What do military prosecutor Matios and fugitive communist Kaletnik have in common?

We continue looking into the business belonging to the family of Ukraine’s General Prosecutor, a military prosecutor Anatoly Matios.

In the previous issues of “Donetskaya Pravda” we mentioned that the military prosecutor married for the second time in 2014. He chose Irina Barakh, a well known businesswoman in Kherson, as his wife. She owns a range of companies in such industries as agriculture, construction and car sales.

Owing a large business lets her declare substantial income. In his tax return for 2014, Anatoly Matios claimed that his wife earned 34,743,000 UAH during that year – it’s more than 100 times as much as the military prosecutor himself earned during that period, his declared income being 264,000 UAH. Recently Irina Barakh has also started a legal services business.

On December 23, 2015, a new company was incorporated under the name of the “Law firm “Avellum Legas”. Among its shareholders is LLC “Polyexpo”, a company that in its turn has Irina Barakh as one of its shareholders.

Her share in the “Avellum Legas” company’s capital is 145,000 UAH.

Her partner in the new business is Viktor Vitalievich Bulyuk, with a registered residence in Skadovsk, Kherson region. He made a far less noticeable contribution to the common business — a mere 5,000 UAH.

Since January 11, 2016, the company has been directed by Inna Vladimirovna Rostalnaya.

A person with exactly this name, patronymic and surname used to work as the head of the legal department at the Kherson Customs Office.

The surname of Bulyuk, the "Avellum Legas” company’s shareholder, is well known in Kherson region.

Vitaly Viktorovich Bulyuk used to be the head of the Kherson Customs Office during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, and even long before it. The fugitive ex-president awarded Bulyuk the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland” III class. He was also an advisor to Igor Kaletnik while the latter was occupying the position of the Head of the Customs Services of Ukraine between 2010 and 2012.

In 2012, Kaletnik was elected to the parliament from the Communist Party of Ukraine where he held the position of the First Deputy Speaker.
 
During that time, Vitaly Bulyuk was elected to the Kherson Regional Council on behalf of the Communist Party.

After Yanukovych fled, the careers of Kaletnik and Bulyuk plummeted in different ways.

Kalentik’s situation was so bad that he was put on the wanted list by the General Prosecutor’s criminal investigators, on suspicion of his falsifying the vote for the notorious “dictator laws” of January 16, 2014 that triggered the bloody strife between the Maidan participants and the police.

Before those laws had been passed, the rally was generally peaceful by nature, yet after the laws facilitating the usurpation of power by Viktor Yanukovych had been passed, some rioters began acting in a more radical manner. Besides, the General Prosecutor Office of Ukraine, where Anatoly Matios is working, was also suspecting Kaletnik of taking a bribe of 8 million USD.

The media suggested that Kaletnik could be staying in the territory of the Russian Federation at present. As usual, nobody could prevent the high-level government official of Yanukovych’s ruling from fleeing Ukraine in order to escape arrest and prosecution.

For Vitaly Bulyuk, Maidan’s victory was not so hurtful. Up to 2015, he managed to keep his position at the Kherson Customs Office.

The former customs officer took the lead of the Kherson regional office of the political party “Nash Kray” (Our Land) – the project that united many members of the previous governmental team loyal to Petro Poroshenko, the current President of Ukraine.

Once again, Bulyuk was elected to the Regional Council, now from a different party. In his Biography section on the Kherson Regional Council website he mentioned that he had a son born in 1995, Viktor Vitalievich Bulyuk. Apparently, it was he who became a new business partner to the military prosecutor’s wife, Irina Barakh, in the legal services company “Avellum Legas”.
It is hardly believable that a young man aged 20 could become a business partner to such a business leader as Irina Barakh thanks to his personal skills only, least of all in an experience-driven industry like law.

Barakh, a business leader who does a large-scale trading of agricultural products, could not help but be acquainted with Bulyuk Sr., the former head of the regional customs office, and the office’s key executives.

Thus, the business of the military prosecutor’s family has become “relative” to that of the Kherson region’s former chief customs officer and the advisor to the fugitive Kaletnik.

So politics is good, but business will always be business.

New service "Explain Ukraine". This is a daily mailout of five articles which were written about the situation in the Donbas by Donbas journalists and translated into English. Honest vision of people who work in the field is unbiased and fresh which is crucial in the world which is full of desinformation and propaganda. We try to share this vision in out daily mailout.  You can subscribe here.

You can also join our Facebook community.