Serhiy Korovchenko and Vitaliy Nestor: Swindlers from Batkivshchyna

Serhiy Korovchenko and Vitaliy Nestor: Swindlers from Batkivshchyna

After that, Russia annexed Crimea. Later Serhiy Volodymyrovych Korovchenko claimed that he immediately submitted his resignation, did not yield to pressure, refused to sign documents about the referendum, and destroyed all the seals of his office — allegedly coordinating his actions with Ukraine’s Minister of Justice Pavlo Petrenko.

But those were only his words, and then other words appeared: the so-called “Glazyev tapes,” which included the name of Serhiy Korovchenko. In them, in February 2014, advisor to the Russian president Serhiy Glazyev, in a conversation with State Duma deputy Kostyantyn Zatulin, discussed the candidacy of Serhiy Korovchenko as “Minister of Justice of Crimea” (separated from Ukraine), calling him a Medvedchuk man. Here is a transcript of that conversation:

Glazyev: Hello, Kostya, look, I just got in touch with Medvedchuk, they’ll put forward their proposals. They already have the acting minister of justice of Crimea, who, well, was with Mogilev — Korovchenko Serhiy Volodymyrovych. He’s their guy, they speak well of him. He said he would bring in a legal team. We need to keep this Korovchenko. He’s already the minister of justice of Crimea, so he should stay there.

Zatulin: Well, I don’t know how this Korovchenko behaved during the events, you understand?Glazyev: I understand, Kostya.Zatulin: I arranged a meeting, I’m on my way now. Around 11 I’ll be there. He’s very tense, because they need to approve the Cabinet composition at three o’clock, and other consultations (indistinct).

Glazyev: Well, better to postpone it until the next day, actually. But we’ll see. Ask about Korovchenko.Zatulin: Okay, I’ll ask.Glazyev: I have two candidates that I… Korovchenko is from Medvedchuk, and I’ve known Razumovsky well for many years. He’s completely ours.

Zatulin: By the way, (indistinct), Medvedchuk, he actually disappeared during the heat of events…Glazyev: Well, he may have disappeared, but he has a decent legal team. He’s fully on our positions. And the main thing is that he can get to VV at any moment, so that’s an important channel of influence.

Korovchenko himself denied the authenticity of these tapes and generally argued that he did not remain in Crimea but returned to Kyiv. Nevertheless, after these tapes were published many questions were raised about Korovchenko. And in 2018 the Security Service of Ukraine, following a request from People’s Deputy Vadym Denysenko (BPP), even opened a criminal case (see document), but then everything quieted down.

It’s unknown what motives kept Korovchenko from becoming minister of justice in annexed Crimea, but upon returning to Kyiv he engaged in raiding. The company he founded in 2014, Art System (39496200), headed by Vitaliy Nestor, became an instrument of a fraudulent raider scheme to seize LLC Lyra-2000, located in the capital at Dniprovskyi Descent,1.

This story began back in 2009 when Russian swindler businessman Ihor Bobnev, with the help of his partner, Ukrainian banker Andriy Onystrat, “stole” from the founder and co-owner of Lyra-2000, Serhiy Babushkin, seizing 75% of the shares and moving them offshore.

Babushkin sought justice in the courts for a long time and achieved it only in the spring of 2014. However, Bobnev continued to hold the building, and while the conflict escalated, in October of 2014 the firm Art-System appeared, to which Lyra-2000’s real estate was re-registered. In the course of unprecedented fraud, Nestor and Korovchenko’s firm invited KUN activists, supposedly to help evict Bobnev’s “titushky” from the building.

In reality, however, it was a new takeover of the building. Nestor promised the nationalists a nominal rent for an entire floor of the office center, and they dreamed of opening there either a “Heavenly Hundred” museum or a “Rehabilitation Center for ATO Participants.” In fact, naïve Bandera fans were simply duped, and after some time they were thrown out, while the building was used as collateral in fraudulent loan schemes. Moreover, a whole campaign of harassment was started by Kyiv’s Batkivshchyna against Babushkin, who continued to fight for his property.

Yes, after Batkivshchyna’s betrayal in 2010, after three years of working with the Regionals alongside Portnov, Korovchenko returned to Kyiv — and was reinstated in the party’s ranks. Whether with the help of his sister’s husband, who also returned to BYuT and began rising through the party’s ranks, or by bringing a large sum of money to the now-impoverished Yulia Volodymyrivna. Then he went to Pryluky, where in 2017 he became Batkivshchyna’s representative in electoral district No. 210. There he immediately teamed up successfully with another of Tymoshenko’s criminal sponsors, local “authority” Vitaliy Dubil.

Meanwhile, Korovchenko periodically travels to annexed Crimea, where he still has many affairs and friends. For example, Simferopol mayor Hennadiy Bukharev, according to SKELET-info, marched through the city with Korovchenko under Russian flags at the parade on 9 May 2015. By the way, Korovchenko was even placed on Myrotvorets!

Serhiy Korovchenko (circled in red) and Hennadiy Bukharev (in yellow) at the parade in Simferopol on 9 May 2015

But each time after returning from Crimea, Serhiy Korovchenko puts on a starched vyshyvanka and stages patriotic comedies. His brazenness even extended to running in the parliamentary elections in 2019 as a candidate in the 210 single-member district from… ATO veterans and volunteers! Dubil ran on Batkivshchyna’s list in those elections, so the district was entirely at Korovchenko’s disposal — yet he ran as a nonpartisan candidate.

Serhiy Korovchenko in “patriotic camouflage” is nominated for People’s Deputy

Buying local volunteers and servicemen was not difficult, because for this Serhiy Korovchenko even created a charitable foundation (EDRPOU 41469291) and a civic movement (41770359) named after himself. By the way, Nestor initially headed Korovchenko’s Foundation, and later his wife Yana Volodymyrivna took charge. The Foundation generously sowed buckwheat among Pryluky residents and even organized lotteries with prizes!

But voters did not know that they were actually funding Korovchenko’s campaign themselves, because they became victims of his scam with… donkey meat from the Promised Land. Korovchenko bought it in Israel very cheaply, via a scheme through Palestine, as decommissioned and inedible, registering it as raw material for fish feed production.

He brought 22 tons of donkey meat to Pryluky, soaked it in sodium tetraborate (the meat stank), and sent it to a meat processing plant, where they made expensive dry-cured sausages and basturma from it. Part of the goods was sold in Chernihiv region, and part, with Nestor’s help, in Kyiv.

Why does Nestor need the capital?

Vitaliy also ran for deputy in those elections — under Batkivshchyna’s banner in the 212 single-member district (Kyiv), but he received only 4%, placing seventh. It was an outright failure, but Nestor emerged unscathed — because Tymoshenko appointed him head of Batkivshchyna’s Kyiv branch just days before the elections, replacing her longtime ally Volodymyr Bondarenko. Prior to that, Nestor for one and a half years had led the party-created “Center for the Protection of Kyivans,” which dealt with the same things that his new project “New Strategy of Kyiv” now does — empty presentations and feeding voters nonsense. It was obvious that Vitaliy Nestor’s success came only from raiding others’ property and selling sausages made from dead donkey meat! Yet both of these projects showed the intention of their authors.

The first, created before the elections in 2019, was meant to help Kyiv residents with various everyday problems: utility payments, disputes with housing offices and banks, consumer issues, etc. Tymoshenko, by the way, tried to ride the nationwide issue of inflated utility tariffs then, but she never grasped its essence, so her statements and promises sounded simply foolish — and people like Nestor were completely ignorant on the issue, though they knew how to spend the party coffers. All he achieved was lowering the fee for maintenance of adjacent territory by a couple of hryvnias… The collapse of the first project and the rather modest election result were misread. Batkivshchyna decided to look for a new approach to Kyivans’ hearts: instead of low tariffs it began promising them the creation of a city of the future. It seems this project was conceived under Vitaliy Nestor’s leadership, since it is utterly senseless and detached from reality. As with tariffs, there is no understanding of the problem’s essence.

Old water mains cannot handle the load from new developments, likewise old Soviet bridges collapse from overload and age — but instead of building new ones Nestor proposes only “digitalization.” And on top of all that, to bring Kyiv Aviation Plant to world leadership and make the capital a new film industry center modeled on Budapest (which, by the way, is actually a pornography center). An idiot? No, a common swindler in the vein of Ostap Bender, who performed before the residents of Vasyukiv!

Batkivshchyna will not be able to put its person in the mayoral chair — that’s obvious. So Tymoshenko consoles herself with the hope of getting at least a strong faction in the Kyiv City Council, and Nestor lulls her with supposedly rising party ratings. But what is his personal interest in these elections? It turns out to be quite extensive!

First, Vitaliy Nestor and his family, according to SKELET-info, directly participate in the very construction business that destroys green zones and the capital’s infrastructure. Through the firm KMB Corp Solutions (38991698) he controls LLC Kyivgorstroy-1 (24595667), whose owners besides him included Moldovan Moisey Lilian, Luhansk native Oleh Altashin and Donetsk native Serhiy Shepelev, and earlier was controlled by developer Valentyn Isaak (former partner of developers Harik Korogodskyi and Oleksandr Melamud).

As the media report, in reality the company has been controlled since Yanukovych’s times by Portnov and Serhiy Levochkin, and Nestor was placed to oversee it. In recent years the firm faced, so to speak, some setbacks. Then in 2016 a court ordered it to return half a hectare of land on Lukianivska Street to the city, then in 2017 the firm entered the top-100 tax debtors for failing to pay 116 million hryvnias to the treasury. Clearly, if elected to Kyiv City Council, Nestor could set its affairs right! Moreover, he has very influential allies: Alla Shlapak and Vladyslava Molchanova. Molchanova is simple: this scandalous businesswoman is now Serhiy Korovchenko’s common-law wife. She now owns 54 companies, so next to her Korovchenko looks like a beggar kept by a woman. Previously Molchanova headed Batkivshchyna’s election headquarters; now she’s invited back. It’s easy to see that the Molchanova–Korovchenko–Nestor–Dubil alliance creates a powerful center of influence within Batkivshchyna, a real playground for intra-party intrigues and brokerage in trading list positions.

And Alla Shlapak was formerly an adviser to Mayor Leonid Chernovetskyi and remains close to his family, specifically to his son Stepan Leonidovych, and to another “family friend,” the notorious developer Denys Komarnytskyi. Shlapak and Nestor are long-time friends, so they can draw into Kyiv’s Batkivshchyna at least people from Chernovetskyi’s inner circle.

And others will inevitably follow them, with the same aims — to get a hold of Kyiv’s budget and land. At the same time, through Komarnytskyi they have a direct link to Mykola Tyshchenko, who is the main candidate for mayor from Servant of the People and the godfather of the Head of the President’s Office Andriy Yermak. One can only imagine what broad opportunities for corruption these intricate connections open up!

Author: Serhiy Varis, SKELET-info