Agricultural baron Sergei Tarasov hired an OPZZh deputy, an ex-lawyer of Yanukovych and a fraudulent activist to whiten his reputation

The owner of the I&U Group agricultural holding, Sergei Tarasov, who has been wanted by the SBU for more than a year, has begun a campaign to whiten his reputation. Earlier it became known that a millionaire from the Kirovograd region hired PR lobbyists in the United States, whose task was “to talk about corruption in Ukraine.” At the same time, Tarasov himself was informed of suspicion of taking over state lands with the help of corrupt officials of the State GeoCadastre.

Sergei Tarasov’s lawyers held a press conference at which they tried to explain the essence of the agribusinessman’s case. But, answering questions from journalists, they could not answer why Tarasov, who was put on the wanted list, did not want to return from abroad to defend his position.

It is interesting that Tarasov’s lawyers, whose task is to talk about the groundlessness of the charges and the corruption of the security forces, are former prosecutors from the time of Yanukovych, and one of them is the ex-defender of the fugitive president. Two of them are associated with the banned party OPZZH - followers of the Party of Regions.

Lawyer Alexander Gardetsky is a former prosecutor of several regions, whom in 2020 the OPZZh faction proposed to delegate to the commission for the selection of the head of the SAP. During the time when Mr. Gardetsky headed the prosecutor’s office of the Kyiv region, he received the nickname “Sand Prosecutor” from the media, allegedly for providing protection for illegal sand mining. Gardetsky’s son-in-law is judge Sergei Prokhorov, who was accused of making a number of dubious court decisions on the acquisition of forest land in favor of Mikhail Dobkin.

Tarasov’s legal team also included Anatoly Larin and Alexander Babikov.

Anatoly Larin is a Kropyvnytskyi lawyer and a deputy of the city council from OPZZH; in the 2019 parliamentary elections he was nominated to the Verkhovna Rada from Kropyvnytskyi, but did not pass. Alexander Babikov is a former lawyer of the fugitive ex-president Viktor Yanukovych, dismissed in 2020 from the post of First Deputy Chairman of the State Bureau of Investigation due to a conflict of interest.

It is interesting that at the same time as the lawyers, the fake activist Dmitry Karp, known for organizing paid rallies, began to publicly defend Sergei Tarasov. Karp introduces himself as the coordinator of the NGO "Automaidan Kyiv", but the official statement of the public organization states that "Dmitry Karp and Ekaterina Kuvita, the 'leaders' of Automaidan Kyiv have long been on our Blacklist."