Tabachnyk Dmytro Volodymyrovych — biography, dossier, compromise

Abachnik Dmytro Volodymyrovych

Biography.

Born on November 26, 1963, in Kyiv to Volodymyr Tabachnyk (born in 1940), an aircraft engineer by profession, and Alla Hlebova (born in 1938), a civil engineer (a direct descendant of the Kyiv Governor General, General-Anshef Ivan Hlebov).

Education.

In 1986, he graduated with honors from the Faculty of History of Kyiv State University (where he entered for the third time).

In 1991, he defended his PhD thesis on “Mass Repressions in Ukraine in the Second Half of the 1930s and Early 1940s.” In 1995, he became a doctor of sciences, defending his dissertation “The Phenomenon of Totalitarian Repressive Society in Ukraine in the 20s and Early 50s.” He holds the title of professor and is a full member of the Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine.

Author (and co-author) of more than 400 scientific publications.

Family

Since 1993, he has been married to Tetiana Nazarova (b. 1960), an actress of the National Theater of Russian Drama named after L. Ukrainka, People’s Artist of Ukraine and Russia, Academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. She is an actress of the National Theater of Russian Drama named after L. Ukrainka, People’s Artist of Ukraine and Russia, and an academician of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine.

Her brother Mykhailo Tabachnyk is the president of the Tiko Corporation.

Career.

• Tabachnyk’s first job was at the Central State Archive of Film and Photo Documents of Ukraine, where he worked as a copyist and restorer.
• From 1986 to 1990, he studied in graduate school and was a junior researcher at the Institute of History of the Academy of the Ukrainian SSR.
• Since 1991, he worked as a senior consultant, then chief consultant of the secretariat of the Verkhovna Rada Commission on Youth, Physical Culture and Sports.
• In 1992-1993, he was the head of the press service of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, the press secretary of the Cabinet of Ministers, and the head of the Main Department of Information and Public Relations. Then, until 1994, he was the first deputy chairman of the State Committee of Ukraine for Press, Publishing and Book Distribution.
• In 1994, he headed Leonid Kuchma’s presidential election campaign, which was based on the concept of strategic partnership with Russia and granting Russian the status of the state language. After Kuchma’s victory, he headed his presidential administration until the end of 1996 and was a member of the National Security and Defense Council.
• While working in the Presidential Administration, he was promoted to the rank of major (1994, bypassing the rank of captain), lieutenant colonel in March 1995, and colonel in February 1996, but in 2005, the decision to award him military ranks was canceled by a resolution of the Prosecutor General’s Office.
• In 1997, after resigning from his post, he worked as an advisor to the head of state. In the 1999 presidential election, he was again one of Kuchma’s campaign managers.
• In 1998, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, running on the ticket of the Labor Party and the Liberal Party Together, and was a member of the Budget Committee and then a member of the Legal Policy Committee. At the same time, he held the position of Chief Researcher of the Department of National Minorities at the Institute of National Relations and Political Science of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In the 2002 parliamentary elections, he was elected to the parliament from the “For United Ukraine!” bloc and remained a member of parliament until March 2003.
• From November 2002 to February 2005, he served as Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine in the first government of Viktor Yanukovych. During his tenure, he was involved in a scandal involving the theft of documents from the State Archives of Lviv. For example, in 2004, Tabachnyk, on behalf of Yanukovych, donated rare letters by Mykhailo Hrushevsky to the National Museum of History of Ukraine. According to the vice prime minister himself, they were purchased by Viktor Yanukovych with the per diem he saved during his business trips to France and the United States. Later it turned out that all these documents were stolen from the Lviv archive.
• In 2004, he was one of the leaders of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential election campaign. After the victory of the Orange Revolution and his resignation, he became the head of the NGO National Expert Institute of Ukraine.
• In March 2006, he won the elections to the Verkhovna Rada of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea from the “For Yanukovych!” bloc. However, in August 2006, he was reappointed to the post of Vice Prime Minister in the second government of Viktor Yanukovych.
• In the 2007 parliamentary elections, he was elected to the Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Regions. In March 2010, he resigned his parliamentary mandate and joined the government as head of the Ministry of Education and Science, which was transformed into the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports in December of that year.
• In February 2013, after the reorganization of the ministries, he became the head of the Ministry of Education and Science, and Ravil Safiullin became the head of the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
• After Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from the presidency, he was dismissed from his position by a resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine on February 23, 2014.

Compromising material

Business empire

According to the Business weekly, the interests of the Tabachnyk brothers, Dmytro and Mykhailo, extend to:

• — gasoline trading
• — construction
• — water parks, sports complexes;
• — banking, insurance business;
• — advertising business;
• — agricultural business;
• — tourism.

In particular, according to Business, Dmytro and Mykhailo Tabachnyks are involved in the creation of the following structures:

• — AutoTradeCompany LLC;
• — Vilta LLC;
• — CJSC Strategic Financial Group TIKO;
• — Tiko-Service LLC;
• — Ukrainian Land Resources LLC;
• — Construction Technologies CJSC;
• — OJSC Ukrainian Stone Processing Company;
• — Graal LLC;
• — New Language LLC;
• — Intersport LLC;
• — Aquarium health complex;
• — JSCB “Synthesis”;
• — Stif LLC;
• — Golden Age-96 LLC;
• — Ukrainian Advertising LLC;
• — CJSC “Ukragropererobka”;
• — Agrocomplex LLC;
• — Tiko Ltd;
• — Lin LLC.

Among the Tabachnikovs’ business partners are Vladyslav Mylenkyi and Oleksandr Tretyakov, who once ran the ATEK-95 company.

Dmitry Vladimirovich confirms that his brother had joint companies with Tretyakov in the past: “Today, there is no business cooperation, and it is not his (his brother’s — S.R.) fault… I think that no one respects people who try to cooperate with you only when you are the highest official in the state. And when that time passes, they try to stop recognizing you” (Ukrainska Pravda, October 25, 2005).

The Tabachnyks sold the Tiko gas station chain to LUKOIL. According to estimates by Business, the amount of this transaction may be about $30 million. The brothers also sold supermarkets to the Silpo chain. The deal is said to be worth about $2 million.

Mykhailo Tabachnyk is currently the head of Graal LLC, which plans to demolish a non-residential building at 5-B Khreshchatyk Street in Kyiv. The weekly «Komentarii» estimated Mikhail Tabachnyk’s net worth at $82 million. In 2011, he received an income of UAH 768,271, and his family members received UAH 494,300.

Dmytro Volodymyrovych owns a land plot (6960 sq. m.), a residential house (559 sq. m.), an apartment (298 sq. m.), a garage (58 sq. m.), and a Toyota Camry. His family members own an apartment (38 sq.m.).

Dmytro Tabachnyk has UAH 5 million 903 thousand 390 in his bank accounts, and his family members have UAH 2 million 320 thousand 983.

According to Ukrayinska Pravda, Tabachnyk has a manor house in the Koncha Zaspa area, which has three houses. According to the online media outlet, Dmytro Volodymyrovych himself, his brother and the ex-Deputy Prime Minister’s father live in them. Tabachnyk refused to comment on this information.

Forgery of documents

In December 2005, the press service of the Trudova Ukraina party reported that the General Prosecutor’s Office had opened a criminal case over the forgery of party documents and their use on behalf of the party. Dmytro Tabachnyk was among the defendants in the case. In particular, the case concerned the party congress, which in September 2005 expelled its leader, Valeriy Konovaliuk, from the party. The new leadership of Trudova Ukraina, headed by Volodymyr Sivkovych, submitted documents to the Ministry of Justice, which, in fact, was the reason for the case.

However, the case was not pursued further. Valeriy Konovaliuk retained his position as head of Trudova Ukraina.

An “archival” case

In July 2004, on behalf of the then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the then Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Dmytro Tabachnyk, handed over 39 letters by Mykhajlo Hrushevsky to the State Museum of History of Ukraine. As it turned out later, the letters were stolen from the Lviv archive. Mr. Tabachnyk claims that these documents were bought from a collector. According to him, he never initiated the transfer of these letters. “One day in July, the Prime Minister’s Protocol Service asked me and the then Minister of Culture Yuriy Bohutsky to meet the Prime Minister at 10:50 a.m. near the National Museum of the History of Ukraine on Volodymyrska Street, which we did. At about twelve o’clock, Yanukovych called and said that the president was calling him and that he would not be able to attend the event. Yanukovych asked me to donate the documents in question to the museum. I handed them to the museum’s director, Serhiy Tchaikovsky, in front of the cameras,“ he recalled (”Segodnya”, June 16, 2005).

Yanukovych himself confirmed that it was Tabachnyk who allegedly initiated the transfer of the letters to the history museum.

A criminal case over the theft of historical documents was opened on December 24, 2004, after two collectors arrived in Lviv with documents stolen from the Lviv State Historical Archives, where they had gone to assess their value. The police conducted over 100 searches and interrogations in this case. In particular, former Cabinet of Ministers Minister Anatoliy Tolstoukhov and the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Culture and Spirituality, Les Taniuk, were interrogated.

Leonid Kuchma

With Leonid Kuchma, Dmytro Tabachnyk’s career took off. “I met Leonid Danilovich when I was a member of the Verkhovna Rada staff, and he was the Prime Minister. Our meeting took place only because he was given a selection of my publications. The Prime Minister liked something in them, and he offered me to head the press service,” says Dmitry Vladimirovich.

As early as 1994, Dmytro Tabachnyk headed the headquarters of presidential candidate Leonid Kuchma. Dmytro says that he was motivated to support Kuchma by his desire to change something in the country. “I was a maximalist, I wanted change. Besides, I worked with him in the Cabinet of Ministers and was impressed by his hard work and humanity. I was very impressed by his then traits: openness, ability to discuss the problem, to analyze it comprehensively, trust and respect for people who were younger than him. Progressive views: he was always not just talking, but focused on reforming the economy. He understood that without reviving private land ownership, without creating a class of effective owners, it was impossible to renew Ukraine or create it as a de facto state. That is, to turn it from a de jure state into a de facto state.

Chevalier Dmytro Tabachnyk

In February 2003, Oleksandr Moroz publicly accused a group of high-ranking Ukrainian politicians of involvement in the international Masonic organization “Order of St. Stanislav.” Three years later, Levko Lukyanenko accused Mykola Azarov from the parliamentary rostrum that Mykola Azarov, who is a Knight of the Order, had sworn to carry out orders from the leadership coming from abroad, which contradicts the oath of a people’s deputy. In response to Levko’s attack, Pavlo Vyalov, the Prior of the Order, wrote an open letter to him in which he refuted all the accusations, stating that, first, the organization’s headquarters is located in Kyiv, and second, the Cavaliers do not take any oaths or swear upon joining. At the same time, according to Vyalov, not only Mykola Azarov, but also 18 of his colleagues from different factions in the current Verkhovna Rada are Knights of the Order of St. Stanislav. Dmytro Tabachnyk is also a Knight of the Order.

An attempt at hidden privatization

In February 2005, the Business weekly accused Dmytro Tabachnyk of attempting to covertly privatize a number of printing companies.

Abuse of power

During the 2004 presidential election campaign, Anatoliy Tolstoukhov and Dmytro Tabachnyk tried to interfere with the activities of the Uriadovyi Kurier newspaper. On November 25, 2004, despite a ban from the Supreme Court of Ukraine, they signed off on the newspaper’s layout, which contained information from the CEC on the recognition of Viktor Yanukovych as the winner of the second round of the presidential election.

The Main Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor’s Office conducted a pre-trial investigation under Part 1 of Article 365 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — abuse of power.

Tabachnyk himself called this case “purely political”. “According to lawyers, there is neither a crime nor an event,“ he said (”Ukrainska Pravda”, October 25, 2005).

The demoted colonel

On December 10, 1996, Kuchma signed two decrees: dismissing Tabachnyk from the post of head of the Presidential Administration and stripping him of his rank of colonel. Almost 5 years later, on August 8, 1994, he was promoted to the rank of major by order of Defense Minister V. Shmarov. A. Hrytsenko noted that this happened immediately after Leonid Kuchma was elected President of Ukraine. D. Tabachnyk was promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel on March 11, 1995 (by order of V. Shmarov), and to colonel on February 16, 1996, also by order of V. Shmarov.

Lobbying for the interests of Russian politicians

In 1996, representatives of the Ukrainian Perspective Foundation — Mykola Tomenko, Serhiy Kudryashov, Serhiy Odarich and Yuriy Orobets — accused Dmytro Tabachnyk of interfering with Ukrainian justice. In particular, at the request of the then Secretary of the Russian Security Council and on behalf of Leonid Kuchma, Dmytro Volodymyrovych asked the Supreme Court of Ukraine to carefully check the legality and validity of the circumstances of the case of Russian citizen Tanasevsky. This former serviceman of the 14th Army was sentenced to death for his crimes in Crimea.

Museum affairs (He (Yanukovych) did not steal anything…)

In July 2004, on behalf of the then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, the then Deputy Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs Dmytro Tabachnyk handed over 39 letters by Mykhajlo Hrushevsky to the State Museum of History of Ukraine. As it turned out later, the letters were stolen from the Lviv archive. Mr. Tabachnyk claims that these documents were bought from a collector. According to him, he never initiated the transfer of these letters. “One day in July, the Prime Minister’s Protocol Service asked me and the then Minister of Culture Yuriy Bohutsky to meet the Prime Minister at 10:50 a.m. near the National Museum of the History of Ukraine on Volodymyrska Street, which we did. At about twelve o’clock, Yanukovych called and said that the president was calling him and that he would not be able to attend the event. Yanukovych asked me to donate the documents in question to the museum. I handed them to the museum’s director, Serhiy Tchaikovsky, in front of the cameras,” he recalls.

Yanukovych’s press secretary at the time, Hanna Herman, said that “he (Yanukovych) did not steal anything. “It’s Tabachnyk who’s doing all the dirty deeds. He (Tabachnyk) came up with the idea (to steal the documents from the Lviv archive), and he implemented it.” Yanukovych himself confirmed that it was Tabachnyk who allegedly initiated the transfer of the letters to the history museum.

The criminal case over the theft of historical documents was opened on December 24, 2004, after two collectors arrived in Lviv with documents stolen from the Lviv State Historical Archives, where they had gone to assess their value. The police conducted over 100 searches and interrogations in this case. In particular, former Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers Anatoliy Tolstoukhov and the head of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Culture and Spirituality Les Taniuk were interrogated.

Money laundering

In 2007, the Ukraina Moloda newspaper, citing its source in the Security Service of Ukraine, wrote that the Synthesis bank, which was involved in the activities of the Vice Prime Minister for Humanitarian Affairs, Dmytro Tabachnyk, was engaged in “money laundering”. This money was used to bring supporters of the Party of Regions to Kyiv to protest against President Viktor Yushchenko’s dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada.

Branded as an embezzler and a cheap clown

A budget thief like Tabachnyk

This unequivocal accusation was made against Dmytro Tabachnyk by Party of Regions member Borys Kolesnikov in the context of the purge of the Party of Regions: “Let’s raise the issue of expelling this cheap clown, Dmytro Tabachnyk, for what?” — For his speech at the congress in Sievierodonetsk. Remember: businessmen from the southeast are eager to make deals with Yushchenko because money loves silence. Who is this talking? An embezzler who has never created a single business in his life? How can he even judge? What does he know how to do, except steal books and paintings from Ukraine’s already poor museums?“ — Why don’t you initiate his expulsion?” — We will definitely insist on tough measures against Tabachnik! This is the opinion of me, Rinat Akhmetov and all businessmen from the southeast who are members of the Party of Regions. Honest business does not need agreements, but transparent government and fair laws! Agreements are important for budget thieves like Tabachnyk. They need silence to plunder state property with impunity. I find it funny to read about Tabachnyk’s “radicalization”. Only independent people can be radicals, not embezzlers! Dmytro Tabachnyk and radicalism are incompatible. Dmytro Tabachnyk and corruption, theft from museums — yes, they are compatible.”

“Great Ukrainians”

In 2008, Dmytro Tabachnyk represented Yaroslav the Wise in the high-profile TV project “Great Ukrainians” on the Inter TV channel. After the results were summed up, he was accused by Vakhtang Kipiani, the project’s editor-in-chief, of falsifying the votes of viewers.

The Holodomor

In 2004, at the international forum “Preventing Genocide: Threats and Responsibilities” (Stockholm), he stated that “we will seek recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people by the international community.” In 2010, he stated that the interpretation of the Holodomor as genocide in school textbooks is nonsense and will be removed from textbooks. [19] He protested against the allocation of 1 billion hryvnias from the budget for the construction of a memorial to the Holodomor victims (which allegedly violates the security zone of the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra).

Russian-Georgian conflict

In August 2008, he condemned Georgia’s military actions in South Ossetia, qualifying them as aggression, and advocated Ukraine’s recognition of the state independence of the Republic of Abkhazia and the Republic of South Ossetia. In September 2008, he was the first Ukrainian and Russian politician to state (in the article “At the Fatal Edge. Ukraine after Tskhinval”) that the Buk-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems in South Ossetia were operated by Ukrainian specialists secretly sent on the instructions of Viktor Yushchenko.

Heroes of Ukraine

One of Tabachnyk’s most high-profile anti-Ukrainian statements when he was Vice Prime Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of the Yanukovych government was a public accusation against Roman Shukhevych that he had allegedly received two Iron Crosses from Hitler.

About Zmeinyi Island

After the Ukrainian leadership agreed to the transfer of the oil and gas shelf around Zmiinyi Island to Romania, he called it “Ukrainian Tsushima” and sent a deputy appeal to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine demanding a legal assessment of the transfer of the territory and the initiation of a criminal case under the article on treason.

Maloros Tabachnyk on Galicians as “lackeys”

According to Tabachnyk, “Galicians are lackeys who have barely learned to wash their hands and who have virtually nothing to do with the people of Great Ukraine, neither mentally, nor confessionally, nor linguistically, nor politically.” On the air of Channel 5, Tabachnyk refused to apologize for this statement.

Ukrainophobia

He considered the Ukrainian state during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko to be unviable: “The modern Ukrainian state can be compared to Poland in 1939 in terms of […] its prospects for survival.” Political opponents (the party “For Ukraine!”), as well as a number of Ukrainian cultural figures, on the basis of these and a number of other statements, accuse Tabachnyk of Ukrainophobia and consider him an enemy of Ukrainian culture. Tabachnyk’s activities are often assessed as anti-Ukrainian with manifestations of xenophobia.

(Pseudo) scientific activity

Tabachnyk is credited with a PhD thesis “Mass Repressions in Ukraine in the Second Half of the 30s and Early 40s” (1991) and a doctoral thesis “The Phenomenon of Totalitarian Repressive Society in Ukraine in the 20s and Late 50s” (1995). At the same time, the texts of Tabachnyk’s PhD and doctoral dissertations are not freely available, which is a gross violation of the requirements of the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine and raises doubts about the authenticity of the degrees.

Professor (the title was awarded by the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration under the President of Ukraine (!)). Academician of the National Academy of Legal Sciences of Ukraine (1999). Founder and director of the public organization “National Expert Institute of Ukraine”. Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” (2006). Author (co-author) of more than 400 scientific papers (!)

A number of Ukrainian public and cultural figures have sent an open letter to the Higher Attestation Commission of Ukraine demanding that Dmytro Tabachnyk be stripped of his doctorate in history for his unscientific and xenophobic publications in Black Hundred publications.

Tabachnyk out!

A protest campaign by a number of Ukrainian civic, student and youth organizations, local governments, political parties, and education and science figures to dismiss the Minister of Education and Science of Ukraine.

Tabachnyk vs. Herman

Minister Tabachnyk received very unflattering feedback about his “educational activities” from the deputy head of the Presidential Administration, Anna Herman. Noting that she and the minister are having a “discussion” and have “different approaches” to education reform, Hanna Herman cited the same claims voiced by the opposition and rebellious university students against the “Tabachnyk concept.” Increasing tuition fees every year. Restrictions on student self-government. Lowering the status and ratings of leading Ukrainian universities… “For every Tabachnyk, there is a president in Ukraine,” she said.

Tabachnyk is a “stupid Jew” and a “scumbag”

On January 22, 2010, during the celebrations of the Day of Unity, Roman Krutsyk, director of the Museum of the Soviet Occupation, called Dmytro Tabachnyk a “stupid Jew” from the stage on St. Sophia Square. This caused the biggest wave of applause. “I have met many Jews in my life, and they were all intelligent people,” Krutsyk said. — “But I have never seen someone like Tabachnyk. This is a real stupid Jew.”

Ukrainian politician, Soviet dissident, and Hero of Ukraine Stepan Khmara made even more radical statements about Dmytro Tabachnyk, reacting to the failure of the vote to dismiss Tabachnyk as Minister of Education: “Tabachnyk is a scumbag, a scumbag who is not worthy of the title of citizen of Ukraine! He has no right to hold any public office, let alone a minister. What are we talking about? I am even ashamed to discuss this topic. Does the Party of Regions not realize that it is doing the current President of Ukraine a disservice by not voting for Tabachnyk’s resignation?”

Is the odious minister gay?

Information about Tabachnyk’s non-traditional sexual orientation is circulating on the Internet, but, as is often the case in such cases, there is no official confirmation of these theses, and the minister himself does not quite convincingly deny such statements.

“Corrupt talent”

Tabachnyk turned the education system into a cash cow, says current Minister Serhiy Kvit.

«The Ministry of Education created a situation where you had to pay for everything — for protection, for appointments, but it was all done in cash, so it’s very difficult to prove it,» the minister says of his predecessor.

In addition to banal bribes, the Ministry of Education also ran sophisticated corruption schemes. The press wrote about how Tabachnyk earned millions on school textbooks while he was still in office. The brazen privatization of real estate was no secret either. Several buildings in the center of Kyiv once belonged to the Ministry of Education. Tabachnyk evicted the educators, leased the premises to his brother’s private company, which renovated them, and soon privatized the “golden” square meters.

If not for the Maidan, Dmytro would have stolen his own ministerial chair. Working under the complaining silence of uneducated officials who giggle stupidly behind his back

Dima and Mykhailo’s high-profile cases

Lviv Central Department Store and Stolychnyi Restaurant. This story began in 1995. At that time, Lviv Central Department Store (the largest shopping area in the capital of Galicia) was re-registered as a CJSC and owned by the labor collective. Five years later, an additional share issue was made with investments from Polish entrepreneurs Jerzy Konik and Jarosław Nowacki. Thus, the Poles became shareholders of TSUM. But six months later, “outsiders” came to the company and carried out a raider attack. The management secretly represented the interests of Dmytro Tabachnyk. Dmytro managed to get hold of Lviv Central Department Store thanks to his good connections at the State Commission on Securities and Stock Market. In particular, he was friends with Andriy Portnov, the first deputy executive secretary of the SEC, and Ivan Hrantzev, the former head of the issue registration department. Everything happened according to a well-established scheme: the case went to court, the property and rights of the department store were resold to other persons, and the Poles, accordingly, were left with a nose.

A situation (fraud) similar to TSUM was repeated in Kyiv with Stolychnyi OJSC (better known as the Stolychnyi restaurant, located in the very center of Kyiv, where Khreshchatyk turns into European Square). At the end of 2003, Stolichny was transformed from an open joint-stock company into an LLC. But a friend, Ivan Hrantzev, notices an “inaccuracy” in the paperwork, and the commission cancels the re-registration. Then it’s a matter of technique: a lawsuit is filed in court, followed by a traditional shareholders’ meeting without the main shareholders, and a new manager is appointed. In this case, Yevhen Garkusha became the chairman of the board of Stolychny. At the same time, Stolichnyi itself knew nothing about what was happening. Garkusha resold the property several times, including to the Graale company.

The arbitrariness of Graale. The beginning of this story can be considered 2003, when the Kyiv City State Administration held a tender for the reconstruction of European Square. The investment competition was won by a little-known company called Graal. This victory made the company the de facto owner of the territory inside the block behind the Dnipro Hotel. “Graal proposed a project for a 160-meter skyscraper with an underground parking lot for 1,100 cars. Experts immediately declassified the company and its affiliation with Mykhailo Tabachnyk’s business. The most ridiculous thing in this situation was the competition, which was purely nominal. This was confirmed by the fact that the competition council was headed by Iryna Okunieva, the director of Graal.

The construction of the skyscraper was hindered by a house at 4B Hrushevskoho St. Representatives of the company tried to create a kind of construction vandalism and bring the house to demolition. The plan failed, and public activists intervened. They turned the building into a community and cultural center and even obtained documents confirming the building’s cultural heritage. But a few days later, an unknown force intervened and the Main Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage of the Kyiv City State Administration canceled its order.

However, demolishing a building in the center of the capital is not so easy. Although the building had been considered uninhabited since 1989, the apartments had owners. So Graale decided to buy all the apartments in the building in 2006. But the case still stalled. Today it is back on the public’s lips. A former deputy of the Kyiv City Council, oligarch Alexander Loifenfeld, joined the demolition, which is being covered up by reconstruction.

Bread business. In April 2002, the Crimean Property Fund issued an order to transfer a stake (51%) in Krymkhlib OJSC for free to a number of Crimean agricultural enterprises with which Krymkhlib had no relations. And then, in a strange way, the controlling stake ended up at the disposal of the Kyiv-based Hermes-Agro, which operates under the wing of the leasing company Khlib Ukrainy. In its turn, the founders of Graal included Auto Trade Company LLC and Insurance Financial Group Hlebov & Partners CJSC, owned by Mykhailo Tabachnyk.

In 2007, bread prices in the south and east of Ukraine began to rise sharply. The monopoly on bread companies in these regions belonged to prominent “regionals” of the Leasing Company Khlib Ukrainy CJSC.

A “fake” order holder. In 2003, a scandal broke out. Oleksandr Moroz, the leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine, publicly stated that a group of high-ranking Ukrainian politicians belonged to the international Masonic organization “The Order of St. Stanislav.” But he did not specify the names, which helped the case to die down. However, 3 years later, Levko Lukyanenko accused Mykola Azarov of wearing the Order. This contradicted the oath of the MP. Pavel Vyalov, the Prior of the Order, answered for Azarov, who brought many politicians under the monastery. He revealed the names of those who were members of the Ukrainian Freemasons. Among them was Dmytro Tabachnyk. The topic was discussed for a long time, and in the end it turned out that Pavlo Vyalov, the “Grand Prior of the Order,” had previously been prosecuted by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies for fraud, and that he had invented the “order,” its attributes, titles, and awards himself. He sold all these props to interested parties for a lot of money, the amount was not disclosed, but the figures were several hundred dollars.

He left and is unlikely to return

Dmytro Tabachnyk was last seen in Ukraine on February 28. A TSN camera spotted him in the Vip zone of Boryspil airport. The former official refused to talk to us. A few hours later, Tabachnyk’s arrival was announced on his Facebook page by Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs. He wrote that law enforcement officers in Kyiv were already preparing a “warm welcome” for the ex-minister.

However, Dmytro Tabachnyk left the airport without any obstacles, and a day later he left Ukraine just as easily. Vasyl Vovk, the head of the SBU’s investigation department, explained at the time: “Tabachnyk was flying to the Prosecutor General’s Office for questioning, and so far he is being interrogated in several cases as a witness. They are formulating a suspicion.

“I think they are trying to figure out when to present Tabachnyk with something so that it is not just some formality, some creativity, but that it is serious work. He came once, he will come again,” Vovk assured.

Since then, Tabachnyk has not been seen in Ukraine. He became a suspect only three months later. On May 28, Prosecutor General Shokin announced the article: embezzlement of budget funds, misappropriation of property, and abuse of office.

Sanctions

On March 5, 2014, the Council of the European Union announced the blocking of funds of the ousted President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych and 17 former officials and people close to Yanukovych suspected of misusing budget funds. Dmytro Tabachnyk was also included in this list.

On May 25, 2015, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine charged Tabachnyk with embezzlement in the case of misappropriation of UAH 2.76 million by the heads of two departments reporting to Tabachnyk: The Institute of Innovative Technologies and Content of Education and the state publishing house Osvita.

On June 6, 2015, the EU published a decision to extend sanctions against Dmytro Tabachnyk for another nine months.

In July 2015, the Security Service of Ukraine put Tabachnyk on the wanted list and charged him with embezzlement of state property on a particularly large scale (Part 5 of Article 191 of the Criminal Code).

On June 30, 2016, the Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv arrested both the cash and precious metals held in Dmytro Tabachnyk’s bank accounts and the bank accounts opened at Oschadbank.

Financial situation

Dmytro Tabachnyk is not a poor man, judging by the number of commercial enterprises he has been involved in setting up. In 2012, he declared a total income of UAH 2.7 million, and his bank accounts amounted to UAH 9.5 million. According to news.mail.ru, Tabachnyk is a dollar millionaire.

У In 2011, he earned an income of UAH 768,271, and his family members earned UAH 494,300. Dmytro Volodymyrovych owns a land plot (6960 sq. m.), a residential house (559 sq. m.), an apartment (298 sq. m.), a garage (58 sq. m.), and a Toyota Camry. His family members own an apartment (38 sq.m.).

Dmytro Tabachnyk has UAH 5 million 903 thousand 390 in his bank accounts, and his family members have UAH 2 million 320 thousand 983.

According to Ukrayinska Pravda, Tabachnyk has a manor house in the Koncha Zaspa area, which has three houses. According to the online media outlet, Dmytro Volodymyrovych himself, his brother and the ex-Deputy Prime Minister’s father live in them. Tabachnyk refused to comment on this information.

Conclusion

Tabachnyk did everything under Yanukovych’s rule. He looted the treasury as much as he could. And as Hanna Herman put it, Tabachnyk was involved in the theft of museum exhibits, including Hrushevsky’s letters. He also “mutilated” the education system to the most corrupt state, and now diplomas, defenses, and exams are expensive. We can thank Dmytro Tabachnyk for this!