Yuryk Ivan Ivanovych
Official biography
Member of the Board of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”
Education
1998-2002 — Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics, diploma with honors;
2002-2004 — Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Consortium for Economic Research and Education, Master’s program in Economics;
2007-2008 — Harvard University (USA), John F. Kennedy School of Government, public finance management course, bachelor’s degree.
Career.
Professional competencies: specialist in investment and finance.
2007 — Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC (USA). Peterson Institute for International Economics, Washington, DC (USA) — Research Assistant on the project of reviewing economic reforms in Ukraine (book “How Ukraine became a market economy and democracy” was published).
2010-2014 — Head of the representative office in Ukraine of the international investment company The Blackstone Group: corporate M&A transactions, debt restructuring and capital raising, creation, structuring and implementation of corporate transactions.
2014-2016 — Head of the Service of the Minister (Natalie Jaresko) of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine: coordination and administration of key projects and work processes of the Ministry; support of the main initiatives of the Ministry in the government and parliament; coordination of the analytical function and work with the media; development of presentation and analytical materials to support the activities of the Minister.
Since 2017 — Deputy Director-Manager of Investments at the Investment Promotion Office of the Government of Ukraine, UkraineInvest: support and implementation of investment projects involving foreign direct investment in the real sector of the Ukrainian economy: alternative energy, infrastructure (railways, seaports), agriculture, modern production and new technologies.
June 2018 — June 2019 — Member of the Supervisory Board of Ukrzaliznytsia JSC.
Since June 2019, he has been a member of the Management Board of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
April 15 — August 26, 2020 — Acting Chairman of the Board of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
March 17, 2021 — appointed by the Cabinet of Ministers as Acting Chairman of the Board of JSC “Ukrzaliznytsia”.
Since August 12, 2021, he has been a member of the Board of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia.
Dirt on him
Acting Ukrzaliznytsia CEO Yurik is accused of lobbying for “Soros”
Leaders change, corruption remains: top managers of Ukrzaliznytsia are accused of violations in the procurement of oil and lubricants. “How much does a position cost?”, ‘Yuriy stole 80000000’ — these were the slogans with which activists came out on May 25 to the UZ office. As a reminder, Ivan Yuryk was appointed as the new interim head of the agency on April 15 this year. StopCor analysts investigated what scandals he has already been involved in and whose interests he represents.
Industry players call Yurik a «compromise» candidate, as Roman Veprytsky and Mykola Ivanina were considered the main contenders for the position. However, Minister Krykliy opposed the appointment of Ivanina, who was supported by the majority of the Supervisory Board members.
Interestingly, Ivan Yuryk joined Ukrzaliznytsia during the time of Yevhen Kravtsov and is considered a person from his orbit. Yuryk himself does not deny his friendly relations with Kravtsov: «It’s no secret that I worked on the board under Yevhen Kravtsov, and we were on the same team. Before UZ, I worked at Ukraineinvest, an investment attraction agency. I was involved in large investment projects. One of them concerned UZ — together with an American manufacturer, we successfully implemented an investment project to upgrade locomotives for the company. Based on the results of this work, I received an offer from the government to pass a competition and join the Supervisory Board of UZ. That’s how I met the then CEO, Yevhen Kravtsov,» he said in an interview with Liga. Business».
According to the telegram channel Shadow Anonimous, Yurik’s candidacy was actively lobbied by Daniel Bilak, former head of Ukraineinvest and former member of the Supervisory Board of Ukrzaliznytsia, representative of CMS Cameron McKenna in Ukraine, and Andy Hunder, interim president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Ukraine.
Mr. Yuryk’s flexibility and adaptability is evidenced by another fact from his biography: during two parliamentary convocations he was a pro bono assistant to MP Igor Grinev: in the Rada of the IV convocation, when Grinev was a member of Viktor Yushchenko’s Bloc “Our Ukraine”, and in the VI convocation, when the MP represented the “Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc”.
Ivan Yuryk is also considered one of the Ukrainian “Sorosites.” He once graduated from the same Kennedy School of Government, of which the notorious Natalie Jaresko is a graduate.
In 2009, a little-known American institute published a book called Democracy and Market Economy for Ukraine, which the domestic media dubbed the «Soros Handbook.» George Soros personally called it «a book that is an insightful, comprehensive, and easy-to-read account of Ukraine’s difficult transition to a market economy.»
Ivan Yuryk, a research assistant at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, worked on the editorial board of the publication. The name of the editorial board was Ivan Yuryk. This was his first job, right after graduating from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy and completing a grant at Harvard. Already in 2010, during the deployment of the EEGF II in Ukraine, Ivan Yuryk headed its office in Kyiv. It is believed that his appointment was agreed with the American investment fund Blackstone by Natalie Jaresko.
Corruption
A person named Yuryk Ivan Ivanovych is involved in court cases on the facts of malicious disobedience to a police officer’s order, driving while intoxicated, hooliganism, and violation of traffic rules. The cases were heard in the Mezhyhirya District Court of Zakarpattia Region.
Ivan Ivanovych from Kyiv is obviously much more educated and refined than his Transcarpathian namesake/relative, but despite this, he has already been involved in several corruption conflicts in his short time at the helm of Ukrzaliznytsia.
In particular, last week, a scandal broke out in the media over a tender for meals on Intercity trains. “Ukrzaliznytsia suspended the management of the Ukrainian Railway High-Speed Company branch, which selected the caterer for high-speed trains, from their duties because of the lack of transparency in the tender.
Although in this case the procurement was carried out by a branch of UZSK, and not by the Procurement Center of JSC Ukrzaliznytsia, the scheme is similar to the one used during the bidding for the purchase of oil and lubricants, when the supplier with the most favorable price offer was simply rejected due to bureaucratic nuances.
Another recent scandal concerns the reform of Ukrzaliznytsia’s medical facilities. Employees of railroad hospitals are sounding the alarm: the head of the Health Care Center branch, Natalia Belinska, approved a new legal status for hospitals as production units, amended staffing lists, and introduced the position of hospital CEO with the authority to dispose of the branch’s property. On May 7, new general directors were appointed without any competitive selection process, and employees were laid off.
The railroad workers themselves called such actions of the management “a cynical and well-thought-out plan of raider seizure.”
It also became known that NABU recently conducted searches of Ukrzaliznytsia officials and representatives of a number of related private companies.
Meanwhile, the new management ofUZhas not yet commented on numerous scandals and accusations of corruption schemes — the central office has simply… been closed, hiding from the protests of the outraged public.
Money may end up in the pockets of Ukrzaliznytsia
The Capital publication, citing StopCor, noted that “100 million hryvnias may end up in the pockets of Ukrzaliznytsia officials, including the acting chairman of the board of UZ Ivan Yurik and his subordinates at the Production Support Center branch: Zolotarev, Shyganov, Dovhalenko, and Oleynik, and every passenger will have to pay extra for tickets. This may happen because the price of fuel was included in the ticket price — if it rises, the cost will be higher.”
Declaration
In May 2020, Ivan Yurik published an electronic declaration of his income for the past year. The top official of Ukrzaliznytsia owns an apartment (71.2 sq. m.) in Kyiv, as well as a land plot (1363 sq. m.) and a dacha (41.71 sq. m.) in the village of Vuchkove, Zakarpattia region.
Yuriy drives a 2011 Ford Kuga Trend. The car cost him 285 thousand hryvnias.
In 2020, Ivan’s total income amounted to UAH 5.9 million. He keeps 1.19 million hryvnias in the bank. Ivan declared 50 thousand dollars in cash.
Polish solitaire of Ivan Yurik, acting chairman of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia
How can one of the country’s largest and most strategically important state-owned enterprises be driven to default? How do you drive it into debt and make it dependent on foreign creditors, thereby removing the aggressor country from the arena? How, under the guise of a Kremlin agent, can one accomplish the first two tasks and get away with it, while making good money?
The story of an effective manager with great pseudo-ambitions to become the chairman of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia will tell us about this. Meet the hero of our article, Ivan Ivanovich Yurik.
Our character’s career at Ukrzaliznytsia began as a member of the Supervisory Board, but soon realizing that he could not effectively solve the tasks set from this position, he left this position and took up the position of a member of the Board of Ukrzaliznytsia, responsible for the financial vertical of the state-owned enterprise. In this position, Ivan Ivanovych became the right-hand man of the then Chairman of the Board, Yevhen Pavlovych Kravtsov, who was an absolutely incompetent leader in both the financial sector and the railroad industry in general. It can be said that Yevgeny Pavlovich was a nominal manager, and his orders regarding the company’s finances were completely dictated by Ivan Ivanovich. Thus, another tranche of Eurobonds was issued for a monstrous $500 million, an unnecessary loan agreement with the EBRD for the purchase of freight cars for $150 million, and even attempts to go public and sign a memorandum with Deutsche Bahn, which, fortunately, failed miserably.
But the most interesting were the manipulations with Ukrzaliznytsia’s debts to Russian sanctioned banks: Prominvestbank and Sberbank. While a quick deal was reached with Sber, namely, in exchange for certain bonuses, Ukrzaliznytsia continued to repay its credit line to the sanctioned bank at an unheard-of 12% rate.
It was not so easy with Prominvest, and Yevhen Pavlovych, using Ivan Ivanovych’s expert advice, was unable to persuade the board of this bank to restructure Ukrzaliznytsia’s debt, forgiving it all penalties, fines, and interest and reducing the principal from $153 million to $120 million. Prominvest, on the other hand, simply took and resold Ukrzaliznytsia’s debt to the offshore company VR CAPITAL. But even here, the situation turned out to be lucky for Ivan Ivanovich, as this debt assignment agreement was concluded in violation of Ukrainian law, and there was a threat of a double write-off of the debt both in favor of the offshore company and Prominvest. This case is still being litigated, which we will discuss later, as Ivan Ivanovich’s cards were confused by the sudden and disgraceful departure of Yevgeny Kravtsov and the arrival of the even more incompetent Vadym Zhmak, after which Yuriy had to go underground for a short time.
But a few months later, Zhmak was even more disgracefully removed from the position of chairman of the board, and Yurik became the new acting chairman. After that, Ivan Ivanovich redoubled his efforts to undermine the financial position of Ukrzaliznytsia by blaming the payment of dividends for 2019 in the amount of UAH 109 million on Ukrzaliznytsia’s locomotive and car repair plants and pushing through the Ministry of Finance the issue of Eurobonds worth $300 million, of which more than $130 million was instantly written off against the debt to the sanctioned SBER (but the loan was due in 2023).
And now it’s time to return to lawsuits over the loan debt to Prominvest, which VR CAPITAL bought out.
On July 27, a court hearing was held to consider Ukrzaliznytsia’s claim to invalidate the debt assignment agreement, where representatives of Ukrzaliznytsia, probably on the advice of Ivan Ivanovych, challenged the judge, thereby provoking him to rule against Ukrzaliznytsia.
And now, Ivan Ivanovich is no longer concerned about how events will develop further, because he has accomplished his task: 1) he has driven Ukrzaliznytsia into unbearable debts to foreign creditors (over $1 billion), which in the short term will result in a significant loss of revenue. This will lead to a technical default of the state-owned enterprise in the short term; 2) under the guise of a Kremlin agent, he paid off the debts to SBER, receiving his bonus from it, and thus removed the Russian structure from the list of creditors of Ukrzaliznytsia; 3) he may “leave in disgrace” from Ukrzaliznytsia, thereby avoiding responsibility until it is too late; 4) left fertile ground for his followers who will continue to bankrupt Ukrzaliznytsia under the guise of making another “highly effective” management decision, because the stories with Prominvest and VR CAPITAL, Eurobonds, EBRD/EIB loans, and the debts of Donetsk Railways are far from over…
Summary
Yuriy ruined Ukrzaliznytsia with his greed. Train tickets are getting unreasonably expensive, and Ivan Ivanovich is getting richer. A good, working, and most importantly ILLEGAL enrichment scheme. Everything is in the best traditions.