18. Zelensky and Portnov

The resounding victory over Poroshenko not only uplifted the newly elected president but also those who awaited the election results from abroad. On May 16, 2019, not waiting for the official inauguration, Kolomoisky returned to Ukraine for the first time in two years. After being dismissed from the position of head of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Administration, he initially lived in Switzerland and then, fearing arrest and extradition to the USA, moved to Israel, which does not extradite its citizens at the request of other states. According to Ukrainian law enforcement, the former owner of PrivatBank obtained an Israeli passport back in 1995. There, in the resort city of Herzliya, Kolomoisky lived until Zelensky’s victory.

Under Poroshenko, the oligarch’s problems were not limited to PrivatBank. From March to August 2015, parallel to the withdrawal of more than $5 billion from PrivatBank, Kolomoisky executed a scheme to plunder the state-owned “Ukrnafta,” where he was a minority shareholder but controlled the management. The leaders of this company illegally transferred oil worth over 10 billion hryvnias ($450 million) to five private companies, but “Ukrnafta” did not receive any funds for it.

In July 2015, the scheme was repeated in reverse. Kolomoisky’s management transferred more than 3 billion hryvnias ($135 million) from “Ukrnafta’s” accounts to shell companies for the supply of oil products. As you might have guessed, the company received neither the oil products nor a refund.

Three days after Kolomoisky’s plane landed in Kyiv, another controversial figure returned to Ukraine — Andriy Portnov, the former deputy head of Yanukovych’s Administration. During all five years of Poroshenko’s presidency, he lived in exile: first in Moscow, then in Vienna.

Portnov has an interesting biography. Born and raised in Luhansk, in the early 90s, while still studying at the local university’s correspondence department, he started working as a lawyer for an oil trading company. In 1997, 24-year-old Andriy Portnov moved to Kyiv, where he somehow obtained a position in the State Commission for Securities and Stock Market. Strangely, just a few months after his appointment, he began to rapidly climb the career ladder. At 28, Portnov became a head of the corporate finance department in this organization.

And then the promising career of the young provincial lawyer suddenly comes to a halt. A year after his appointment, Portnov resigned from public service and went into private business. He opened his own legal practice specializing in investment transactions, including those of a rather dubious nature. Around this time, Andriy Portnov met Kolomoisky and Medvedchuk.

In 2005, Portnov began to actively engage in politics and became the head of the legal department of Yulia Tymoshenko’s election campaign. According to former presidential candidate Mykhailo Brodsky, controversial politician and businessman Bohdan Hubsky, repeatedly accused of raiding property, brought Portnov into the prime minister’s staff.

Tymoshenko, as a politician, was always characterized by her indiscriminate choice of team members. Then, in 2005-2009, she hardly cared about the biography and views of her associates. The main thing was the benefit this person could bring. And since Portnov proved to be an effective lobbyist, he got a place on the party list of Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc and became a member of parliament in 2006.

After Yanukovych’s victory in 2010, Andriy Portnov quickly left Tymoshenko’s team and switched to working for the new president − as a deputy head of the President’s Administration.

What makes Andriy Portnov interesting in our story is that he created and controlled for many years an illegal system of influence on the courts. Initially, this was done through bribes, blackmail, or threats. Then, when Portnov became part of Yanukovych’s team, he personally selected and approved judicial candidates.

The Ukrainian law enforcement system was so flawed that Portnov managed to control the courts even when he was in opposition to President Yushchenko. And incredibly, he managed to push through the necessary court decisions even after fleeing Ukraine in 2014. Of course, things got a bit more complicated during Poroshenko’s years, but Portnov still had strong connections in the judiciary.

The former deputy head of Yanukovych’s Administration never hid his hatred for everything related to Ukrainian national revival. However, that’s a side, moral aspect of this case. But here’s what’s curious. After Zelensky came to power, people associated with Portnov appeared in his Administration (renamed almost immediately to the President’s Office): Andriy Smyrnov and Oleh Tatarov. They became deputies of the President’s Office, responsible for interactions with courts and law enforcement agencies. As it turned out later, the new president liked the idea of influencing Ukrainian courts. Now, Portnov’s judges served the interests of not Yanukovych, but Zelensky.

Even more interestingly, in the summer of 2019, Portnov began publishing information on the progress of the pre-trial investigation against former President Petro Poroshenko in his Telegram channel. He shared information that could only be possessed by the head of the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI), Roman Truba, and published this information before the head of the SBI did.

When Roman Truba was asked how Portnov was the first to receive official information from the State Bureau of Investigations, he simply could not explain anything. The leak of information continued for several more weeks. It seemed that Portnov was simply mocking everyone, flaunting his capabilities.

From all this, one thing was clear: the new president Zelensky not only took a pro-Russian official from Yanukovych’s team into his own but effectively gave him control over the key pre-trial investigation agency.

There is ample reason to believe that in February 2022, in the event of the capture of Kyiv by Russian troops, Andriy Portnov, along with the head of the Kyiv District Administrative Court (KDAC) Pavlo Vovk, was supposed to facilitate the return to power of former President Yanukovych. This is evidenced by the fact that on January 14, 2022, a month before the full-scale invasion, the KDAC accepted and opened proceedings on Yanukovych’s lawsuit against the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

In his lawsuit, the fugitive, by then sentenced in absentia to 13 years in prison, demanded the illegality of his removal from the presidency be recognized. The District Administrative Court not only opened the proceedings on this case but also scheduled the case for consideration in a simplified procedure, without summoning the parties and holding a court session. That is, the court’s decision on this lawsuit could have been made at almost any moment.

The hearing on the case was scheduled for February 16, 2022 — the very day that, according to US intelligence, was considered the start of the war. But, as we know, there was no invasion that day. Most likely, Putin promised Xi Jinping not to start the war until the end of the Olympics in Beijing. Joyfully, Zelensky thought everything was over and declared February 16 a new national holiday, Unity Day. Probably, from the point of view of an experienced comedian, a holiday was exactly what everyone needed at that moment.

On February 16, the District Administrative Court of Kyiv postponed the hearing on Yanukovych’s lawsuit against the Ukrainian parliament indefinitely. It did not close the proceedings but announced that the consideration of the case would be notified additionally. Undoubtedly, the trial was supposed to take place. But only after Kyiv was captured by Russian troops. KDAC chairman Pavlo Vovk, along with his long-time curator Andriy Portnov, were supposed to “sanctify” the court decision to return Viktor Yanukovych to power, making him the legitimate president after Zelensky’s flight or assassination.

Formally, these are only suspicions, and someone might well call all this a coincidence. After the start of the war, Portnov and Vovk still remained good friends of the Ukrainian power system. Although they have been under US sanctions for several years, Zelensky’s Office has no complaints against them.

>>> 19. On Guard for Kolomoisky’s Interests

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