Pavlo Kudiukin
“Ten years imprisonment in a strict regime penitentiary and confiscation of property,” read the sentence of the Mykolaiv Regional Court imposed on Pavlo Kudiukin, former president of the Black Sea Shipping Company (BSSC), better known as the Blasco Concern.
Despite all promises and expectations, the Kudiukin case has not caused a sensational scandal: neither the investigation nor the court were able to prove the ex-president guilty of BSSC’s current condition, its sold vessels and huge debts. Accordingly, a substantial part of the sentence, which took five hours to be read out, focused on tedious things such as cars and apartments.
Pavlo Kudiukin was arrested by Ukrainian agents in late January 1995 in Moscow. First he was charged with illegally crossing the border, allegedly using someone else’s passport. Soon this charge fell by the way, but instead Kudiukin was indicted for crimes under five clauses of the Ukrainian Criminal Code: embezzlement of especially large amounts, violation of currency exchange provisions, forgery in office, abuse of office, and exceeding his official powers. 45 volumes of criminal evidence were submitted to the court of Mykolaiv oblast (neighboring Odesa where the violations took place) presumably for objective examination.
The trial started in January 1997, and for several months was delayed by numerous and usually overruled objections by Kudiukin’s lawyers, which called for recusation of the court (propter defectum), change of venue, forwarding the case for additional investigation, prescribing medical examination to the defendant, releasing the defendant on bail, etc. When the court proceeded to examine the core of the case, it turned out that it was the apartment business that spoiled the case for Pavlo Kudiukin: things like resettling Fortuna Real Estate Co. employees in communal apartments in the center of Odesa on Kudiukin’s order, his transfer of $360,000, and the resettling of tenants and registering 23 rooms with a total area of 699 square meters in the name of a fictitious person, received the most close consideration. Documents were presented, witnesses summoned and brought by force from Odesa.
And when the court proceeded to the episodes which had promised to have a broad public response, they failed to produce any. Kudiukin’s theft of DM 456,521 transferred from the BSSC account to the defendant’s personal account and opening accounts in Germany’s Commerzbank were considered only based on the copies of documents which had been incompletely presented by German law-enforcement bodies, state prosecutor Ivan Kryvovyaz told our correspondent. Thus, the Kudiukin case has many blank spots: did he have accounts in other foreign banks? Who handed over cash and drafts to him from abroad? What is the origin of DM 1,315,912.28 in the blocked account of Pavlo Kudiukin in the Frankfurt branch of Commerzbank?
During the proceedings Mr. Kudiukin refused to testify and pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutor Ivan Kryvovyaz asked a 12 year sentence for Kudiukin, but the court gave him ten in a strict regime penitentiary, property confiscation, and a ban on his holding posts associated with the distribution and accounting of material and financial assets. The court satisfied the civil action by the BSSC to return it Hr 530,477.70 allegedly stolen by Kudiukin, and two Toyota Land Cruisers which its ex-president had given to private companies.
In violation of established practice, after announcing the sentence Judge Savysko did not allow journalists to interview Kudiukin. According to defense lawyer Valentyn Volynets this is related to the political statement of the ex-president: “It is a contract case. The sentence was not a revelation neither to lawyers nor to Pavlo Kudiukin. It was programmed in the very beginning. This is why in the process of investigation and court proceedings there were many flagrant legal violations, which offer us adequate grounds to file a very substantive appeal to the Supreme Court of Ukraine, and, if need be, the International Court of Human Rights”.
Incidentally, the court proved more favorable to Kudiukin’s accomplices charged with violation of the currency exchange regulations. Fortuna General Director Vasyl Kozubenko was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment, but then made eligible for the 1997 amnesty (declared in commemoration of the anniversary of the Ukrainian Constitution) and released from custody in the court building. Fortuna employees Vasyl Timofeyev and Volodymyr Khvostiv, who had given a written pledge not to leave, got 3 and 2 years respectively and were also immediately amnestied.







