You're reading: These contentious MPs got reelected

Editor’s Note: This story has been updated to reflect recent developments in several single-member districts.

Ukraine’s parliament is among the country’s most criticized institutions. Polls before the recent snap parliamentary election showed that the Verkhovna Rada enjoyed the support of around eight percent of Ukrainians.

One of the reasons for that was the number of people with questionable reputations who are responsible for drafting legislation in Ukraine.

The next Ukrainian parliament will drastically change the makeup of country’s political landscape. Over 60 percent of lawmakers elected during the July 21 election have never served in parliament.

While many dubious figures have failed in their bids to get reelected and therefore keep their parliamentary immunity, a number of those who previously faced allegations of fraud and corruption will remain in parliament for the next five years.

The Kyiv Post gathered together a list of future lawmakers who were either part of corruption investigations or have faced credible accusations of fraud and corruption.

Opposition Platform

Among the parties elected through the party list system of proportional representation, the Kremlin-friendly Opposition Platform – For Life party has received the most attention from investigative journalists and Ukraine’s law enforcement agencies.

To name a few, Yuriy Boyko, 60, the party’s leader, was accused of fraud in 2011 for allegedly selling natural gas rigs through a shell company to a Ukrainian state-owned company at an inflated price. At the time, Boyko was the minister of energy under pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in 2014. That made Boyko the prime suspect in the corruption scheme.

Today, the investigation is ongoing, yet Boyko is no longer a suspect. He has denied all accusations of wrongdoing.

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Vadym Rabinovych, 65, second on the party’s list, also had multiple encounters with law enforcement agencies. In 1999, Rabinovych was banned from entering Ukraine by SBU security agency, which said he caused significant damage to the Ukrainian economy. Rabinovych was an Israeli citizen at that time.

The ban was eventually lifted the same year and no charges were pressed.

Number three on the Opposition Platform party list is Viktor Medvedchuk, a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has been an outspoken supporter of Russia and constantly travels to the country on his private jet, even though direct flights between Ukraine and Russia are temporarily banned. The politician denies that Russia is even involved in the war in eastern Ukraine.

Medvedchuk’s brother is running in a single-member district in Luhasnk Oblast with Opposition Platform, and it remains unclear whether he will make it into parliament.

The party also features a number of notorious pro-Russian politicians – Serhiy Lovochkyn, 47, the former head of Yanukovych’s presidential administration, and Taras Kozak, 47, owner of now three television channels linked to Medvedchuk. Kozak’s official declaration suggest that he lacks the financial resources to buy multiple television channels.

Read More: Kremlin mobilizes its arsenal to influence Ukrainian elections

Vadym Novynskyi

Vadym Novynskyi, 56, is a Russian-born Ukrainian oligarch with a net worth of $2.3 billion, according to Novoe Vremya magazine. The makes him the third richest Ukrainian citizen.

He is running in the 57th single-member electoral district, representing half of Mariupol, a city of 450,000 people roughly 750 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. With 85 percent of the votes counted in the district, it is clear Novynskyi has once again been elected to parliament.

Novynskyi was granted Ukrainian citizenship in 2012, entering Ukraine’s parliament a year later. He has always been an ally of pro-Russian forces in the country. Novynskyi has both business and political ties with Ukraine’s richest person, Rinat Akhmetov, and is a proponent of the Kremlin-linked Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

In 2017, Novynskyi was accused by the General Prosecutor’s Office of abducting a pro-Ukrainian church official to persuade Ukraine’s church officials to remain under Moscow’s rule. Later the same year, the parliament voted to drop Novynskyi’s parliamentary immunity. However, the pro-Russian parliamentarian was not prosecuted and instead categorized as a witness.

In 2019, he was widely recognized as one of the leaders of the Kremlin-friendly Opposition Bloc party, which did not make it into parliament in the party list vote.

Dubnevych brothers

Bohdan and Yaroslav Dubnevych appeared poised to get reelected to parliament as independent candidates from two districts of Ukraine’s western Lviv Oblast.

With over 95 percent of the vote counted in both electoral districts, Yaroslav Dubnevych, 49, was receiving over 43 percent of the vote, two-times more than the second place candidate. His brother Bohdan, 55, was barely scraping by. However, he was eventually overtaken by his competitor from the Voice party, Halyna Vasylchenko, by just over a percent.  Bohdan Dubnevych has conceded.

On July 22, Sviatoslav Vakarchuk, the rock-star and leader of Voice, accused Bohdan Dubnevych of falsifications, citing major difference between the results and the party’s exit poll. Dubnevych has not yet responded to the accusations.

The brothers became well-known when a corruption scheme was revealed in two power plants owned by the two lawmakers. According to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, the Dubnevych brothers bought gas for their power plants at below market prices and eventually resold the gas to industry, embezzling Hr 1.4 billion ($50 million).

The brothers have also been accused of selling overpriced equipment to state-owned railroad monopoly Ukzaliznytsia. They have denied both accusations.

Oles Dovhiy

For the second time in a row, lawmaker Oles Dovhiy, 38, has won in a rural single-member district in Kirovohrad Oblast, central Ukraine.

With 65 percent of vote counted, Dovhiy is receiving around 42 percent, almost twice the amount of his closest competitor, who has officially conceded through a Facebook post.

Dovhiy, a Kyiv native, has been part of numerous scandals throughout his long political career. In 2017, the General Prosecutor’s Office accused him of selling off land belonging to Kyiv.

According to the prosecution, during his tenure at the Kyiv city council, Dovhiy helped sell off land belonging to the city between 2007 and 2009, costing the state over Hr 81 ($3 million). Dovhiy’s parliamentary immunity was lifted by parliament, yet the case fell apart, with the prosecution stating that the evidence had been destroyed.

Oleksandr Kovalyov

A rather unknown figure is Oleksandr Kovalyov, 51. With 100 percent of the vote counted, he won the electoral district in Zaitseve, a village of a couple of thousand people near the occupied city of Horlovka, 700 kilometers east of Kyiv.

A total of 220 votes were enough for Kovalyov to secure his victory, due to most of the constituency being occupied by Russian-backed militants.

Denis Kazansky, a prominent journalist and commentator who lived and worked in Donetsk Oblast before the war started, said in a recent Facebook post that Kovalyov is a well-known pro-Russian activist who bribed his way into parliament.

Back in 2016, Kovalyov was the subject of an official investigation alleging that he took part in covering up the killings of activists during the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted Yanukovych.

The same electoral district featured another notorious candidate, Andriy Alyosha, representing the pro-Russian Opposition Platform – For Life party. He was seen as the favorite prior to the vote count. In a comment to the Kyiv Post before the elections, Kazansky alleged that Alyosha could bring people from the occupied territories to vote for him.

Maxim Efimov

For the second time in a row, Maksim Efimov, 44, is winning the single-member district in Kramatorsk, a city of 150,000 people in Donetsk Oblast, 650 kilometers east from Kyiv.

With 100 percent of vote counted, Efimov is receiving 54 percent.

Efimov, a lawmaker from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc party who ran independently both in 2014 and in 2019, is a wealthy regional businessman. He controls factories and power plants situated in Kramatorsk.

Efimov was the subject of multiple journalistic investigations. The Bihus.info journalist investigation series revealed that Efimov bought Parkovyi Exposition Centre, known as Yanukovych’s helipad, from people connected to the ousted president. Efimov acknowledged that his mother became the owner of the multimillion dollar property. The object was subsequently removed from the list of frozen assets connected to the Yanukovych regime, as it was no longer owned by Yanukovych associates.

Schemes, a joint project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the UA:Pershyi television channel, accused Efimov of lobbying for the allocation of additional funds to rebuild war-torn Kramatorsk. The construction is usually performed through firms associated with Efimov.

In 2015, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau conducted a pre-trial investigation on charges that the lawmaker had business ties in Russia occupied Crimea.

Viktor Baloga

Veteran politician Viktor Baloga barely made it into parliament. With 100 percent of the votes counted in his native Zakarpattia Oblast around 800 kilometers west of Kyiv, Baloga beat his competitor from the pro-Presidential Servant of the People party by one percent.

Baloga has been representing Zakarpattia for over 20 years, switching between parties to help his chances of remaining in office.

Baloga began his career in Medvedchuk’s party back in 1997, but later became a close ally of pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko in the early 2000s. After the decline of Yushchenko and the rise of pro-Russian Yanukovych, Baloga sided with the latter, taking on various government positions under the new president.

Lawmaker Baloga is often criticized for running Zakarpattia like a family business. Out of the six single-member constituencies in Zakarpattia, three are currently controlled by Baloga and his brothers Petro and Ivan. This time, however, the latter two failed to get reelected.