"Dirty financier" Ihor Cherkaski: how the head of the State Financial Monitoring service earns on money laundering of millions

"Dirty financier" Ihor Cherkaski: how the head of the State Financial Monitoring service earns on money laundering of millions

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to power with promises to totally renew Ukrainian policy and the composition of the ruling team.

In many respects he is succeeding, but in some positions there remain — suspiciously long — stalwarts. Usually, these are quiet and unobtrusive corrupt officials in positions not of first importance. Yet these positions ensure such “bureaucratic worms” more than easy living. One of these parasites of the state apparatus is the head of the State Financial Monitoring, Ihor Cherkaski, who for many years has been "collecting coupons" in the leadership of financial intelligence. The cruel irony of Ukrainian politics works here as well: a person who should fight money laundering profits from it.

A scout with six zeros

The colorful biography of Ihor Cherkaski, of course, deserves a long and detailed material. Today it is almost impossible to find traces of his large-scale criminal activity in the media — all carefully scrubbed by a PR team. But given that Cherkaski continues to stay in power, moreover Zelenskyy has brought him into the National Security and Defense Council, and the Verkhovna Rada has significantly expanded the powers of the State Financial Monitoring — this unpleasant blunder is worth correcting.

In big politics Cherkaski has been in power for more than 10 years. In 2007 year he entered the Verkhovna Rada as a member from the BYuT block. By that time he was known as a money-laundering specialist. Perhaps this is connected to the subsequent vector of his career: Cherkaski receives a generous reward from his political patrons — in 2008 year he gets the position of head of the State Committee for Financial Monitoring, at that time the main Ukrainian financial intelligence body. It seems that Cherkaski found his mission in the authorities then, succinctly described by the saying "Let the goat into the city."

Ultimately, the cautious Cherkaski does not strive to push himself to the forefront and thus expose himself to strikes. To this end he befriends influential politicians, for example Alexander Turchynov, who at that time was deputy prime minister in Tymoshenko’s government.

As one of his parliamentary colleagues from that era testifies, "Cherkaski was an accomplice in criminal schemes to steal funds from the Ukrainian state budget. Turchynov’s garbage-collection firms operated under the roof of Ukraine’s Financial Monitoring... they acted no more than a month, after which they closed, and all documents were destroyed."

Then the Financial Monitoring under Cherkaski’s leadership "suddenly" discovered non-existent companies, sent information to the General Prosecutor’s Office — and everything collapsed, because there were no firms, no money, no documents, no suspects. "For all this Cherkaski received a share in tens of millions of dollars," said former MP Shepelev.

Now the fugitive parliamentarian, Shepelev, is more than anyone else acquainted with Ihor Cherkaski’s schemes. The former owner of the Rodovid Bank, according to the investigation, together with businessman Pavlo Borulka stole hundreds of millions hryvnias in refinancing from the National Bank. Later he managed to escape from custody. He twisted the scheme right in 2008-2009 year, when Cherkaski headed the financial intelligence. So he could not but know about the frauds, but kept silent. Why? The obvious answer: Cherkaski was clearly involved and had a sizable share in illicit money withdrawals.

According to participants in those processes in 2008-2009-s, the NBU allocated refinancing to banks manually. They gave money, of course, not to everyone, but to those who could and should. Among the “elite” were not only people close to Tymoshenko, but also to Yanukovych. The latter, after coming to power, simply used the schemes developed under Cherkaski — while he himself was formally pushed away from the trough: his own people were already too close.

Therefore, soon after Yanukovych’s inauguration Ihor Cherkaski was kicked out of his office. Financial Monitoring went into the shadows, heading a seemingly public organization the “Foundation for Legal Initiatives” — a NGO, whose activities Google cannot trace. And what activities, if Cherkaski simply lay low with stolen millions, quietly laundering them through his NGO, waiting for a chance to return closer to the state trough. Gossip says that in 2010-2013 years Cherkaski remained a close adviser to the State Financial Monitoring on shadow schemes.

Return to the streams

The chance to return to his office did not take long. Not a few days after Turchnynov became acting president following the escape of the previous “guarantor,” he pressed for Cherkaski’s return to the post of head of the State Financial Monitoring. It is easy to suppose that old allies immediately restored the former schemes of sharing streams and controlling necessary deals and turnovers.

With the powers of the agency, Cherkaski could easily take on hundreds of illegal schemes of Yanukovych and his Family, to return money stolen from the Ukrainian people to the budget. But why return them to the state treasury if you can neatly (with an experienced hand!) redirect them into the needed pockets? For example, his own, as well as those with whom one can and should share. After all, officially — according to the agency’s own statement — the sums amount to not less than 200 billions of hryvnias.

Under the new government Cherkaski began actively simulating a stormy activity. Already in July 2014 his agency proudly reported blocking 17 billions of hryvnias on the accounts of people around the ex-president. And it hands the cases to the General Prosecutor’s Office, which at that time was headed by Cherkaski’s longtime associate in Kyiv’s criminal world Vitaliy Yarema. So should we be surprised that cases slowed down magically and money went in an unknown direction, while the business assets of many of the fugitives from the family continued to operate and earn?

Truth be told, Cherkaski’s luck almost ran out. In December 2017 it became known that investigators from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine were conducting an inquiry into Cherkaski. He was suspected of misappropriating $1,5 billions of hryvnias stolen by ex-president Yanukovych and his circle, money seized by court decision under a special confiscation procedure at the end of April 2017. The money was allegedly moved to Oschadbank under a classified decision… from the Kramatorsk court of Donetsk region.

Already at that time activists noted that such a special confiscation gave criminals a chance to challenge the decision on technically legal grounds. Not free, of course.

The case was hushed for a time, however, Cypriot intermediaries of the former rulers still try to find traces of the vanished money. It seems Cherkaski himself invested much in whitening his reputation — there is virtually no mention of the case against him on the internet, and his Wikipedia page presents a shameless PR sample.

In transferring funds through Oschadbank, incidentally, the then-secretary of the National Security and Defense Council, Cherkaski’s longtime patron Turchnynov, also flashed. These two, like the head of Oschadbank Andriy Pyshny, are linked through the “People’s Front.”

This connection surfaced in another scandalous deal. Namely — the sale by the NF leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk and the wife of one of the prominent party officials Arsen Avakov of their shares of the Espreso TV channel to Konstantin Zhevalgo’s son. The deal screamed of money laundering. Olga Shcherbany, a lawyer from the Center for Anti-Corruption, directly stated that the deal to sell the TV channel "at an absurd price by 10 times higher than the purchase price could be interesting for the State Financial Monitoring Service. Of course, if the agency was not headed by Ihor Cherkaski, a protege of the People’s Front."

A modest official with multi-million assets

According to declarations, Cherkaski also has a taste for the finer things. Besides portraits of American presidents, the head of the State Financial Monitoring, who has been in his post for a long time, collects art and luxury cars. A bureaucrat, on state service for more than 15 years, officially owns a collection of dozens of artworks. Their value and names are not specified in the documents, but the very fact of including them in the declaration indicates their value is not less than 80 thousand hryvnias.

Moreover, in the past year Cherkaski earned a “modest” 560 thousand hryvnias. This does not prevent him and his family from being happy owners of luxury cars Infiniti QX 56, Mercedes-Benz G 63 AMG and Mercedes-Benz S 500. The family breadwinner is traditionally his wife — employed by an insurance company, she managed to earn 5 million hryvnias of profit from business in a year. And Cherkaski himself has on bank accounts 620 thousand hryvnias, half a million dollars and 164 thousand euros. Not to mention premium Swiss watches Audemars Piguet. In Ukraine this brand is represented by pieces priced from 3,7 thousand euros to 691,5 thousand euros.

It seems the “dirty financier” knows how to settle well under any regime. Therefore questions arise: can a person with wealth clearly not commensurate with salary, and with a long corrupt “track record,” stay in office under a new team? Or have his schemes become so liked by Zelensky’s entourage? One thing is obvious: Ihor Cherkaski clearly should be sitting not in the National Security and Defense Council, but in a pre-trial detention center.

polygraf.net