In 2012, allegations started swirling that a powerful sex ring had been operating out of southeastern Poland, namely in Podkarpackie Voivodeship, a southeastern region bordering Ukraine.
Dawid Kostecki, a Polish light-heavyweight boxer, testified that two Ukrainian brothers, Aleksiej R. and Jiewgienij R., were secretly recording their customers – business and political elites of Podkarpackie Voivodeship.
It’s important to note that Dawid Kostecki was sentenced to prison multiple times for crimes related to organized crime and running escort agencies. Regardless of his criminal background, the Polish investigators found Kostecki’s testimony to be credible.
Lenient sentences for the two Ukrainian brothers
The two Ukrainian gangsters were found guilty of running a sex-trafficking ring and bribing a public official. They were sentenced to a year and a year and a half in jail.
The reasoning of the prosecutors and the court to give the two such lenient sentences wasn’t made public. The records of the case are sealed. The reasons for the judgment aren’t publically available and remain unknown.
Possible Security Service of Ukraine involvement
The brothers also claimed that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) attempted to recruit them in Tarnów (a city in southeastern Poland) in 2011. The two Ukrainians also claimed that the SBU tried to blackmail them into cooperating.
As the gangsters pointed out, the whole effort by the SBU was logical, given the kind of information and blackmail material the brothers had access to. It’s also worth noting that, in 2011, Ukrainian Secret Services were closely cooperating with Russian intelligence services and it’s a mistake to see the SBU today as the same organization as it was in 2011.
Four thousand sex tapes
Prominent Polish politicians and high-ranking officials, as well as others from elite circles of business, intelligence and even the religious establishment are rumored to be involved, perhaps compromised, by the sex ring.
Supposedly, there are four thousand sex-tapes secured by the investigators. Under the cover of running legally operating escort agencies, Aleksiej R. and Jiewgienij R. managed their sex trafficking operation for more than ten years. Their experience as sex traffickers (pimps) of women goes back to the 1990s.
What’s even more disturbing, but not that surprising, is that the brothers were managing their business under the watchul eye of Polish intelligence services.
Murky background of the Ukrainian brothers
How did two dental technicians from the Khmelnytskyi Oblast in Ukraine become such prominent figures in southeastern Poland?
Not much is known about the brothers. Not even their real names are certain. Ryszard K., a businessman from Rzeszów, testified that he supposedly stumbled upon the two Ukrainians and liked their entreprenurial spirit. Impressed, he hired them, only to find they outsmarted him.
Ryszard K. testified that the two brothers married Polish women for three thousand dollars. The marriage was a purely business transaction to gain Polish citizenship. The fact the two brothers divorced quickly after marriage points to Ryszard K. being right about their using the Polish women to get the Polish papers.
Questions persist, while answers are nowhere to be found
There are many questions in this case. Why the secrecy of the prosecutors and the courts? Did Dawid Kostecki really hang himself in Warsaw prison on August 2, 2019 – or was he murdered?
While the prosecutor suspected that Kostecki might have been drugged and strangled, a court-appointed expert ruled out such a possibility. The court expert concluded suicide by hanging was the cause of death.
The skepticism as to the boxer’s suicide as the cause of death persists among many.
Why is the Polish media so silent about the Afera Podkarpacka?
Who was allegedly recorded and how does this blackmail (kompromat) impact their decision-making, particularly in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine? Indeed, who was the brains behind the whole operation?
And finally – were Russian intelligence agencies involved in the operation? Does the Polish intelligence agency world understand the seriousness of the threat? Could the Polish intelligence world be complicit?
As with so many profoundly perplexing cases, there is a torrent of questions and almost no definitive answers.
Disturbing realization
We’re likely never going to know the answers to these questions. In light of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal in the US and all the strange suicides surrounding such criminal cases, one wonders: What’s really going on in the world?
Given that Jeffrey Epstein exchanged e-mails on a variety of topics with prominent people from all walks of life, we can delve into his released emails to find out more about how the world really works.
Epstein even commented on the Smoleńsk plane crash – an air disaster on April 10, 2010 which devastated the Polish political elite and resulted in the deaths of the Polish President at the time – Lech Kaczyński, and his wife – the First Lady of Poland, Maria Kaczyńska.
Epstein also gave advice on dealing with Vladimir Putin. No topic, it seems, was off-limits for the man.
This brings us to a disturbing, yet glaringly obvious, realization: are some (maybe many) of the Ukrainian children abducted to Russia then trafficked across the world by these global pedophile networks to be abused and killed?
With the disturbing disclosures of the criminal networks interlinking across the globe, the answer appears to be a resounding yes. It’s our duty to do what we can to save as many children as we can from the clutches of monsters.
After all, why fight for freedom at all if we ignore the plight of the children?
The views expressed are the author’s and not necessarily of Kyiv Post.