March 6, 2015

Key Yanukovych ally, facing criminal charges, commits suicide

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KYIV – Mykhailo Chechetov, a key functionary in the Party of Regions most famous for leading the January 2014 vote in the Verkhovna Rada for what was dubbed the dictatorship laws, was found dead on February 28 outside a Kyiv high-rise building. He fell from his 17-floor apartment in what was determined by police to be suicide.

Just a week earlier, a Kyiv court had ordered that Mr. Chechetov, 61, be placed under house arrest following criminal charges filed on February 20 by prosecutors for leading the illegal vote in the Verkhovna Rada to impose laws severely restricting the basic freedoms of Ukrainian citizens amid the Euro-Maidan protest.

Prosecutors determined there weren’t enough votes to approve the laws and the vote by show of hands was fraudulent. Mr. Chechetov took part in counting those votes. Several hours before the suicide, Procurator General Viktor Shokin said in a television interview that more criminal charges were being considered.

Yet the notorious January vote was merely the tip of the iceberg in Mr. Chechetov’s political career serving the Party of Regions as its deputy parliamentary faction head since 2006. He was nicknamed the party’s “dyryhent” (the conductor) because it was his job to instruct the deputies of the parliamentary faction to support or reject a particular bill under consideration.

He did this for many years by raising his hands as he sat in the front rows of the Rada’s session hall. A horizontally extended left arm meant not to vote. An arm lifted vertically meant to vote in favor.

When the Ukrayinska Pravda news site informed him in 2010 that no civilized country has a Parliament that behaves this way, he remarked, “It’s normal. A united position is produced in this way. We’re fulfilling our program.”

Given his key role in Parliament, Mr. Chechetov was privy to many key decisions within the party, political experts said.

“He merely fulfilled the will of others, but there are a lot of individuals from the high leadership of the previous government who were interested in him disappearing and not telling anything to investigators,” said Oleksandr Palii, a Kyiv political author. “Chechetov could have been a carrier of information who posed a threat to former state officials from Yanukovych’s team.”

Anton Gerashchenko, a spokesman for the Internal Affairs Ministry, said Mr. Chechetov could have received threats since his release from prison since his corrupt cohorts could have been concerned that he would reveal their crimes and testify against them.

Indeed, they were well aware that after the first Maidan in 2004 Mr. Chechetov cooperated with prosecutors in revealing information, particularly with Mr. Shokin, the deputy procurator general who is now procurator general.

In particular, Mr. Chechetov served as the head of the State Property Fund when it reached its most scandalous decision in June 2004 to sell Ukraine’s biggest steel plant, Kryvorizhstal, to oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Victor Pinchuk at far below market price. (Mr. Chechetov headed the fund from April 2003 to April 2005.)

“At his first questioning in 2005, he revealed [former President Leonid] Kuchma’s illegal scheme to privatize Kryvorizhstal, having given the direct order to sell it to Akhmetov-Pinchuk at a depressed price,” Mr. Gerashchenko said. “Under Yushchenko, he evaded criminal responsibility. But now, it’s apparent that he understood he had no chances to avoid punishment. And he didn’t want to sit in prison at his age with all his ailments.”

Mr. Shokin knew that Mr. Chechetov is a person who offers testimony without problems, having been involved in the investigations in 2005, said Taras Chornovil, a former Party of Regions insider and political expert. He had access to information and decisions that were passed in the closed-door meetings of the Regions, particularly with regard to the second Maidan.”

He knew so much that he was safer in prison than out on the streets, Mr. Palii commented. Yet he was released from house arrest on February 23 after three days of incarceration.

Russian billionaire-turned-Ukrainian citizen Vadim Novinsky, a national deputy with the Opposition Bloc, is reported to have posted his bail of 5 million hrv ($180,000).

“The pressure began right after Novinsky posted bail,” Mr. Chornovil said. “Chechetov is a weak person who quickly caves in. They told him, ‘We posted your bail, so you can’t spill everything.’ They pressured him morally and could have hinted at problems for his family. But if Chechetov kept silent, he could have ended up in prison. So the step out of the window was a way out of the situation.”

Indeed, Mr. Chechetov fell into a deep depression when a criminal case was opened against him, reported Mr. Gerashchenko, according to what Mr. Chechetov’s wife told police. “She woke up at 1:30 a.m. Not finding her husband beside her, she searched the whole apartment and saw on the second floor an open window and her husband’s slippers,” he said.

He left behind a suicide note, posted on the Internet, in which he stated, “No moral strength is left to live any longer. I am going. I think it will be better for everyone this way. Thanks to everyone for their support.”

Mr. Chechetov is the second former State Property Fund head to die not from natural causes. Valentyna Semeniuk-Samsonenko, who served between April 2005 and December 2008, was found dead in August in her suburban Kyiv home with a bullet wound to her head from a rifle. Police opened a criminal case for murder.

As a Party of Regions functionary, Mr. Chechetov was involved in all its run-of-the-mill corruption and impudence towards the public. He engaged in vote-buying during the 2012 parliamentary elections when visiting the Chernihiv Oblast and joined local state officials in openly campaigning for the Party of Regions and distributing gifts at a state-sponsored event.

He attacked the Euro-Maidan protests from the very start, blaming its participants for bringing the beatings upon themselves for failing to clear the square to set up the Christmas tree.

“They ruined and soiled everything, and rats will soon be running across the Maidan,” he said after the November 30, 2014, beatings that ignited the Euro-Maidan movement. “And children are supposed to come from throughout Ukraine. A child could have been brought for once in seven years. She could have seen the Khreshchatyk, New Year’s in Kyiv, the Christmas tree, ice skated. They stole a slice of happiness from these kids.”

He later claimed the Maidan was full of drunks. When activist (now national deputy) Tetiana Chornovol was brutally beaten, he blamed Svoboda party nationalists.

A native of Russia, Mr. Chechetov was also hostile to Ukrainian language and culture, and stoked ethnic tensions.

During the Euro-Maidan, he compared the Halychyna region to Nazi Germany. His contempt for all things Ukrainians was demonstrated when he said in February 2013 it was inappropriate to wear embroidered shirts (vyshyvanky) to Parliament. “The natives want to force us to come to Parliament in embroidered shirts, yet its rules state that a national deputy is supposed to show up in a suit and tie,” he said on the “Shuster Live” political talk show on TV.

At the next session, dozens of deputies showed up in their vyshyvanky.

“He didn’t hide his pro-Russian views and believed that without Russia, its market and friendly relations, it would be impossible to build an independent Ukraine. He supported an authoritarian government,” Volodymyr Latsev, who worked with Mr. Chechetov for six years as his advisor at the State Property Fund, told the gazeta.ua website.

Grieving family members, including his wife and daughter, and leaders of the Opposition Bloc, attended his March 2 funeral.

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