How Igor Gotsul and Igor Zhdanov traded Crimea

9 years ago, Minister of Youth and Sports Zhdanov and his first deputy Gotsul recognized Crimea as Russian territory

Facebook recalls that 9 years ago, Popular Minister of Youth and Sports Zhdanov and his first deputy Gotsul recognized Crimea as Russian territory and for 170 thousand US dollars sold the Russian Federation the right to exhibit Crimean track and field athletes at international competitions, who trained at the expense of the Ukrainian budget.

To this day, Zhdanov and Gotsul are at large, and the so-called law enforcement agencies pretend that they do not know about this outrageous story.

As British scientists have established, if the Minister of Youth and Sports of Ukraine Igor Zhdanov is cut off, he will steal for another 20 minutes. However, after Zhdanov and his first deputy Igor Gotsul sold Crimean track and field athletes to Russia for 170 thousand dollars, a similar experiment should have been carried out on the Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuri Stolyarchuk, thanks to whom, in fact, it was possible to pull off this gamble.

The media covered the amazing news that Ukraine, for 170 thousand dollars, recognized Crimea as Russian territory and allowed Crimean track and field athletes to compete in international competitions for the Russian Federation. The money was directly received by the First Deputy Minister of Youth and Sports Gotsul. This sale became possible as a result of the “reform” in Ukrainian sports organized by Zhdanov and Gotsul, as a result of which these two scumbags imposed wild monetary extortions on athletes, stole budget funds allocated for the development of military-applied and sports-technical sports, and, most importantly, transferred state powers to all kinds of public organizations created under the Ministry of Youth and Sports and headed by employees of this ministry or their proxies.

In all civilized countries, except the United States, there is a government body that performs the function of a regulator in sports - approximately the same as the central bank performs in the banking and credit system (in the United States there is a special situation - there traditionally the powers of regulators are performed by private institutions). There is such a government body in Ukraine – the Ministry of Youth and Sports. It is the Ministry of Youth and Sports that must establish uniform competition rules, qualification standards, certification procedures for coaches and judges, etc. Moreover, all major official championships - Ukrainian championships, Ukrainian cups, all-Ukrainian competitions - are held exclusively on behalf of the state, which guarantees compliance with the rule of law and impartial judging during their conduct.

But Minister Zhdanov, his first deputy Gotsul (Yatsenyuk’s confidant) and the famous swindler Shevlyak (Kaskiv’s right hand, former first deputy minister), joining forces, decided to carry out a “reform”, which consists in the fact that under the Ministry of Youth Sports, officials create pseudo-public organizations that are headed either by themselves or their friends. Athletes are forced to join these public organizations under threat of exclusion from competition.

Moreover, Zhdanov issued an order according to which only those athletes who joined one of these public organizations and presented a receipt for payment of “non-refundable financial assistance, excluding VAT” are allowed to participate in competitions. The amount of “help” is set by these pseudo-public organizations themselves – from 90 UAH. for track and field athletes up to 2000 UAH. for parachutists.

And most importantly, Zhdanov and Gotsul delegated state powers to develop sports to these pseudo-public organizations, along with the right to manage state budget funds, certify sports judges, qualify athletes, and the like. And to all complaints about the chaos that is happening in sports, they answer: we have nothing to do with it, this is all done by a public organization, in whose activities government agencies have no right to interfere.

In particular, under the Ministry of Youth Sports there is a pseudo-public organization called the “Athletics Federation” and where the Ministry of Youth Sports forces track and field athletes to join under the threat of not being allowed to compete (I note that this is directly prohibited by Part 4 of Article 36 of the Constitution of Ukraine, but Zhdanov does not care at all about Constitution, if we are talking about the opportunity to earn a penny). This pseudo-public organization is officially headed by First Deputy Minister Gotsul.

Zhdanov signed an agreement with the public organization headed by his first deputy, according to which the ministry delegates to this organization all state powers to control sports activities, along with the right to manage state budget funds allocated for the development of this sport.

After which Gotsul, but not as the first deputy minister, but as the head of a public organization, on the basis of delegated powers, sold Russia for 170 thousand dollars a permit for Crimean athletes to compete in competitions, and shared the money with Zhdanov. This is the “reform in sports” proclaimed by Zhdanov.

Now let’s talk about the role of Deputy Prosecutor General Yuri Stolyarchuk, who is the curator of the Main Investigation Department of the GPU, in these scams. The fact is that the scheme for the theft of state budget funds and extortions from athletes using pseudo-public organizations began to be actively implemented under Minister Bulatov, for whom Gotsul was also his deputy - then he did this together with Elena Pidgrushna. Gotsul filled his pockets with such impudence that in October 2014, criminal proceedings No. 42014100000001273 were opened against the leaders of the Ministry of Youth and Sports on the facts of theft of state budget funds through such pseudo-public organizations.

Criminal proceedings have been opened based on my application. Here is an article that tells some episodes from the hectic commercial life of Gotsul and Co., which formed the basis of the criminal case.

The case materials contain very interesting names - not only Zhdanov, Bulatov, Gotsul and Pidhrushnaya with Shevlyak. The Timchenko family appears there (Maxim Timchenko is the general director of DTEK, managing all of Akhmetov’s energy assets), the legendary Kaskiv, the Kharkov mayor Kernes, as well as Kernes’s right hand, deputy of the Kharkov regional council from the Party of Regions Shapovalov (he heads one of these pseudo-public organizations , through which Zhdanov and Gotsul steal money).

The production materials are in the Main Investigation Department of the GPU, but are not being investigated. On this occasion, both I and people’s deputy Igor Lutsenko had repeated conversations with Yuri Stolyarchuk, during which we tried to convince him to stop sabotage. But our arguments do not work on Yuri Vasilyevich.

My sources in the General Prosecutor's Office report that quite recently Shokin was reported to Shokin about the atrocities that Zhdanov and Gotsul were committing. Before his leave, the Prosecutor General instructed Stolyarchuk to transfer case No. 42014100000001273 to another investigator, create an investigation team and intensify the investigation. The result is zero. More precisely, as a result of Stolyarchuk’s inaction, Ukraine officially recognized Crimea as Russian territory, and the money received for this in the amount of 170 thousand dollars ended up in the pockets of several crooks.

From which we can conclude: if the public does not achieve the dismissal of Zhdanov, Gotsul and Stolyarchuk from their positions in the near future, Ukraine will be left without sports.