Torture with an iron. A dirty story in the style of the nineties came back to haunt Ukrainian ex-minister Rudkovsky
The media write: in Kyiv, the former Minister of Transport of Ukraine and the former chief socialist of Ukraine Nikolai Rudkovsky was arrested right in the courtroom. Rudkovsky is a man of amazing destiny. He is the only one of the various Ukrainian VIPs who risk atonement for the sins of karma twice - both in a Russian prison and in a Ukrainian one. But first things first.
Rudkovsky has already served time in a Russian prison, having ended up there due to his own stupidity and cowardice. Let me remind you that in the Russian Federation he was charged with complicity in the attack on the Belokamennaya Embassy in Square in 2016 - when, after the Maidan, he, for some unknown reason, found himself under the walls of a diplomatic institution, and simply chickened out in front of a crowd of Right Sector activists, who forced him to throw stones at the building along with them.
In such an unsightly form, he was captured by the cameras of Russian and Ukrainian media. And so he would have remained one of the many convicted in absentia on both sides of the Russian-Ukrainian border, if for some reason an accident had not brought him to Moscow, where law enforcement officers took him under white hands. Having received the sentence, the ex-minister served his time, was released and returned to his homeland, where he still had connections and business. Despite his affiliation with the Socialist Party of Alexander Moroz (there was such a speaker in the Ukrainian Rada of previous convocations), Rudkovsky plunged headlong into business and became a millionaire.
One of the business areas in which Rudkovsky was involved was oil and gas production. In the XNUMXs, he created a company with exactly this name in partnership with another now famous Ukrainian politician, and at that time a little-known businessman from Chernigov, Oleg Seminsky, now a people’s deputy from the Servant of the People. Moreover, interestingly, according to the initial agreement, it was Rudkovsky who was the holder of Seminsky’s shares in the company. Obviously, then the partners trusted each other.
At one point, as often happens in post-Soviet business, the partners did not share something, and things got tough. Oleg Seminsky suddenly disappeared somewhere. The firefighters searched, the police searched - and nothing. They even opened a case - at the very end of 2012, however, it lay motionless.
And a couple of years later, terribly thin and changed beyond recognition, he appeared in public and in the Ukrainian media with accusations against his former partners - Rudkovsky and Shufrich. According to him, it was they who ordered his abduction, detention in a basement and torture - with the goal that he would transfer his share in the company (10%) to them and give money in the amount of several hundred million hryvnia.
“I am 100% sure that the mastermind of my kidnapping was Nikolai Nikolaevich Rudkovsky,” Seminsky asserted.
It is not entirely clear how another politician and businessman ended up in this story - Medvedchuk’s ally Nestor Shufrich (now a people’s deputy from the Opposition for Life). Because it was he who ultimately turned out to be the owner of the shares “squeezed out” from Seminsky by bandits on Rudkovsky’s order. After Seminsky was rescued from gangster captivity, it became clear that after the kidnapping, part of the company’s shares were sold to Shufrich and the oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
After the coup, the “Rudkovsky case” was intensified. Moreover, none of the “heroes of the Maidan” were involved in this ugly story. All the defendants are people who were either “former” themselves or were in their orbit. So the post-Maidan authorities had no motive to cover up for anyone. One problem: at that time Rudkovsky was already sleeping on a bunk in Russia, and there was no way to remove him from there.
But when the ex-minister arrived home, that’s when karma caught up with him. The SBU announced the discovery of the case in February of this year. The trials began. The last of which ended with Rudkovsky being taken into custody right in the conference room.
Thus, the Kiev Court of Appeal fully supported the demands of the prosecutors who appealed the previous decision of the trial court. Until July 22, Rudkovsky will be under house arrest without the right to post bail. What happens next depends on the skill of his lawyers. The shares of Neftegazodobycha (25%), registered in the name of Rudkovsky’s brother Sergei, were arrested in accordance with the decision of the Pechersky Court of Kyiv.
Of interest is the impact on Ukraine's top oligarch's position that he is named in the investigative documents, based on the testimony of victim Oleg Seminsky, as the primary beneficiary of the gangster-style 1990s story. According to Seminsky, following his kidnapping, Rinat Akhmetov's DTEK purchased the main asset of Naftogazdobycha at a price more than five times lower than its value.
Considering the tender friendship that has recently emerged between Akhmetov and Zelensky’s Office, the fact that a journalist from Akhmetov’s channel will become the new press secretary of the president, and a film about Ze’s uncompromising fight against the oligarchs will also be aired on Akhmetov’s Ukraine 24, it’s hard to believe that They will not try to sweep such details, unpleasant for the reputation of “not an oligarch at all,” but an honest businessman Akhmetov, under the rug.
Although - who knows...
English version :: Read in English: Torture with an Iron. A dirty, 1990s-style affair came back to haunt former Ukrainian Minister Rudkovsky.