Ihor Kononenko


Ihor Vitaliyovych Kononenko is a Ukrainian businessman and politician.
Kononenko is a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada since November 2014, first deputy chairman of the Bloc "Solidarity", a close friend of Petro Poroshenko. He often referred to as the gray eminence of the Ukrainian president. In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Kononenko lost reelection as an independent candidate in single-seat constituency 94.

Biography

After graduation in 1982 at the 45th secondary school in Kiev, Kononenko studied at the Automobile and Highway Institute in Kiev. From 1984 to 1986, he served in the Soviet Army, where he met Petro Poroshenko. In 1989, he graduated with honors in the Kiev Automobile and Highway Institute with a degree in Economics and Management in Transport. From 1988 to 1990, he worked as secretary of the Komsomol committee in the KAHI. From 1990 to 1991, he was deputy director of the structural unit of the city headquarters of the student brigade. From 1991 to 1994, he worked as commercial director in two companies – MP "Transport" and JSC Exchange House "Ukraine". From 2004 to 2009, he was chairman of the supervisory board of a transport company in Kiev.

Business career

Kononenko owns an PJSC Closed Non-diversified Corporate Investment fund VIK, which manages seven companies. Since 2012 he is a chairman of the supervisory board of its fund. Kononenko is the most important business partner of Petro Poroshenko and worked as a chairman of the supervisory board in Poroshenko's company
Kononenko was also a member of the supervisory board and worked in Poroshenko's companies, such as CJSC Ukrainian Industrial and Investment Concern, Bogdan Motors, Sports-health complex "Monitor" and International Investment Bank. In the latter, Kononenko is a minority shareholder.
In the declaration of 2015, Igor Kononenko indicated the following companies in which he was the head or investor: Shipbuilding plant "Leninska Kuznia", International Tennis Academy, Medservice Plus, Promavtomatika, European House, Kievgate Investment, Treck Holding Coast S.L., Lancashire Big, Treck Holding Limited, Vnesheconomservis LLC, RI-SYSTEM LIMITED, Peskovsky glass manufacturing plant, Sports and recreational complex "Monitor", insurance company "Kraina", AK Bogdan Motors, International Investment Bank, Non-diversified investment fund VIK.
In 2016–2017, the companies of Igor Kononenko won state tenders for a total amount of UAH 106 million.
Many sources connected Ihor Kononenko with the unofficial curator for coal-energy sector of Ukraine businessman Vitaliy Kropachev, who controlled this industry since 2016.
Offshore company Intraco Management Limited, which The Guardian newspaper links with Kononenko and Poroshenko, is engaged in trade with food and fuel produced by the Moscow refinery. According to The Guardian, Intraco transferred money to the daughter of Kononenko, Darya. Intraco Management Limited also pays for the maintenance of a private airplane on which Petro Poroshenko is flying. The company was founded in 2002.

Political career

From 2006 to 2014, Kononenko was a deputy of the Kiev City Council of the 5th and 6th convocations from the Leonid Chernovetskyi Bloc. He was the deputy chairman of the Standing Committee on Transport and Communications. In the elections to the Kiev City Council of 2014, Kononenko entered the electoral list of the party UDAR, where he took 11th place.
At the parliamentary elections in 2014, he was elected as a people's deputy on the "Petro Poroshenko Bloc" list. In the Ukrainian parliament, Kononenko became the first deputy chairman of the faction, also joining the Committee on the Fuel and Energy Complex, Nuclear Policy and Security and the Inter-parliamentary group on relations with Austria.
In the 2019 Ukrainian parliamentary election Kononenko lost reelection as an independent candidate in single-seat constituency 94. He earned 9036 votes.

Controversies

On 8 February 2016, deputy Yehor Firsov left the parliamentary faction of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc in the Verkhovna Rada because of position in the conflict between the Minister of Economic Development Aivaras Abromavičius and Ihor Kononenko. Firsov also said that he does not want to remain in the party and the faction whose leaders are engaged in "corrupt activities".
In February 2016, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine Vitaliy Kas'ko resigned as prosecutor alleging corruption in the prosecution service. One example was that the Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, had told him Kononenko had asked the service to influence a prosecution. Kas'ko said that Shokin had given him instructions, which Shokin took from Kononenko, to intervene in the case: "I received a firm request from the General Prosecutor in reference to this, declining to give details of the case. I refused to carry it out. I didn’t do as I was told," Kas'ko said in an interview with Reuters.
On 15 June 2016, journalist and People's deputy Serhiy Leshchenko said that the issue is being discussed in the United Kingdom and the United States about putting Kononenko under sanctions. "I am concerned about the possibility of Mr. Kononenko in the future to freely travel around the world and dispose of his money, because the issue of international sanctions regarding him is no longer a joke, but seriously negotiated in European capitals," Leshchenko said.
In September 2016, Serhiy Leshchenko blamed Ihor Kononenko, Alexander Granovskiy and Mykola Martynenko for organizing an information attack on him, which consisted in disclosing confidential information about the purchase of his apartment.
Earlier, in March of the same year, Leshchenko told the media that President Petro Poroshenko personally asked him not to write articles on "members of his family", to which he attributed Viktor Shokin and Ihor Kononenko: "Last time when he proposed not to write about Shokin and Kononenko, he said that they were members of his family; that, in principle, he supports my criticism of Kolomoyskyi, but if I write about the man of his family, I must ask his opinion. I asked who he had in mind. I do not touch his wife."
In October 2016, Serhiy Zuyev, who won competition to fill the vacancy of head of Ukrenergo, stated that Ihor Kononenko initiated the opening of criminal cases against him. This was published by Ukrainian deputy and journalist Serhiy Leshchenko. He added that the "Prosecutor's Office of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea" opened a case against Zuyev in which he accused in financing subversive activities against Ukraine.
In November 2016, the former President of Georgia and ex-Governor of Ukraine's Odessa Oblast, Mikheil Saakashvili, accused Ihor Kononenko and his colleague Alexander Granovskiy for being instructed by president Petro Poroshenko to prepare the question of depriving of his citizenship of Ukraine.
In December 2016, the former member of the People's Will faction in the Verkhovna Rada, Oleksandr Onyshchenko, told the Kyiv Post that Ihor Kononenko, on behalf of President Poroshenko, was engaged in corruption. According to him, Kononenko receives $ 20 from each ton of coal supplied from the uncontrolled part of Donbass. According to Onyshchenko, Kononenko received 2 thousand hryvnia from every thousand cubic meters of gas that his company supplied to state-owned enterprises Odessa Port Plant and Centrenergo.
Oleksandr Onyshchenko gave journalists recordings of telephone conversations and scans of documents related to the activities of then-President Petro Poroshenko and his associates. In particular, Onyshchenko pointed out that Kononenko, together with Serhiy Berezenko, established unofficial control over the Ukrainian electric power industry. During the Shuster Live TV-show, people’s deputy Serhiy Leshchenko published an SMS correspondence between Onyshchenko and Kononenko. They corresponded about gas supplies to the Centrenergo, a major electric and thermal energy producing company in central and eastern Ukraine. Due these facts, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine opened a criminal case. In September 2018, Ihor Kononenko came in to NABU for an interview.
On 20 December 2019 the law enforcers raided both Poroshenko’s party headquarters and Ihor Kononenko's gym. Hidden cameras and recording devices were found inside the gym’s smoke detectors and security alarms. According to the State Investigation Bureau those were allegedly secretly recording and filming Kononenko and Poroshenko's gym clients, of which are politicians and businessmen. Poroshenko and Igor Kononenko, deputy head of Poroshenko's party, are both owners of said gym and could not be reached for comment. The raid was part of two ongoing criminal investigations that are focused on two concerns. First the alleged theft of servers with classified information. Second the alleged tax evasion and money laundering.

Earnings

According to the electronic declaration, in 2013, Ihor Kononenko officially declared UAH 30 million.
In an e-declaration for 2015, Ihor Kononenko indicated salaries in the Verkhovna Rada of UAH 77,772. From the VIK Foundation, Kononenko received dividends of UAH 14 million. Kononenko declared real estate objects for a total of more than 1.8 billion hryvnias. He also declared US$928 thousand, €965 thousand, and 6 628 000 hryvnias in cash. The deputy owns a land plots of 4654 m² and 2255 m², as well as apartment buildings with an area of 1643.6 m² and 36.6 m². The cost of the first house in the Kiev's elite area "Tsarskoe Selo" is estimated at UAH 244 million, and cost of the site is UAH 105 million. In addition, Kononenko has an apartment of 236.6 m² and Mercedes-Benz GL 600.
In an e-declaration for 2016, Kononenko showed a total income of UAH 14,743,000. As a deputy he earned in the Verkhovna Rada UAH 161 thousand, he also had UAH 82 thousand as a percentage of the deposit in the Ukrsotsbank. From the VIK Foundation, Kononenko received dividends of UAH 14.5 million. On the account in the Ukrsotsbank he had UAH 2 million.
According to the investigation of the program "Schemes", Ihor Kononenko didn't indicate in his E-declaration a villa in southern Spain. The house of 768 square meters is located near the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Kononenko confirmed this information, but stated that he wasn't obliged to indicate property belonging to his companies in his declaration: "Yes, the companies I own really have an impressive list of property. However, according to the provisions of the Law of Ukraine 'On Preventing Corruption', I am not obligated to declare property that belongs to these companies. In particular, the format of the declaration doesn't allow this."
According to the declaration, Ihor Kononenko owns the following companies:
Kononenko is married to Liliya Kononenko and has three children: two daughters and one son. Vitaliy Kononenko works as Sports director of the Sports school "International Tennis Academy", which until 2015 was the children's pioneer camp "Yunga" at the plant "Leninskaya Kuznitsa". After the reconstruction in 2015, the sports school has become a closed tennis club, which is a violation of Ukrainian law. The Law of Ukraine "On Physical Culture and Sport" forbids tuition for training in children's and youth sports schools.