Wealthy Ukraine Oligarchs Skirt Covid-19 Rules at Home and Abroad
Ukraine oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk’s private jet photographer in Uzhorod.
There are two sets of rules in Ukraine. One for oligarchs and one for everybody else.
Thanks to the excellent reporting of the Ukrainian investigative TV programme, Schemes (Схеми: корупція в деталях) - it’s emerged that several oligarchs broke quarantine rules and managed to arrange for their private jets to fly in and out of closed Ukrainian airports.
The biggest offender is Vladimir Putin’s «кум» and Russophile parliamentarian Viktor Medvedchuk, who between March and May flew no less than 16 times between Kyiv and Uzhorod, where he owns an several hundred hectares nestled away in the Carpathian Mountains.
Curiously, Medvedchuk socialite wife, Oksana Marchenko, told a news site that the entire family spent the quarantine period at home. “We are law-abiding citizens, were at home, observed quarantine and continue to observe it in public places,” she told Strana.UA
A villager near Medvedchuk’s Carpathian Mountain property told Hromadske she last saw the family during the Easter break, when the entire country was on lockdown.
Oligarch Valerij Khoroshovskyi being questioned at Kyiv’s airport by Scheme’s Mykhailo Tkach
Other rule breakers includes President Zelensky’s former business partner Igor Kolomoisky. The oligarch, who defrauded one of Ukraine’s largest banks to the tune of $5 billion, managed to fly between Kyiv and a Dnipro ten times, Schemes found.
As well, millionaire businessman and Zelensky buddy, Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi, who managed to leave Ukraine twice during the lockdown to fly in his private jet to London and Nice. He flew into France at a time when the Covid-19 situation was much worse than in Ukraine and then later to London.
“Viewed from a wider perspective, the oligarch’s ability to flout the rules with abandon illustrates the complicity that exists with state organs such as the Security Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Infrastructure and the Presidential Administration.”
During one surveillance mission undertaken by the Scheme crew at Kyiv’s Borispil Airport on June 9, the wife of a Ukrainian oligarch was photographed during the height of the lockdown arriving from a shopping spree in Germany with several cartons from elite fashion shops.
It gets better - millionaire Vadym Novynskyi, who is reported to have a net worth of $1.7 billion, skirted several rules and managed to fly into Ukraine from Russia. Currently, there are no flights allowed between the two warring countries.
The lifestyles of Ukraine’s oligarchs is unfathomable to most people in a country where the average monthly wage is around $200
Viewed from a wider perspective, the oligarch’s ability to flout the rules with abandon illustrates the complicity that exists with state organs such as the Security Service of Ukraine, Ministry of Infrastructure and the Presidential Administration. Even with promises by Zelensky to drain the swamp, officials are believed to continue the practice of accepting bribes and other favours that allow Ukraine’s elite classes to go about their business.
The 2020 annual rating of the world's richest people by Forbes includes six Ukrainian businessmen.
As Schemes journalists routinely discover when digging into the movements of oligarchs, state organs block their access to information or provide misleading or false information.
Schemes reported that in all of their video surveillance of the arriving oligarchs, none wore masks. Novynskyi and Khoroshkovskyi both contracted Covid-19.
The number of officially confirmed COVID-19 cases in Ukraine has reached 42,065 as of 9 a.m. on June 27. Ukraine has identified 948 new cases of COVID-19 in the past 24 hours. Friday was the fourth day in a row that the country has seen a record number of new cases, with 994 new infections on June 25 and 940 on June 24, the Kyiv Post reported.
The founder of Schemes, Natalia Sedletska, was awarded Canada’s Light of Justice prize in 2018 for her journalistic work. With over 11 million viewers, Schemes: Corruption in Details is one of Ukrainian Public Television’s five most-watched programs.
Link to video report: https://youtu.be/GMhRMyPLRb4