Petro Poroshenko, Serhiy Kurchenko and 220mln UAH as a bribe

Well, being greedy, the president is not going to pay these millions. He entered into a discussion with the media holding overseer by name Serhiy Kurchenko as to the possibility of barter instead. The idea was as follows: the advertising services provided by UMH would really help a number of its radio stations get their licenses that were annulled by the puppet National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting back.

However, such an exchange shall be regarded as a bribe: UMH launches ads of Poroshenko’ election campaign for 8.3mln USD and Mr. Kurchenko receives 37 licenses for radio broadcasting from the puppet National Council back in return.

Such an assumption was made based on the correspondence between Hryhoriy Shverk and Illya Savvin, Head of UMH Supervisory Board, that Dubimsky.pro had obtained.

Ukrainian Media Holding (hereinafter UMH), that had primarily belonged to Borys Lozhkin and Petro Poroshenko, was handed over to the young oligarch by name Mr. Kurchenko back in 2013 for a huge amount of 400mln USD that ignited a scandal back then as Poroshenko and Lozhkin ignored to pay taxes to the Ukrainian budget out of that sum.

However, as it’s just turned out, despite the public hostility of Poroshenko + Lozhkin alliance and Mr. Kurchenko, they still have common levers of influence on the policy of the media holding. This very lever bears a name of Hryhoryi Shverk, former member of the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, who is well-known by his endeavors of seizing media assets for the benefit of Borys Lozhkin.

Before politics, Mr. Shverk took a post as UMH First Deputy President and was a right-hand man of UMH managing partner Borys Lozhkin. Petro Poroshenko was the controlling partner of the UMH Group indeed.

Mr. Shverk is not only a ‘talking head’ representative of Petro Poroshenko Bloc but also an active influencer of Poroshenko’s information policy that apparently has partial involvement of Borys Lozhkin. Such an assumption can be suggested by a number of e-mails starting with the analysis of statements made by leaders of political blocs, different infographics and government’s achievements and ending with the reports made by the Prosecutor General’s Office to the media, having them primarily forwarded to Mr. Shverk for reviewing before publishing.

In 2017 the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting revoked broadcasting licenses of a number of UMH companies in an expeditious manner ‘based on the ownership structure lacking transparency’. These actions were aimed at seizing Kurchenko’s media holding that Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko planned to nationalize.

The nationalization still didn’t take place similarly to the previous situation when other mass media were under pressure. However, the media holding UMH started to express more loyalty to Poroshenko and his Administration after such ‘warning shots’.

Besides, Hryhoriy Shverk’s relations with Vitaliy Gorduz who has led UMH ads sales house till recently are so cordial that the studying of Vitalyi’s son Roman Gorduz at Pechersk School International is paid by Mr. Shverk with the funds from his own offshore account at Paracroft Ltd.

There is an email as of August 16, 2018 containing an order to spend 23,672 USD from the accounts of Paracroft Ltd as a payment for the academic year 2018-2019 of Roman Gorduz. The order was delivered through Marina Krimsky, Director of the investment company named Julius Baer Group representing Mr. Shverk’s interests abroad.

The e-mail as of October 10, 2018 is another proof of Sverk’s active participation in deciding UMH’s fate. It was forwarded to Mr. Sverk’s assistant counsellor Maria Lashkina and contained an appeal of LLC Nashe Radio (UMH) against the decision of Pechersk District Court in Kyiv as to the criminal proceeding that implied arrest of property.

But the thing that interested me the most was in the correspondence between Hryhoriy Shverk and UMH Supervisory Board Head Illya Savvin, known as its private overseer assigned by the UMH Group runaway owner Serhiy Kurchenko. The correspondence was initiated on October 16, 2018. They discussed the electoral publicity of Petro Poroshenko on UMH radio stations and in UMH publications for the price of 8.3mln USD.

Yes, you have understood everything right.

Petro Poroshenko was ready to pay more than 220mln UAH to a person who used to be Viktor Yanukovych’s private money-box in human guise conducting anti-Ukrainian activity on the territory of Ukraine: Mr. Kurchenko is a chief overseer over all of the industrial assets in the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics physically leading the economies of these unrecognized republics.

This is how that very last farewell said by Kurchenko to Ukraine looks like nowadays.

UMH Supervisory Board Head Savvin representing Kurchenko made several demands in his correspondence with Hryhoriy Shverk regarding the electoral advertising of Poroshenko:

1. UMH was committed to exclude anti-Russian materials from its content.

2. The main requirement of the agreement set forth by UMH was immunity from prosecution by the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting, other state institutions and agencies.

3. UMH radio stations had to get their broadcasting licenses that, as Mr. Kurchenko thought, had been revoked on political grounds back.

In fact, such conditions could be regarded as a bribe given by Petro Poroshenko through Shverk for the pre-electoral PR campaign in exchange for reinstatement of UMH broadcasting licenses.

The bribe amount in the form of advertising services for Poroshenko’s pre-election PR was 8.3mln USD.

I have sent a request to the Petro Poroshenko Bloc ‘Solidarity’, Presidential Administration, UMH and to Mr. Shverk personally.

And while we’re waiting for them to reply just spare some time and read a couple of articles published on the UMH resources:

korrespondent.net – An article dd. December 18, 2018: ‘On a working mission to Dnipro on Monday, December 17, President Poroshenko bestowed state awards upon soldiers of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army (UVA) who had fought in Donbas ‘. “It’s a great honor to present state awards to Ukrainian soldiers”, - said Petro Poroshenko.

bigmir.net – An article dd. December 18, 2018: ‘Today there was made another important step towards the counter-occupation of Crimea. The resolution showed an unequivocal assessment by the international community as regards the continuing unlawful actions undertaken by the Kremlin”, - said Petro Poroshenko.

bigmir.net – An article dd. December 13, 2018: According to Petro Poroshenko, the whole situation that happened (seizure of Ukrainian ships on November 25, 2018, ed.) ‘can be explained by solely aggressive actions of the Kremlin attempting on Ukraine’s sovereignty all the time’. ‘When I talked about the warfare in the Kerch strait, I meant the aggression from the Russian Federation against the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine”, – explained Petro Poroshenko to Donald Tusk.