Village council head arrested again in the increasingly strange case of 'Ukraine's Beverly Hills'
The once quiet Dnipro River village that has become a bedroom community for Kyiv’s elite saw more controversy last week, with locals alleging further harassment by the authorities.
Around noon on Sept. 10, militiamen drove up to the village council office in Kozyn, the municipality that’s become known as the “Ukrainian Beverly Hills.” They entered and arrested council head Valentyna Horobets. When she protested that she was ill, and asked to call her lawyer, the officials allegedly removed her from the office by force.
“They threw her on the floor, bent her arms, put the handcuffs on her while she cried in pain, and dragged her out along the floor. Her shoes fell off, so they took them and left,” said Larysa Shishenko, a villager who witnessed the incident.
The arrest comes as just the latest incident in a struggle between Kyiv elites and locals over the use of local lands – a struggle that has taken a turn into the bizarre.
Turf wars
As the Post earlier reported, tensions boiled over in Kozyn in July, when the Prosecutor General’s Office requested title to ten hectares of waterfront land in order to build residences for its staff. But the village council, trying to control development in the idyllic river village, had declared a moratorium on land sales and leases in December 2003. It rebuffed the PGO and refused its offer.
Later in July, the PGO brought charges against Horobets, alleging abuse of power in matters pertaining to land use. She was removed from office on July 22, angering her supporters.
That same month, Kozyn’s village council refused to sell and lease about 250 hectares of land to Proletarian Truth, a Ukrainian company said to be backed by powerful tycoons, including, it is alleged, Ihor Bakay. The council then ignored a Kyiv district court decision ordering it to sell the land.
According to Our Ukraine parliament deputy Yuriy Karmazin, the village council also protested a government directive to transfer ownership of more than 150 hectares of forest to Svit Shlyakhiv, a company Karmazin said is backed by Viktor Pinchuk, the powerful mogul married to President Leonid Kuchma’s daughter.
What followed, few in town had expected.
First raid
On July 27, police came to the Horobets house, ordered all the family members except Valentyna Horobets out of the premises, and spent three hours searching the interior. Horobets said she fainted.
During the search, said village executive committee member Iryna Sarych, lights and phones in Kozyn went dead and roads into and out of the town were blocked.
PGO spokesperson Serhiy Rudenko denied that anything illegal had been done in the raid, and would neither confirm nor deny that the PGO had requested any land in Kozyn. Be that as it may, Horobets suffered a heart attack later on July 27. She spent the next two weeks in the hospital recovering.
Since then, rumors of shady land transfers have emanated from the village. Parliament deputy Karmazin has alleged that Kozyn’s forests and river banks are being destroyed in defiance of environmental regulations.
“I’ve witnessed how fast the buildings are being constructed very close to the river bank, violating the water and land codes. It’s a brutal destruction of the forest and the river,” Karmazin said.
September madness
Midday on Sept. 10, Valentyna Horobets was back in the Kozyn village council office. The day before had been a tiring one, as she had spent time with her lawyer, Vasyl Nesvit, at the regional prosecutor’s office in Obuhiv, discussing the Kozyn case with investigator Vitaliy Renkas. Horobets agreed to cooperate with any investigation.
Now, at the office, Horobets was preparing for an important public meeting that would be held that evening. On the agenda was a crucial order of business: A number of Kozyn village council members who had organized against Horobets had subsequently been the targets of a no-confidence vote by a slight majority in a village referendum, and that night the referendum results would be validated.
Shortly after noon, militia vehicles showed up at the building.
Three officials, including the investigator Renkas, entered the building.
“She was in her office alone when three investigators, including Renkas, came in. He said on his walkie-talkie that four people should be enough, as there is no one here,” said Gallyna Kolerova, the office secretary, a witness to the incident.
Horobets, who was placed in the back seat of a militia car, said that she was driven around Kyiv, face downward and her arms twisted behind her back. The ride lasted 90 minutes, she estimated. She said she was unconscious for around 40 minutes of that time.
“For a while they didn’t even give her water, but were continuing to press and threaten her,” said Horobets’s lawyer, Vasyl Nesvit. “They told her she was suspended from her office, and should hand in the [official village] stamp – which she refused. The stamp is the only guarantee of her safety now.
“They also told her she must ensure that no mention of what happened to her appear in the media,” he added.
Blocking the door
As the authorities entered the premises to find Horobets, Kolerova says she tried to block the door, but was pushed to the wall. She demanded to be allowed to accompany Horobets, who had only recently been discharged from the hospital. The militiamen said no.
Not even her lawyer was told where she was being taken.
“Starting at noon I kept calling Investigator Renkas, but I couldn’t reach him and therefore I couldn’t find out where Horobets was being kept. It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that I learned were she was.”
“It was obvious that the goal of the arrest was to upset the evening meeting, aimed at declaring a no confidence vote in our [council] deputies,” Kolerova said.
Parliament deputy Karmazin agrees.
“It’s an obvious attempt to close our mouths with a police baton. It’s all a violation,” he said.
As for the authorities’ treatment of Horobets, Karmazin said at least parts of it violated Ukraine’s constitution and criminal law.
Karmazin has twice approached Prosecutor General Hennady Vasyliyev about taking action concerning human rights violations in Kozyn. He has also applied to the State Agency for Land Resources, to determine the legal status of Kozyn’s hotly-contested real estate. He says his applications have been largely ignored.
Karmazin also brought up the Horobets situation in the Rada on Sept. 10, and alleges that if he hadn’t, the woman arrested might not have been released that evening.
Meeting in session
Despite the arrest, the village council did meet on the evening of Sept. 10 at 6 p.m., with more than 300 citizens present. Kolerova said all the deputies subject to the referendum received personal invitations to the meeting, but only one showed up.
That meant the no-confidence referendum was approved unanimously. A team of 15 people was appointed to make budget and communal land decisions until new deputies can be elected.
“According to the law, the election of new deputies should take place no earlier than in 90 days, but we’ll appeal to the Rada to let us hold the elections sooner,” said Irina Sarych, a member of the new council.
A decision was also made to hold an Oct. 31 referendum about local land use: on whether land should be transferred, and how and to whom it should be sold and/or leased.
The meeting next resolved to find Horobets. Around 30 villagers set off for Kyiv, bound for the State Security Service (SBU) offices.
Arriving there around 9 p.m., they were told that only one piece of information existed: Horobets had been detained by the PGO and was now in questioning in the agency division for special cases. Eventually gleaning the address of her holding place, they gathered around the windows of the first floor room, banging on them and calling out Horobets’ name.
After 40 minutes Horobets, accompanied by her lawyers, walked out of the front door.
“I was advised to give away my stamp and not go to my office anymore, if I don’t want this to continue,” a tearful Horobets said.
Other side
“So far the only accusation that has been brought against her is based on the cancellation of land lease agreements with certain companies, [a decision] that was made commonly by the Kozyn village council, including all the deputies,” said Horobets’ lawyer, Nesvit.
For the PGO, however, she is apparently the guilty one. Nesvit says the accusations made against her are “groundless.”
“Horobets is simply a disagreeable village head for the region and oblast heads,” he said.
Meanwhile, other parties to the affair, like Proletarian Truth, offer their own versions. The company offered to buy 30 plots per hectare of Kozyn land at Hr 20,000, which is at least 100 times lower than market price, and lease the remaining land, and was turned down. The village council subsequently refused to adhere to a court order mandating the sale.
Yet Proletarian Truth’s lawyer, Oleksiy Stalyak, says a March 5 Kozyn village council decision, signed by Horobets herself, authorized the sale, and that Horobets then refused to honor it. As for the price his company offered for the land, Stalyak says it was determined by the State Committee for Land Resources, and that the plots in question are for agricultural use, making them cheaper.
Stalyak said Proletarian Truth, a joint-stock company officially registered as a fishing enterprise, was granted the land for permanent agricultural use in the Soviet era, and now simply wanted to reaffirm its rights to it under the new land code. He said no construction was planned for the land.
The lawyer also denied that Bakay currently has any connection with his company.
“Bakay was involved in half of Ukrainian companies ten years ago, and that is why we have been getting questions about him ever since.”
At the moment the village council is appealing the court decision favoring Proletarian Truth.
Stamp acts
According to Nesvit, the PGO would like to get hold of something specific: the official village stamp. The stamp allows whomever possesses it to process and validate documents, including documents concerning land transfers in Kozyn. He said that the whereabouts of the stamp was a theme of the questioning sessions Horobets endured.
Horobets and her allies are wondering how to proceed. Horobets was arrested on the basis of documents that allegedly prove her wrongdoing, but those documents have allegedly not been produced, even though Horobets requested them.
“We, the defense, have received no document, which was the grounds for her arrest,” Nesvit said.
The Horobets camp do have at least some friends in higher places.
“Yuriy Karmazin will appeal to the Verkhovna Rada, the Prosecutor General’s Office and other official organizations in order to improve the situation. I will appeal against the illegal actions used against Horobets,” Nesvit said.
“The investigation is being carried out illegally and ignorantly. With such an attitude and such behavior on the part of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the defense unfortunately can’t do much,” Nesvit said.
PGO spokesman Rudenko had no comment on the issue. Neither did Volodymyr Hubarev, the Kyiv oblast vice governor in charge of land issues.
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| Citizens confront masked militiamen outside the Kozyn village council office on the evening of Sept. 14. Authorities were again searching the building, where embattled council head Valentyna Horobets, now hospitalized, works. (Post photo by Vlad Lavrov) |
On Sept. 14 Renkas and 10 special unit police officers arrived in Kozyn to search the village council building. Eyewitnesses say they sealed the door and returned Sept. 15 around noon, to do more investigative work.
As for Horobets, the day following her arrest she couldn’t get out of bed. She said a vertebra rupture that she previously underwent has gotten worse. As the Post went to press on Sept. 15, she was in the hospital.
