"List 527": how Mindichgate spawned spinoff in which law enforcement feeds mafia files on anti-corruption campaigners
The anti-corruption serial dubbed "Mindichgate" never lets the audience get bored: from one episode to the next, not only the people and the amounts change, but the very genre of the story as well.
If, over the past two weeks, we were watching a courtroom drama about high-level corruption in a country at war, the latest meeting of the parliamentary anti-corruption committee treated us to a mafia thriller with dystopian overtones.
UNDER MINDICH’S WATCH: LAW ENFORCEMENT, MPS, OFFICIALS, JOURNALISTS
The main bombshell went off in the 12th minute of the meeting, when first NABU Director Serhii Kryvonos and then head of NABU’s detectives unit Oleksandr Abakumov told MPs about seized dossiers that the suspects in the Mindich–Halushchenko case had compiled on 527 individuals who either, in one way or another, resisted corruption and caused problems for Mindich and his mafia-style circle of like-minded associates, or simply piqued the "archivists’" interest by virtue of their professional activities.
The "List 527" includes, in particular:
- 15 NABU employees;
- 9 SBU (Security Service of Ukraine - ed.) employees;
- 10 journalists;
- ministers and deputy ministers;
- former heads of Ukrenergo and Naftogaz;
- employees of the State Enforcement Service;
- forensic experts.
Some of the people targeted in these dossiers were named at the meeting: among NABU detectives – the now well-known Ruslan Mahamedrasulov, Vitalii Tibekin and Yevhen Tokar; among journalists – Yurii Nikolov and the late Oleksa Shalaiskyi; among MPs – Yaroslav Zhelezniak (Holos party) and Anastasiia Radina (from Servant of the People).
Anti-corruption committee chair Anastasiia Radina, upon hearing her own name, could not hide her surprise. Or at least pretended to be surprised…
Mr Zhelezniak, who over these weeks has turned into a genuine blogger-DJ and chief populariser of Mindichgate among the wider public, just nodded in confirmation. He already knew about this list, as well as the contents of his own file, and never took his eyes off the laptop from which he was live-blogging the committee meeting on social media.
And there was plenty to live-blog, as Mr Abakumov, in just one sentence, took the discussion about the list to a whole new level, stating that "the way these documents were drawn up and their substance suggest that they were prepared by law-enforcement bodies and handed over to the criminal group."
After hearing these and other details, committee chair Anastasiia Radina summed up what she had heard in the form of a reply question:
"I am shocked by the information you have voiced about the background reports on NABU detectives that appeared in the hands of members of the criminal organisation even before the searches took place. Do I understand correctly that, even before the searches and arrests of NABU detectives, the members of this criminal organisation, who are not part of the law-enforcement system, already had background reports which, by their form and content, look as though they could only have been drawn up by law-enforcement officers? And that these background reports were prepared even before investigative actions were carried out against these detectives? Which, at least for me, is a direct indication that other law-enforcement officers must obviously have been members of, or involved on behalf of, this criminal organisation. Am I correctly understanding the situation and what you have told us?"
She was assured that this was indeed the case and, moreover, that a significant share of the background reports had been drawn up just a few days before the July raid on NABU and SAPO. (As a reminder to readers, it was the SBU that carried out those searches; in addition, recordings released by NABU as part of Operation Midas indicate that one of Mindich’s associates, Ihor Myroniuk, supposedly met with someone from the State Bureau of Investigation. The tapes also contain a line about 20,000 dollars being handed over to the National Agency on Corruption Prevention.)
As an old commercial used to say: "With all this variety to choose from…"
ON WHAT BASIS WAS THE LIST COMPILED, AND WILL WE LEARN THE NAMES ON IT?
We will not retell everything we heard at that meeting. Readers can watch the video themselves (the discussion of "List 527" starts at around the 12th minute) and draw their own conclusions.
Reactions from politicians, journalists, former government officials and bloggers came immediately after the revelations about "List 527".
Some called it a "kill list", others spoke of the machinery of the state turning into a mafia, while Mariana Bezuhla, who once used to get hysterical about NABU’s professionalism, was smiling this time and thanking them for their work.
As for our outlet, we have been interested from the outset in the "procedural issues". Specifically: has NABU opened criminal proceedings over the fact that information was collected for these background reports? And will the people who were profiled in these background reports be notified going forward?
Olha Postoliuk, spokesperson for the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office, told Censor.NET that the background reports discussed at the committee meeting are not, for now, to be forwarded to other law-enforcement bodies; instead, they will be examined as part of the ongoing pretrial investigation into the criminal organisation from which they were seized. "We will be examining them, including how they ended up where they were found. This work will continue," she explained, adding that publishing the lists or otherwise informing the public and those who appear in these "dossiers" would be inappropriate before the investigation is completed.
Postoliuk also stressed that it is important to establish for what purpose this information was collected and how it was intended to be used.
And since no one is more interested in learning the purpose of this data collection than the people on List 527 themselves, we asked journalist Yurii Nikolov:
- Were you surprised when you heard your name among those on this list at the anti-corruption committee meeting? Or did you somewhat suspect something like this?
- I was surprised that this existed at all; it just wouldn’t fit in my head that criminals would take such a systematic approach to fighting an anti-corruption environment hostile to them that they would prepare dossiers on such a staggering number of people. Half a thousand names – I don’t recall anything like that. Although Hollywood films should have prepared me for it.
As for whether I was surprised to see my own name on that list – not at all. I fully understand, without any false modesty, that there are not many journalists left in Ukraine who, during the invasion, have been systematically investigating corruption.
- This raises the question: should society demand that NABU make this list public? After all, for obvious reasons, many of those on it may not want their full names to be exposed.
- Clearly, not everyone would want to scare their family members and loved ones.
- On the other hand, this is information of clear public interest.
- Well, I’m not ready to speak on behalf of society in this story. For me, a different point is more important – where did that leak come from which, as NABU says, in substance resembled data from law-enforcement agencies? That is what has to be uncovered. Which bastard in which law-enforcement agency was churning out these reports, and at such speed? Because, as Detective Abakumov says: I sign off a request to Energoatom, and five days later they already have a dossier on me.
- For the law-enforcement agencies themselves, wherever this dossier-maker may be working, exposing this gentleman should, in theory, also be a matter of honour.
- What honour can you talk about with these whores? There isn’t a clean spot left on them. I have no sentimental illusions whatsoever about who works in law-enforcement. And from the point of view of a country at war, questions arise: so what, can just anyone buy dossiers from them now? So where’s the price list – how much and for what? And where’s equal access to these ‘services’? Investigative journalists, for instance, also need information about the subjects of their investigations. So can we buy this data from some people in uniform as well? And why is it that some are allowed to do that and others are not?"
- Are you going to approach NABU and SAPO and ask them to disclose exactly what information is in the dossier on Yurii Nikolov?
- No, I will not.
- But they collected information not only on the targets themselves, but also on their family members.
- Maybe. But what could there be in my dossier? That my brother serves in the 47th Brigade and my nephew is in the Pokrovsk sector? That they’ll find out my elderly mother lives with me? That I have a wife and a son? Well, so be it…
Let us shift the angle within this topic. We already know which professions are represented in "List 527". We also know some of the names. What conclusions can we draw from the information we have?
Chair of the parliamentary Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Policy Viktoriia Siumar has been closely following the development of Mindichgate, and this time she was also present (and put questions to the invited guests) at the meeting of the Verkhovna Rada’s anti-corruption committee.
Here is how she sees the principles and approach behind the compilation of "List 527":
"It seemed to me that there are files there on ‘friends’ and ‘enemies’, and among the enemies are investigative journalists, NABU, media-active MPs – basically everyone whom the authorities regard as their ‘enemies’.
I believe that part of the non-government officials were profiled in order to keep certain members of the government on a short leash and to have kompromat on them for resolving sensitive issues, as well as for information warfare against ‘enemies’.
It is good that Oleksandr Abakumov has promised a broader investigation into these files, because they provide insight into how this organised criminal group went about its business, how it lobbied for its corruption and how it organised information support for it. This is a huge layer of reality in which the state is not even a police state, but something semi-criminal. And it will obviously not go unnoticed by our partners. So yes, I think we can speak of a state-coordinated system of pressure and coercion."
THEY ARE TURNING UKRAINE INTO A MAFIA-STYLE CONGLOMERATE OF BACK OFFICES
In other words, this criminal–corruption group is closely intertwined with state offices. Including law-enforcement bodies that are ostensibly supposed to be fighting this very corruption.
This mafia, which owes its very ability to exist and enrich itself to the current Ukrainian authorities, is compiling dossiers on people whose professional activities threaten the mafia or simply interest it.
If the people on the list need to be squeezed, they bring into play (dirty anonymous Telegram channels, bloggers of all stripes and certain paid media outlets – for money, of course, and very good money). And this is not only about publications, but also about surveillance and various provocations (after all, they have all the targets’ contact details in their hands – intimidate them as much as you like). Those readers who subscribe to such Telegram channels will know exactly what I mean.
And what else could this data be used for? It is frightening even to imagine. Yurii Nikolov mentioned Hollywood films – so which script, God forbid, might end up playing out here: Three Days of the Condor, The Art of War or Enemy of the State?
My concerns may seem like paranoia to some. But tell me this: doesn’t a half-thousand-name list, compiled for the mafia by law-enforcement officers, push one towards, if not outright paranoia, then at least serious anxiety? Especially when you picture – and people in the know at NABU, and not only there, say this quite openly – that there are plenty of such back offices in Ukraine. And behind each of them stand their own Mindiches, Halushchenkos, Myroniuks and their ilk. And each one has its own "List 527s" and its own people inside law-enforcement bodies, among media figures and in the upper echelons of power.
We live in a country at war, where law-enforcement and state-building institutions, if they function at all, do so in a very limited form, further warped by corruption. We have got used to thinking of corruption as hideous growths on the body of our state. Yes, they slow its movement towards Europe – but at least we are crawling in that direction, aren’t we?
But the series called "Mindichgate" and its various spinoffs show that while our attention was fixed on the front line, shrewd mafiosi were busy reshaping the load-bearing structures of this state to their own liking. And this Great Construction is proceeding with the silent consent (or active assistance) of its leadership, which came to power on slogans of fighting corruption.
Won’t it turn out that, once the scaffolding is taken down, instead of a state, we will see one big corrupt back office?
Yevhen Kuzmenko, Censor.NET
