Gennady Sikalov: what made Zlochevsky’s ex-adviser famous and the trail of criminal cases

Gennady Sikalov is a well-known figure in Poltava, positioning himself as a public activist and exposer of corruption in the city’s government offices.

He began his political career in 2006 as a voluntary assistant to People's Deputy from the Party of Regions Nikolai Lisin, an oligarch and business partner of ex-Minister of Ecology Nikolai Zlochevsky. But already in 2007 he found himself in the opposite political camp and became an assistant to Sergei Kharovsky (Our Ukraine - People's Self-Defense Bloc).

Sikalov’s political star began to fade in 2009, when NJSC “Nedra Ukrayiny”, as part of the reorganization process, decided to liquidate one of its 14 subsidiaries, the State Enterprise “Poltavaneftegazgeologiya”.

The general director of the enterprise, Gennady Sikalov, resisted and even tried to organize a “Maidan” under the Cabinet of Ministers. But this did not give a positive result; the company went bankrupt, leaving behind multimillion-dollar wage debts.

For many Poltava residents, Gennady Sikalov is remembered as an ex-rader of the Minister of Geology and Natural Resources during the time of Yanukovych. Today, many say that Sikalov earns his living because of blackmail and media attacks on businessmen.

The scheme is banal - he places several publications in the media and offers to stop the attack for a tidy sum.

Here are a few facts from Sikalov’s biography:

• in the early 1990s he was in prison for racketeering
• in 1999 fatally wounded a man
• was an assistant to the people's deputy from the Party of Regions
• thanks to forged documents, he took a high government position
• was on the interstate wanted list

As we found out during journalistic investigations, a sand quarry in the Poltava region was raided

The crowning achievement of Sikalov’s political career was his participation in the mayoral elections in 2015. One way or another, but with a more than modest result of 0.85%, Sikalov “flew” past the much-coveted mayoral seat and focused on the so-called “public work.”

He became the initiator and participant in numerous scandals at sessions of the regional and city councils.