Street market manager Volodymyr Semeniuk’s murder in Lviv shows that such bazaars, being a model of the Ukrainian economy, are built on human blood. This assessment stems from the methods of doing business there, relations with the bureaucracy, and bazaar working conditions. The latest studies by the State Statistics Committee [Derzhkomstatystyky] point to 2,715 such bazaars in Ukraine with a retail trade turnover (stores and stands included) amounting to UAH 33,417,000,000. The press service of the State Tax Administration estimates some 900,000 business entities in Ukraine using simplified tax procedures (e.g., uniform tax or patent) but is hard put to determine the street market ratio. Experts at the state research and forensic examination center say they are too busy checking the foods, wines, and spirits impounded when detecting and raiding underground facilities. Sources close to the chief directorate for the investigation of economic crimes at the Ministry of Internal Affairs insist that domestic street markets rank among the five most criminalized sectors of the Ukrainian economy. No one knows exactly how many goods smuggled into Ukraine or falling under the “dubious origin” category are sold daily to Ukrainian consumers visiting bazaars. There is scarce official information concerning the reverse, shadow side of the street market. Local residents, particularly teenagers, know practically every criminal’s name or alias controlling a given bazaar, yet these names/aliases are mentioned by law enforcement authorities only after a large-scale roundup (the latest was carried out in Kyiv under the eloquent title, Market). Then the general public also learns the amount of firearms, munitions, heroin, and other attributes of the underworld confiscated during the operation. This, however, by no means indicates that law enforcement people know little about such bazaars and who is in charge where. One of them, talking to The Day off the record, said that catching them red- handed is difficult, and that this explains why sometimes the law has to remain passive. This is also apparently why law enforcement people prefer to deal with homicide — when the manager or accountant of a street market gets killed or when some of the unlucky customers get poisoned by bad booze or illicit sausage... Incidentally, keeping the latter under control turns out to be an impossible task even for the all-seeing State Tax Administration. Simplified taxation procedures leave the tax inspectors few legal grounds for keeping the bazaars under close surveillance. After all, what can you take from an ordinary bazaar vendor except the patent fee or uniform tax payment? Thus The Day was told at the STA press service that it is practically impossible to monitor a street market’s actual commodity turnover. Assuming that over 50% of this sector keeps in the shadows (like the rest of the Ukrainian economy).
LVIV: AN OFFER HARD TO REFUSE
Two businessmen have been killed in Lviv. 42 year-old Volodymyr Semeniuk, manager of the Pivdenny [Southern] street market, died after taking eight bullets from a Luger. He was the right hand of the market’s former manager, People’s Deputy Petro Pysarchuk. One Pivdenny employee wishing to remain anonymous claims that, shortly before his death, Pysarchuk had repeatedly received offers to sell the bazaar. The logical conclusion arises that Semeniuk’s murder was meant as a warning to the street market’s current owners to sell their profitable business. That Mr. Pysarchuk was actually pressured is evidenced by the fact that someone set fire to his daughter Anastasiya’s car before his own violent death. Mr. Pysarchuk considered this a sequel to a December 2000 attempt on his life when he was shot in the face with a pistol, miraculously surviving with a grave injury. Now he said that setting fire to his daughter’s car had everything to do with that attempt on his life. “Previously I had a meeting with a deputy prosecutor general in Kyiv. We discussed the case. I am under the impression that the investigators are trying to impeach my testimony concerning the suspects rather than solve the case. The Lviv underworld had learned about my visit to the General Prosecutor’s Office even before I returned to Lviv. I don’t care what the law enforcement people think about it, but I must say that most at the local organized crime investigation department provide protection for the bandits.”
Response from the law enforcement side was immediate. Bohdan Simko, detained several times previously as a suspect in the 2000 attempt case, was again taken into custody. Moreover, Colonel Vasyl Kucher, head of Lviv’s organized crime investigation department, was fired. Several days prior to that, immediately after Pysarchuk’s daughter’s car caught fire, the whole family was placed under guard by Berkut [special assignment law enforcement] men. His friend Volodymyr Semeniuk, however, refused such security arrangements.
In fact, of all Lviv’s prospering bazaars Pivdenny has always been closely watched by official and underworld structures. Not so long ago, its management was pestered by local authorities, being accused among other things of appropriating the territory. Mr. Pysarchuk, then in charge of Pivdenny, must have settled all difference with the city executive committee and the street market was left alone. For the time being.
However, when it had taken the lead as Lviv oblast’s most modern business with many people on payroll, attracting customers from almost all over the region, it was too strong a temptation to be ignored by the local underworld bosses. Once again, Petro Pysarchuk adamantly refused racket protection (although it is present in all such places in Lviv). He said no to a local mob providing such “security arrangements” and formed its own security force. Now this was a challenge to the underworld and they “outlawed” Pysarchuk. Before long he nearly paid with his life for it.
That Lviv’s bazaars are controlled by criminals is no secret. Law enforcement authorities are no exception, of course, since all those street con artists, pickpockets, moneychangers, and criminal team leaders operate practically in the open, before their very eyes. Somehow, both sides maintain a peaceful coexistence of sorts. In any case, no street market had ever revolted against criminal activity and law enforcement neutrality before Petro Pysarchuk went on the warpath. A former Komsomol functionary, he had started in business from scratch in the first years of Ukrainian independence, eventually turning into a successful businessman. He refused to put up with the underworld getting his bazaar under their “protection” and taking away his money. Local officials were not loath either to get their cut, be it money, food, clothes, perfumes, even toiletries.
How did Semeniuk fit into the picture? After Petro Pysarchuk was elected people’s deputy, his post as Pivdenny manager went to his number one who was also his close associate and friend. However, Semeniuk was unlikely to get in anyone’s way. Colleagues insist that he was a sociable type and always tried to avoid trouble. He was content with his social niche as a small-time manager and all important issues were always decided by Pysarchuk (the latter, incidentally, believes that the shots fired at Semeniuk were actually aimed at him). “I don’t think that there are people all out to get hold of Pivdenny, but I swear by my friend’s memory that this business will never be under criminal control,” he declared. He also believes that “there would have been no murder, had the regional prosecutor’s office properly investigated the previous case, I mean that attempt on my life.” Incidentally, at one point during the investigation, he identified the would-be murderer and those that had paid for the contract. But the case was effectively shelved for a year at the Zaliznychny district prosecutor’s office, and eventually transferred to the regional one... As for leads in the Semeniuk case (as an acting manager, he held no interest in Pivdenny), Petro Pysarchuk does not rule out the possibility that he was killed because of the people’s deputy’s political activity. In his opinion, Mr. Pysarchuk opposes some of his fellow lawmakers from Lviv oblast, currently at war with Serhiy Medvedchuk (head of the regional state tax administration). “When Yushchenko was premier and Chervonenko in charge of the Derzhkomrezerv [State Reserve Committee], they managed to privatize the former state transport agency, Sovtransavto, renaming it Orlan-Trans; now they are trying to make millions of hryvnias worth of back taxes into a political affair,” he says. “In fact, Interpol is taking an interest in their firm, so they have the tax administration picketed. We must change the laws and tax procedures instead of fighting Medvedchuk.” Mr. Pysarchuk also reminds us that a group of Lviv city council deputies at one time confronted Pivdenny’s management over the parcel of land allocated for construction of the bazaar. “They wanted bribes, and we acted under the law. More than once they threatened to take away the bazaar and make it municipal property. For this reason I don’t rule out the possibility that there is someone somewhere determined to get hold of Pivdenny come what may.”
Meanwhile, several days prior to that shots were fired at one of the blocks of flats on Konotopska Street in Lviv. Fifty year-old manager of the Effa-Lviv Ltd. Oleksandr Lekhnovych was killed with four 5.6 mm bullets by his apartment. He was also a successful businessman and his travel agency was a licensed dealer in selling and leasing out resort premises as part of the RCI international club network. Its customers can buy resort accommodations all over the world during the holiday season. Quite a few businesspeople in Lviv agree that the murders of Semeniuk and Lekhnovych mark a new stage in the gang war for a redistribution of property held by Lviv’s most prosperous private firms.






