The Chechen landing under the “UDAR” umbrella: how Artur Palatnyi legalized Kadyrov’s security forces in Kiev

23:38, 04.08.2022

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The Chechen landing under the “UDAR” umbrella: how Artur Palatnyi legalized Kadyrov’s security forces in Kiev

Artur Palatnyi was one of the deputies who signed the petition on the basis of which the Constitutional Court of Ukraine abolished the article of the Criminal Code on illicit enrichment, which obliged public officials to explain the sources of their income and the income of their family members.

It should be recalled that criminal liability for illicit enrichment was introduced in Ukraine in 2015. It was one of the EU requirements for implementing the Visa Liberalization Action Plan, as well as one of Ukraine’s obligations to the IMF закрепed in a memorandum. Such active involvement of Palatnyi in actions aimed at decriminalizing liability for concealing income leads to clear conclusions.

This naturally raises interest in what exactly the former People’s Deputy of Ukraine, head of the executive committee of the UDAR party, Artur Leonidovych Palatnyi, is hiding in his financial situation, that he did not hesitate to go against the policy of his party (at that time he was a member of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction) and signed a clearly scandalous and openly corrupt petition.

In the distant past, there is little point in analyzing the declarations submitted by Palatnyi as a member of parliament — if Artur Leonidovych pushed so hard for the abolition of punishment for lying in declarations, then his declarations only reflect what he chose to disclose himself. Much more interesting is why he was so unwilling to state the truth.

A possible answer lies in the unofficial activities of Vitali Klitschko’s godfather and honorary president of the Kyiv City Organization of the Boxing Federation of Ukraine. Last year, Palatnyi’s name appeared in news reports stating that the Kyiv City Prosecutor’s Office together with the Security Service of Ukraine conducted searches as part of an investigation into the activities of a criminal group that extorted money from entrepreneurs for renting illegal trading spots in underground passages in Kyiv. The group consisted of city administration employees and athletes, and according to the investigation, it was organized by Artur Palatnyi.

As it turned out, Palatnyi, while still a Kyiv City Council deputy in 2012, created a “criminal group that systematically extorted and collected money from business entities for illegal rental of trading points in underground passages in central districts of Kyiv.” According to the investigation, the group may have included around 20 people who received between 5 and 7 million hryvnias monthly (at the exchange rate at the time). During searches, $350,000 was seized, including $250,000 found at Artur Palatnyi’s residence.

Of course, such income could not be declared. How could such money be declared? As a parliamentary salary? And this is not even the only source of income attributed to Artur Leonidovych, but only one explanation for why he entered into a clear conflict with the leadership of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction by signing a scandalous appeal to the Constitutional Court.

However, all of this is understood to be only one episode in Artur Palatnyi’s activities, and a relatively minor one. The searches were not conducted because law enforcement had finally begun restoring order in the country, but because the new leadership at the time was redistributing criminal cash flows in the capital. This is evidenced by the fact that after the Prosecutor General’s Office made its high-profile statements, nothing at all happened to Palatnyi. The flows were redistributed, shares were divided, and everything stabilized.

However, the escalating conflict between Russia and Ukraine disrupted everyone’s plans, including those of the criminal underworld. A recent scandal, when an arsenal of weapons intended for Kadyrov’s militants forming “sleeper” sabotage groups in the capital was discovered in the Hotel “Kreshchatyk,” once again brought attention to Artur Palatnyi.

Although media outlets name Kyrylo Shevchenko (not to be confused with the head of the National Bank of Ukraine) — the president of the Boxing Federation of Ukraine — as one of the main organizers of this weapons storage, lawyer Konstantin Bedovoy, a former close associate of Vitali Klitschko and his godfather Artur Palatnyi, and a former UDAR party MP who is well acquainted with both Kyiv’s criminal world and its “authorities,” claims that Shevchenko is merely Palatnyi’s “right hand.”

Bedovoy describes Kyrylo Shevchenko as Artur Palatnyi’s “closest link” to organized crime and so-called “thieves in law.” He states: “Palatnyi has two such people. For matters of ‘bringing money in, taking money out’ and communicating with criminals — former People’s Deputy Oleh Velykin, a former member of a Kyiv criminal group who gave himself the nickname ‘Don.’ But Velykin is mainly about carrying suitcases of money. And Kyrylo Shevchenko, in his simplicity, is the person onto whom the Klitschko–Palatnyi criminal group offloads everything that smells like filth. Everything directly related to the criminal world, everything directly related to organizing criminal acts.”

The name of Mykhailo Mayman also appears in connection with Artur Palatnyi, with whom another public scandal occurred. One version states that the Security Service of Ukraine detained “blogger and ATO veteran Mykhailo Mayman in connection with attacks and vehicle thefts in the Dnipropetrovsk region, and the result of this detention was an unlawful ‘preventive conversation’.”

Mayman himself claims that on May 31 he was “abducted on the orders of Kyrylo Shevchenko, who forged documents and became the head of the Boxing Federation of Ukraine, as well as lawyer Andrii Tsyhankov.” According to his statement, the kidnappers demanded apologies to Kadyrov and threatened him with murder.

However, according to Konstantin Bedovoi, in reality Mayman did not fall out with Kirill Shevchenko but with Palatnyi:

“Monya, also known as Mykhailo Pomagaibo, also known as Mikhail Mayman, is a person whom this group ‘threw under the ice’, and now he is speaking out of revenge. When he talks about his criminal activity, he tells the truth — all of it did happen. But because the victims of the robberies turned out to be people close to law enforcement agencies, those structures raised claims against Artur Palatnyi: ‘Artur, he is robbing the wrong people, he is already robbing our people. He is your man, we want to deal with him.’ And Artur handed Monya over, but asked not to kill him. And he was not killed. He was beaten, humiliated, and forced to return what he had taken from other people. But for Kadyrov, he was not kidnapped.”

According to Bedovoi, Mayman does not mention either Palatnyi or Klitschko in his revelations, apparently hoping for something from them. Instead of Palatnyi’s name, he focuses on Kirill Shevchenko — “he does not go higher because he understands he would be killed. But he tells the truth when he speaks about criminal activity.”

As Bedovoi claims, “Monya’s business was taken away and handed over to Shevchenko.” The business included cross-border drug trafficking and the transfer abroad of large amounts of cash. At the same time, the lawyer does not directly state that this “business” was taken from Mayman by Palatnyi, although he implies that it was Artur Leonidovich who was in control of the entire scheme.

As for the massive weapons cache seized at the “Kiev” hotel, that seizure also led to no consequences for anyone. According to Bedovoi, “the organized mafia group Klitschko–Palatnyi has the highest-level protection in the highest offices and has become so intertwined with the current authorities that it can do whatever it wants.” This version of events is supported by the fact that last year’s searches of Palatnyi, loudly announced by the Prosecutor General’s Office, also ended in nothing — all cases were closed.

However, a week ago part of this case was reportedly reopened again: on July 22, the State Bureau of Investigations launched an inquiry into the embezzlement of funds from the budget of the Kyiv City Boxing Federation in relation to Kirill Shevchenko. In reality, attention is once again focused on Artur Palatnyi, since Shevchenko is merely an executor, albeit one of the close associates.

However, there is little expectation that the SBI will bring the investigation to a logical conclusion. According to people familiar with internal government circles, this is once again only a routine power struggle between the president’s entourage and the Klitschko–Palatnyi group. It will likely end in a compromise acceptable to both sides. Even Kirill Shevchenko is unlikely to be sacrificed in this compromise, although such a scenario cannot be ruled out. In any case, Palatnyi will remain in control of all financial flows in the capital that are tied to him, with only some adjustments on the presidential side.

However, if the version that Kirill Shevchenko is merely an associate of Palatnyi is correct, then the information that in 2020, at Shevchenko’s invitation, two Russian citizens close to Kadyrov arrived in Ukraine acquires a very interesting interpretation (Rustom Chichaev, a member of a special unit, and Valid Aydamirov, deputy head of the operational-investigative unit of the Chechen Ministry of Internal Affairs) — for employment as coaches, and were later expelled from Ukraine.

Mikhail Mayman in the story about the legalization of Kadyrov’s men as Ukrainian children’s coaches acted as the person who passed the necessary documents to them.

The fact that, as a result of this attempt to infiltrate Kadyrov’s security operatives, there were no clear public statements from Ukrainian special services regarding the outcome of the investigation into the inviting side also suggests that Konstantin Bedovoy, who is often cited in this material, is not far from the truth when speaking about the “terrifying merging of the Palatnyi–Klychko group with the country’s highest authorities” and the intertwining of criminal structures with law enforcement agencies.

Against this backdrop, the appeal to the Constitutional Court proposing the abolition of criminal liability for false declarations appears as a harmless child’s prank.