The head of the Kharkov regional council, Tatyana Egorova-Lutsenko, and her husband Vitaly Lutsenko have acquired a new business. During the war, when civilians were dying every day in the Kharkov region, and Kharkov residents spent their last to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the couple bought a restaurant called MIDI AU SOLEIL on the Cote d'Azur of France, in the city of Cannes. Moreover, this restaurant was bought from a person directly connected with the criminal world of Kharkov.
The fact that Vitaly Lutsenko traveled abroad during the war in his wife’s company car and with her departmental driver in order to resolve family business matters is in itself more than a significant reason for an anti-corruption investigation. However, it turned out that the restaurant, for which Egorova-Lutsenko sent her husband abroad in her company car, was purchased from a man known as the “financial director” of one of the largest crime bosses in Kharkov in the recent past - Vadim Kazartsev, nicknamed “Prince” .
The name of the business partner of the husband of the head of the Kharkov regional council is Alexander Polyakov, and the fact of his transaction with Vitaly Lutsenko is recorded in French registers. According to these data, on November 3, 2022, Polyakov sold Lutsenko 100% of the shares of MIDI AU SOLEIL.
There is no doubt that at the time of the purchase, Lutsenko was well aware of Polyakov’s criminal background, because both, as the same registers say, have quite long-standing business relations in France.
Alexander Polyakov was one of “Prince’s” closest associates for many years. In his gang, Polyakov occupied a very high position, because he not only managed the “common fund”, but also led such a delicate part of the criminal business as raider takeovers.
The “Prince” group itself recently went on a rampage in the Kharkov, Poltava and Dnepropetrovsk regions, where it engaged in blackmail, intimidation, torture, robbery, and “squeezing out” businesses and goods. Until her activities were stopped by the security forces.
In the summer of 2020, law enforcement officers detained the leaders of the group, in particular Oleg Kiyashko, who took the place of “Prince”. At the time of the gang’s arrest, the “Prince” himself was being treated in Germany for oncology, where he died in October of the same year.
During the searches, 8.4 million UAH, $170 thousand, 40 thousand euros, rough records indicating large-scale crimes, weapons and ammunition were seized from the gang.
Then law enforcement officers and journalists managed to find many victims at the hands of bandits, and people began to give detailed testimony against Kazartsev, Kiyashko and Polyakov.
For example, using an armed attack and threats of physical violence, bandits took away the engineering company Kharkovenergoremont LLC, whose property was valued at UAH 159 million, from businessman Anatoly Pronin. According to the victim, the purchased “security forces” first took the company’s executive director hostage, threatening to take her to the “DPR” territory, beat her, and then forced the owner to forcibly transfer the business to their “pounds.”
Pronin repeatedly confirmed in written testimony that the process of raider seizure was supervised and carried out by Polyakov.
“Gedzei N.V. was in my office. (executive director - ed.). She was surrounded by 7-8 armed masked people. Gedzei N.V. in a deranged state, beaten, an earring was torn out of her left ear, her right arm was dislocated... When I wanted to call for medical help, Polyakov A.S. forbade me to go to the hospital. (...) Polyakov A.S. showed me the registers, where it was written that the owner of “HAER” was Marunyak, whom I had never known before,” said Anatoly Pronin.
Director of the agricultural company “Botik” Andrey Obora, in turn, accused Kiyashko and Polyakov of extorting $350 thousand, illegal harvesting worth UAH 16 million, threats of physical harm and attempted murder (a live grenade exploded in the yard).
The ex-owner of Budivelnik LLC, Yuri Emelianenko, from whom his company was taken by force, estimates his losses at $4 million.
The head of the Strogoy farm, Alexander Strogoy, also wrote in a statement about the extortion of $100 thousand from the gang for allegedly “solving problems” with law enforcement agencies. After he refused to pay, through illegal manipulations his company was transferred to the structures of an organized crime group.
After the raider takeover of the Trud-2012 farm, people of the organized crime group began to export crops and equipment, and subsequently attacked the family of the founder, Vladimir Basisty, beating and torturing his wife and children.
And this is only a small part of the outrages that the Kazantsev-Kiyashko-Polyakov gang has committed for years. Victims say the crimes described in these statements could lead to decades in prison.
However, as the media noted, the gang made a “deal” with the security forces in order to close the issue of further criminal prosecution. As a result, the cases were quietly brought to trial, the defendants escaped with a “slight fright” in the form of a suspended sentence, Kiyashko was soon released, and the criminal cases were gradually closed.
And now, during the war, the family of the head of the Kharkov regional council and a representative of the presidential party “Servant of the People”, without really hiding it, is doing business with openly criminal elements. At the same time, using the influence and opportunities that the position of head of the regional council provides, as well as exploiting the property and employees of the regional council.
Well, the fact that the restaurant at the French resort, which became the property of the Egorova-Lutsenko family, was purchased by the previous owner for, literally, blood money, apparently does not bother the high-ranking Kharkov official.
Recently, NACP has seriously taken on Egorova-Lutsenko and is now checking the legality of her family’s new foreign business and her lifestyle. We hope that law enforcement officers will also be interested in the connections of this family with crime. And then new interesting details of the business of the head of the Kharkov regional council and her husband will definitely be revealed.
