You're reading: State wins back part of Yanukovych’s former hunting grounds

The Kyiv Oblast Commercial Court ruled on July 30 to terminate a lease for 2.64 hectares of prime state-owned hunting grounds that fugitive ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates used for their personal use.

According to an Aug. 1 Kyiv Oblast
Prosecutor’s Office news release, the 49-year lease was voided because
“contrary to the provisions of this contract, the user-company had without the
permission of forestry bodies built permanent structures in the area.”

Court documents
dated June
2 that
outline the circumstances of the case state that “the plaintiff’s claims are
justified by the defendant’s use of forest plots in violation of norms (in relation)
to forestry, environmental and land legislation of Ukraine, as well as fire
protection, sanitary rules, and equipment and labor safety regulations.”

The lessee of the
land and defendant in the case was Dom Lesnika, a company founded by proxies and
registered in 2006 in a Kyiv suburb that investigative journalists from Forbes UkraineUkrainska Pravda and Yanukovychleaks.org have linked to the disgraced
president. It started leasing the hunting grounds free of charge the same year.

Yanukovych is currently wanted by
authorities on mass murder charges and is hiding out in Russia.

Separately, a court hearing is
currently underway to bring 13 additional hectares of hunting grounds in the
same area back under state control, the press service of the Kyiv Oblast
Prosecutor’s Office told the Kyiv Post.

Altogether, Dom
Lesnika had lease rights to 17,500 hectares of hunting grounds in Vyshhorod
District north of Kyiv that bordered Yanukovych’s palatial 140-hectare estate
in Mezhyhirya.

Viewed as a symbol
of the ex-president’s grand corruption, on Feb. 22 parliament passed a measure to
nationalize the Mezhyhirya country home.

The huge wooded area in the village
of Sukholuchya in Vyshhorod District comprises 30,000 hectares in total. Wild
boar and duck, fox and deer roam here, along with fishing lakes and ponds situated
there.

A fishing and hunting club called
Kedr founded by Yanukovych’s cronies had free usage rights to the 30,000-hectare
grounds, according to a July 31, 2012 Kyiv Oblast Council decision.

Established on Nov. 12, 2008, Kedr
fishing and hunting club’s legal address is 19 Ivan Franko Street in the
village of Novi Petrivtsi where Mezhyhirya is located.

Its three founders were ex-Deputy Prime
Minister Yuriy Boiko who for many years was involved in oil and gas and headed
the Energy Ministry; Volodymyr Demishkan, the former head of Ukravtodor – the
state roads agency; and the former Cherkasy Oblast governor Serhiy Tulub.

The club has two giant hunting lodges
on the grounds. One called Acacia, once belonged to the former head of the
Ukrainian Communist Party Volodymyr Shcherbytsky, who ruled from 1972 until his
death in 1989. But with Yanukovych’s ascendancy to power, the lodge was
replaced by a new wooden two-storied palace, according to Yanukovychleaks.org.

The other building
is called Ostrov (island) and belongs to Dom Lesnika.
Both were completed by autumn 2008. A glamorous bathhouse with two bedrooms,
showers, massage rooms, a kitchen and a karaoke room is situated between a
water reservoir and an artificial bay for boats. A helipad and shooting range
are not far, reads a Yanukovychleaks.org investigation.  

A side view of a posh hunting lodge north of Kyiv that ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and his associates used for their personal use on 30,000 hectares of state-owned hunting grounds.

Most of Kedr’s 28
members were or are part of the political elite and billionaire class.

According to Yanukovychleaks.org,
they are:

Denys Bass – former Deputy Head of Kyiv City Administration
Yuri Boyko – former Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine
Volodymyr Demishkan – ex-chairman of the
State Road Service
Mykola Demyanko – MP, Party of
Regions
Volodymyr Yevtushenkov – Russian tycoon
Sergiy Kivalov – MP, ex-Head of the Central Election
Commission
Volodymyr Kolesnychenko – former
chairman of the High Council of Justice
Andriy Kliuyev – ex-Head of the Presidential Administration
Leonid Kravchuk – ex-President of
Ukraine
Mykhaylo Kulinyak – ex-Minister of
Culture
Leonid Kuchma – ex-President of Ukraine
Oleksandr Lavrynovych – former
Minister of Justice
Vadym Novynskiy – Ukrainian oligarch
Oleksandr Moyiseev 
Viktor Pinchuk – Ukrainian
oligarch
Anton Prygodskiy – member of Party of
Regions, Yanukovych’s close friend
Anatoliy Prysyazhnuk – ex-head of Kyiv
Regional State Administration
Mykola Prysyazhnuk – former
Minister of Agrarian Policy
Anatoliy Radchenko
Dmytro Salamatin – ex-Minister of
Defense
Yuri Samoylenko – MP, Party of
Regions
Konstantin Sapko – ex-chief of the
Ministry of Internal Affairs in Kyiv region
Viktor Syvets – ex-chairman of the State Forestry Agency
Volodymyr Sivkovych – Deputy Secretary
of the National Security and Defense Council Viktor Slauta – Party of Regions,
ex-advisor to the President of Ukraine
Sergiy Tulub – ex-governor of Cherkasy
Mykola Yankovskiy – Ukrainian
industrialist and politician, Party of Regions
Oleksandr Yaroslavskiy – Ukrainian
oligarch

The membership fee to the fishing and hunting
club allegedly was $15,000, the amount that ex-presidential chief of staff
Andriy Kliuyev paid in cash on Feb. 10, just 12 days
before Yanukovych fled the country, according to the Yanukovychleaks.org
investigation.

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be
reached at [email protected].