Lawmaker Anton Polyakov, 33, was found dead in a Kyiv taxi in the early hours of Oct. 8. The authorities believe the cause was a heart attack.
“According to the results of the autopsy, the death occurred because of an acute coronary heart disease,” said Nadiya Maksymets, spokesperson for the Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office. “We’re awaiting further medical tests,” she added.
According to the National Police, Polyakov caught a taxi and minutes later felt sick. The vehicle was stopped by the police who found Polyakov unconscious on the back seat. He was pronounced dead by the doctors that arrived at the scene shortly afterwards.
According to Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova, the car was stopped after it began violating the traffic code. As a standard procedure, the prosecution opened a criminal investigation.
“All valuables, documents and money [belonging to the lawmaker] remained intact,” wrote Venediktova.
Polyakov was a well-known lawmaker. During the 2019 parliament elections, he was elected in his native Chernihiv single-member constituency representing President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People party.
Soon, however, Polyakov was excluded from the 243-member faction for going against the party line. He was accused of not supporting legislation proposed by the party. In turn, Polyakov accused the Servant of the People faction of corruption.
The lawmaker then joined the 22-member For the Future group in parliament connected to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. It’s led by Ihor Palytsa, former business partner of Kolomoisky, and was heavily promoted on the oligarch’s TV channels.
Polyakov took an active part in stalling the adoption of a bank law set to deprive bank owners of returning their former banks nationalized by the state.
According to this law, which was adopted in May 2020, if a court rules against the National Bank’s declaration that a bank is insolvent, it would not restore the former bank’s status, nor would it void any transactions carried out to withdraw the bank from the market or liquidate it.
Most notably, this affected Ukraine’s largest bank, PrivatBank, which was nationalized in 2016. Previously, it had belonged to Kolomoisky and his business partner, Gennady Boholyubov.
Before PrivatBank’s nationalization, the National Bank of Ukraine found that $5.5 billion were missing from its ledgers. Later, a forensic audit by American corporate investigations firm Kroll revealed that the vast majority of the bank’s loan portfolio involved insider lending and money laundering operations.
Polyakov put together over 6,033 amendments in a last-minute attempt to derail the passing of the bill. As a result, parliament was compelled to adopt a separate law allowing to fast-forward the hearing of bills blocked by amendments.
