The recent revelations by Borys Penchuk, complainant in the “White Swan” case wherein Borys Kolesnikov (one of the party of Regions leaders) was arrested in 2005, sound illogical, to say the least. First, the man claims publicly that two years ago he lied to the entire nation, thus compromising his integrity in general and his latest statements, in particular. Second, Penchuk, in fact, acknowledges he committed a crime by deliberately misleading the investigation in Kolesnikov’s case and perjuring. Third, the timing for his catharsis seems ill-considered. The Prosecutor General’s Office controlled by the Party of Regions has recently instituted criminal proceedings against him for providing false evidence. And now that there is a fair chance of getting the Prosecutor General replaced and the case investigated in a more or less unbiased manner. Borys Penchuk appears on TV and confesses, with roving eyes, to the offence he is incriminated in. His behaviour seems completely devoid of logic, unless it is politically motivated. So let us look into the political logic of the latest developments in the case.

The Party of Regions’ official statement that followed Penchuk’s press conference is symptomatic. It keeps silent about the man who accused Kolesnikov two years ago and has now admitted he lied. Instead, its every line hits Lutsenko. More than that, the statement transforms the “crook and extortionist” Penchuk (as qualified by Kolesnikov in 2005) into a person who “allegedly accused Borys Kolesnikov” under duress brought to bear by Lutsenko. In the same vein, Penchuk justified his suicidal exposé with his desire to stop Yuriy Loutsenko from returning to the Ministry of Interior.

Thus, the Kolesnikov case (along with its sequel, the Penchuk case) remains the political tool it used to be back in 2005. The only difference is that it changed hands. The hunter and his prey have swapped places, and are likely to do so again soon. At least Lutsenko’s comments on Penchuk’s announcement and Kolesnikov’s jittery reaction to those comments suggest this could be the case. Otherwise, Borys Kolesnikov for whom “your threats, Yuriy, have been and still are nothing” would not be “scared to watch what this man having no powers of the Interior Minister resorts to threats and inconceivable blackmail in his comments” (from Kolesnikov’s statement of 31 October 2007).

Unfortunately, the election campaign slogan “The law is a must for all!” is nothing but a slogan.

Only three months ago (more exactly on 24 July 2007) Penchuk assured journalists at a press conference in UNIAN: “In 2005 I did my duty as a citizen of this country. I trusted the President and new leadership who promised that bandits would be sent to prisons. As a law-abiding citizen, I reported the gangster redistribution of property in Donetsk to the competent authorities. I disclosed my name and I did not hide from anyone. Nor am I hiding now. I reported having been subject to several attempts on my life back in 1999 but before 2005 I had not got any response to my complaints. I also reported having been robbed of my property but again, had received no reply prior to 2005.”

Of course, today quoting Penchuk as a source is akin to substituting a compass with a weather-vane. While studying the two-year archive in the Kolesnikov case, we understood that each and every personage involved in it paltered with facts: Loutsenko when he spoke of “severed limbs”, Kolesnikov when he whined about “political repressions”. All of them said what was beneficial to them at a specific period of time under specific political circumstances. Nevertheless we will try to reconstruct the chain of events that brought about the current scandal.

On 6 April 2005, Kolesnikov was summoned to the Prosecutor General’s Office for questioning in the separatism case but was unexpectedly charged with extortion and abuse of power. The then Chair of Donetsk Oblast Council and Rinat Akhmetov’s closest friend was detained and sent to a remand prison. Kolesnikov argued the case against him was trumped up and told a story about a person who had approached him a few days before the arrest in the Presidential Secretariat and suggested that he give away his shares in Rinat Akhmetov’s enterprises. Some time later rumours spread that the mysterious “person” was Petro Poroshenko, NSCD Secretary of the time.

Two days after his release Borys Kolesnikov, when asked who could have initiated the persecution, answered cautiously: “I do not think a particular person or group could be interested in it. I think that law enforcement got into their own trap because they acted wrongly at the first stage of the investigation. They ensnared themselves when they trusted the two rogues’ testimony. What can they do now – admit their incompetence? I really do not know who it could be.” From a man banned to leave the country this discretion is understandable but in a person claiming to be a political prisoner it looks more like an elastic conscience.

Exclusive jurisdiction to institute criminal proceeding against officials with a status of oblast council chair is vested in the Prosaecutor General’s Office. In 2005, the prosecutor General was Sviatoslav Piskun, later elected MP on the Party of Regions list.

“The Criminal case against Kolesnikov was based on Penchuk father and son’s petition and excerpt from the shareholder registry of the disputed company. That was it. No inspection materials, examinations, explanations, or withdrawal of documents…” – Deputy Prosecutor General Renat Kuzmin told the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency last December. Formally, the only ground for instituting criminal proceedings was Penchuks’ petition. Today Borys Penchuk argues: “I did not write the petition myself! I signed the document given to me!” Yet three months ago he said he “reported the gangster redistribution of property in Donetsk to the competent authorities…” and “having been robbed of my property…”

At the most recent press conference, Kolesnikov’s former victim declared that whatever he had told the media in 2005 was orchestrated by Lutsenko’s subordinates and he was speaking at the gun point then. Yet the interview quoted above took place in July 2007 when Lutsenko was not Interior Minister any more and Penchuk criticized him for the lack of progress in his case. It is also hard to believe that Penchuk read his own petition “only ten days ago” and in 2005 he signed it without reading. The media and the society did not learn anything new about “severed limbs” and “heart attacks” from the publicized petition, which means there was nothing new in it for Pekchuk, either. Yet he preferred to keep silent before…

Penchuk’s motives are obvious. He could never explain the origin of USD 600 thousand remitted to his bank account around the time when Kolesnikov obtained the “White Swan” shares. This amount would not buy a good house near Kyiv and, probably, did not reflect the real value of Penchuk’s stock in “White Swan”. Yet it shows that the transaction was legitimate, after all. That is why the Kolesnikov case did not hold. The question is, of course, how Penchuk sold his shares at such a low price.

In April 2005, in an interview to the Grani Plus newspaper (was it at the gun point, too?) Penchuk described it like this: “Up until the stock handover in October 2002, there were threats, blackmail, extortion, etc… He called us at home to intimidate and demand the stock. This situation affected my parents’ health badly, and my father told Kolesnikov about it many times. He said: ‘Borys Viktorovych, for God’s sake, what are you doing to our family? Somebody shot at Borys, at me; then there were insinuations with those explosions’. My father said: ‘My wife is seriously ill, she has got cancer; what are you doing to us?’ But he [Kolesnikov] did not care. He did not care about our family. The only thing he wanted was our property. He insisted, he demanded and we gave him everything under the threat of death”.

Did they give him the stock or sell it? Did they sell the stock at such a low price that it was the same as giving for free? It was a common practice in Donetsk then. Yet in legal terms, it could be a purchase-sale transaction. So in 2005 Kolesnikov could have fallen prey to greed: first his own, later – the “mysterious person’s” and finally – Penchuk’s.

That the latter is not free from greed was confirmed by Serhiy Kuzin, author of the “Donetsk Mafia” book series Penchuk published. According to Kuzin, in August 2006 Penchuk suggested that they sell their copyright to the Party of Regions and “share the money”.

Another self-reproaching person involved in the Kolesnikov case – investigator of the Prosecutor General’s Office Jacob Taktashov – announced in November 2005 that the case was totally trumped up, yet he pointed his finger at the Prosecutor General’s Office from which he was fired some time earlier. “I notified my superiors that the case was falling apart. However they told me the case was completed, evidence was strong and Kolesnikov was in for a long imprisonment. The investigation results were reported to the top officials, and nobody will change those reports explaining there was no case whatsoever. I was instructed to bring the case to court,” – the former investigator told the media.

It is hard to say how strong the evidence was. Yet we know from numerous press publications that part of the case materials were lost under obscure circumstances.

The truth must be somewhere in the middle, as usual. One should not look for the truth in the concerned parties’ statements. It would be interesting to find out why Penchuk has chosen this moment to come up with his revelations. The reason could be Lutsenko’s expected return to the Ministry of Interior (or his possible appointment to vice prime minister in charge of law enforcement and defence). The Donetsk clan has a lot to lose in this case, as well as some other groups of interests. No wonder they would make attempts to prevent it from happening. Kolesnikov’s response to Penchuk’s confessions will demonstrate if this hypothesis is correct. If Penchuk is convicted for perjury (the penalty being up to 12 years of imprisonment, according to Kolesnikov), they have not been in cahoots with each other. If he is not – people will start asking questions.

On the other hand, Penchuk could have decided to take the lead and pass the ball to the Party of Regions without their expecting it. Having made sure that the “orange” team used him and left him to his own devices (which could be exactly what happened 10 days ago at the Prosecutor General’s Office) he realized he could get a conviction. So he opted for a change of role: from the Donetsk mafia’s victim he turned into the victim of “orange” repressions. From a criminal victim he turned into a political one. Saving himself, Penchuk, openly and calculatingly, took the side of a definite political force (that risks ending up in the opposition) against the other political force (that risks ending up in power).

Victims of political repressions have always been popular in this country, especially in the Party of Regions. Penchuk could follow suit of Sviatoslav Piskun, Prosecutor General at the time of Kolesnikov’s arrest, who was elected to Parliament on the Party of Regions list again: he deserved it…

“Everything I said about Kolesnikov’s pressure is true…” – stated Borys Penchuk in his interview to the Grani Plus newspaper on 12 April 2005.