Team of Petro Poroshenko. First appointments

Team of Petro Poroshenko. First appointments

Petro Poroshenko is filling quotas — parliament approved his nominees for the posts of foreign minister, prosecutor general, and head of the National Bank.

Whereas the vote for Pavlo Klimkin as chief diplomat was supported by all factions, and Vitaliy Yarema was appointed prosecutor general without votes from the Regionals, Valeriya Hontareva became head of the National Bank after a small intrigue that Batkivshchyna tried to stage.

On the eve, Wednesday evening at a Batkivshchyna faction meeting deputies began to raise the issue en masse about the inadmissibility of voting for Hontareva. Deputies from Lviv first protested that it was unfair to their fellow countryman Stepan Kubiv, who had been heading the National Bank until now.

Others joined them, saying that Hontareva had previously served Poroshenko’s corporation and therefore could not be an independent regulator now, since Poroshenko has assets in the banking business. In the end, the faction broke with the decision not to vote for the head of the National Bank.

Although Yulia Tymoshenko, present at that meeting, asked deputies not to obstruct Poroshenko, everyone was convinced that she was behind this demarche.

On Thursday morning Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk arrived to the Batkivshchyna faction deputies and began persuading them to relieve Kubiv, because he himself had asked to resign. Ultimately, they agreed to reconsider the faction decision — instead of refusing to support Hontareva they switched to “free voting.”

Only when the actual vote for Hontareva began in the parliamentary hall did faction leader Serhiy Sobolev give the command to support her candidacy for the National Bank. As was later explained to deputies, Tymoshenko’s trusted associate Ivan Kyrylenko called her before the question was considered and convinced her to vote “for” — he learned that Hontareva would pass even without Batkivshchyna’s votes.

It turned out that the candidate for head of the National Bank had met in the morning with the Party of Regions and secured their support.

“We raised two questions with her,” a source in the Regions faction says. “She said that the exchange rate would be floating because that is an IMF requirement. And the second thing that interested us was to rid the National Bank of a corruption feeding trough, when they take bribes for licenses to open accounts abroad and to purchase assets there. Hontareva promised that she would address these issues.”

As a result, Hontareva was approved as head of the National Bank with the largest margin that day — 349 deputies voted for her.

Valeriya Hontareva

The new chief banker of Ukraine, Valeriya Hontareva, has 20 years of experience in finance and two degrees: in “opto-electronic instrument engineering” from Kyiv Polytechnic and in “international economics” from Kyiv National Economic University. She finished these universities 10 years apart — in 1987 and 1997 respectively.

After obtaining her first, still Soviet diploma, Hontareva worked for two years as a junior research fellow at the Ukrainian Center for Metrology and Standardization, and from 1989 to 1993 she worked as a design engineer at the Hyprostrommash institute.

Photo from Poroshenko’s Facebook

The period from July 1993 to March 1994 in Hontareva’s employment record is not described at all, and from 1 March 1994 her career in a new field begins.

Hontareva was hired as an economist at the Ukrainian Interbank Currency Exchange.

She worked there for two years, and in 1996 she was hired as head of the resource management department of the French bank Societe Generale in Ukraine.

She worked at the bank until 2001, when Hontareva moved to the Dutch bank ING Bank in Ukraine.

Two months later she became deputy chair of the bank, and in 2007 for half a year — first deputy.

During her years in ING Bank’s leadership she made a name for herself among Ukrainian bankers.

In December 2007 she headed the asset management company she founded, “Investment Capital of Ukraine,” which became one of the most successful on the market.

It was actually among the clients of investment banker Hontareva that Petro Poroshenko appeared.

In June 2009 her company acted as financial advisor in restructuring debts of 100 million hryvnias for the Food Company Podillia from Kryzhopil, which is part of Poroshenko’s UkrPromInvest group.

Two years later Hontareva’s company became a financial advisor to Poroshenko in the acquisition for 50 million dollars of the German firm Interstarch Group, which owns a modified starch production plant in Germany.

Investment bankers openly rejoice at Hontareva’s appointment to the NBU, but traditional bankers treat her cautiously, believing that the two specializations, though close, sometimes conflict.

Having become head of the National Bank with a strong result of 349 “for,” Hontareva gained independence, depriving deputy-lobbyists of the argument that their vote was decisive — and that her work is supposedly indebted to a certain oligarchic group that she now must repay as head of the National Bank.

And the first one who is unlikely to welcome such an independent regulator is Ihor Kolomoyskyi’s PrivatBank, which received record refinancing during Stepan Kubiv’s tenure.

Pavlo Klimkin

Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin was elected without the support of the Svoboda party, which did not vote on principle.

There is a false notion that Minister Andriy Deshchytsia was dismissed because of a line from a well-known football fan song about Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, the decision to replace Deshchytsia with Klimkin was made long before the incident at the embassy on Povitroflotskyi Avenue.

However, Russian propaganda is trying to present the choice of Klimkin as a concession by Poroshenko to the Kremlin. “The Ukrainian MFA was handed to the Russian,” writes Gazeta.Ru, beginning the article with a script from Russian ideologues: “Predictions about the imminent dismissal of acting Ukrainian foreign minister Andriy Deshchytsia, who cursed Vladimir Putin, have been confirmed.”

In reality, Pavlo Klimkin has in recent years been the face of Ukraine’s European integration: he headed Ukraine’s delegation in negotiations with the European Union on concluding the Association Agreement.

He saw that document as the entry ticket to the European Union. But the technocrat Klimkin’s work became hostage to the political situation during Yanukovych’s time.

As deputy minister, Klimkin had to frequently comment on the Tymoshenko case, repeating Bankova’s theses about the imperfection of Ukraine’s criminal legislation and hoping that Tymoshenko would be amnestied.

At the same time, the abandonment of European integration announced in November 2013 was a personal disappointment for Klimkin, who had devoted many months of his life to this issue. It is Klimkin’s signature that appears on the pages of the Association Agreement with the European Union, which he initialed as deputy foreign minister responsible for the course of negotiations.

Photo from Deutsche Welle

Pavlo Klimkin was born in 1967 in the city of Kursk.

He graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, faculty of aerophysics and space research.

He received a diploma in the specialty “applied mathematics and physics.”

His first entries in the employment record for the years 1990–1991 concern Department No.10 at the Paton Institute of Electric Welding, which dealt with “physico-chemical processes in the welding arc.”

But in 15 September 1993 Klimkin resigned of his own accord and went to work for the MFA as attache of the department for limitation of strategic arms and nuclear disarmament.

“It was an absolute coincidence. I was going to prepare a dissertation in the USA. A friend of my friend was then working at the MFA and, knowing my background, suggested I try myself in disarmament. The idea didn’t exactly amaze me, but then I caught the drive and I’m still here. And I do not regret it, despite the remarks of my friends working in the USA,” Klimkin recalls to Ukrainska Pravda.

Klimkin worked in the disarmament direction until 1997. His boss was the future minister Kostiantyn Hryshchenko, who many years later would make Klimkin his deputy.

In March 1997 Klimkin was assigned as third secretary of the Ukrainian embassy in Germany — at that time Hryshchenko was serving as deputy minister.

In 2000–2002 Klimkin, after returning, worked at the MFA in the department dealing with nuclear safety and scientific-technical cooperation.

In 2002 he became head of the Economic Cooperation Department of the European Union Directorate — later this became his specialization, which ultimately brought him to the top of the diplomatic career.

The future minister worked there two and a half years, and in September 2004 he went as counselor-minister to the Ukrainian embassy in the United Kingdom — all of this during Kostiantyn Hryshchenko’s time as minister.

In March 2008 Klimkin became director of the European Union department. He held that position when Petro Poroshenko became head of the ministry in 2009. The future president encouraged Klimkin several times: in August 2009 he was awarded an honorary diploma of the Cabinet of Ministers on the ministry’s recommendation, and in December 2009 Minister Poroshenko announced Klimkin a letter of appreciation from the MFA.

In March 2010 Klimkin became deputy foreign minister to Kostiantyn Hryshchenko, and in May 2011 the minister entrusted him with the position of head of the entire MFA apparatus.

In July 2012 Klimkin went as ambassador of Ukraine to Germany. After Nataliya Zarudna, who served as ambassador without being fluent in German, Klimkin with his good German was received there enthusiastically. He regularly met not only with his counterpart from the German MFA, but also with deputies from various factions, the leadership of relevant Bundestag committees, and the media.

As a representative of Ukraine, which at that time was led by Viktor Yanukovych, Klimkin kept a sober mind and healthy skepticism toward the then president.

The author of these lines has direct experience communicating with Klimkin, when in 2012 he was not afraid to meet at the diplomatic mission with a group of journalists hostile to Yanukovych who were in Berlin under a Goethe-Institut program.

Nataliya Klimkina, photo Matrix Orange

The ambassador spent several hours speaking candidly with the press off the record, which afterwards went to picket Klimkin’s immediate superior — Foreign Minister Kozhara, who arrived in Berlin the same day.

For another diplomat such a coincidence of circumstances could have caused a heart attack — since all information from the embassy was transmitted to Kyiv via security service channels.

Klimkin’s wife, Nataliya, is also a diplomat. They were simultaneously appointed to Berlin and The Hague.

At the moment Nataliya Klimkina holds the post of first secretary of the Ukrainian embassy in the Netherlands and is responsible for political affairs and culture.

Vitaliy Yarema

The appointment of the prosecutor general took place without the support of the Party of Regions, although several people from that faction had warned leadership in advance that they would vote for Vitaliy Yarema regardless of instructions — having good relations with the prosecutor general is more important than party discipline.

Appointing Vitaliy Yarema signals Petro Poroshenko’s desire to have a prosecutor general outside the system, not tied by mutual obligations to colleagues and personally loyal to the president.

Yarema’s entire life path is connected to the militia.

Vitaliy Yarema became an operative investigator in the criminal investigation department of the Dnipro District of Kyiv in 1990, even before graduating from the Kyiv Higher School of the Militia. After receiving a “correspondence” diploma, Yarema became deputy head of criminal investigation for all of Kyiv.

Yarema was in the leadership of the city’s criminal investigation from 1993 to 1999, serving during the heyday of the capital’s criminal groups.

In 1999 Yarema moved to the central apparatus of the Interior Ministry as first deputy of the criminal investigation directorate. During Yuriy Smirnov’s term as minister Yarema was transferred to head the police of the Lviv Railway, and then returned to Kyiv.

Photo from Yarema’s Facebook

Yarema met the Orange Revolution while serving as first deputy of the nationwide criminal investigation, and then, through Petro Poroshenko’s efforts, in February 2005 he was appointed to head the Kyiv police.

He worked there throughout Viktor Yushchenko’s five-year presidency.

After Viktor Yanukovych was elected he retired, and in 2012 he became a people’s deputy, winning Poroshenko’s support in a constituency in Kyiv’s Darnytskyi district.

Yarema took an active part in the events on the Maidan and entered Yatsenyuk’s government as the sole nominee under Poroshenko’s quota, albeit without significant powers.

Prosecutor General Makhnitsky left Yarema dozens of criminal cases opened against figures of the Yanukovych era, as well as personnel appointed throughout the Prosecutor General’s vertical on a quota political principle.

This included the involvement of an influential figure known by the nickname “Pups,” who was placed by the Svoboda party to exercise covert supervision over the Prosecutor General’s Office.

By the way, it was Yarema himself who did not hesitate to tell journalists that “Pups” was indeed registered in operative records as a member of a criminal group.

It is expected that Yarema will not hold the full powers he now receives for long. On the previous evening President Poroshenko, during a meeting with the UDAR faction, did not hide his intention to strip the Prosecutor General’s Office of investigative functions, which are to be transferred to the State Bureau of Investigations. Poroshenko plans to reserve the right to determine the candidate for the head of the newly created law-enforcement agency.

Ukrainska Pravda