides his actions.