Recently, a video from the wedding of the judge of the Northern Appeals Economic Court, Marina Barsuk (nee Didychenko), held in 2021, was circulated in the media, and in addition to the luxury that was inappropriate for the official incomes of Ukrainian high-ranking officials, there was one notable guest at the wedding.
This is reported by the editorial office of the 360UA NEWS
The cameraman filmed Ihor Kolomoisky at the wedding of Judge Marina Barsuk, who was considering several cases in which he appeared.
According to the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, Judge Barsuk ruled on two cases related to Kolomoisky.
The first of these concerns the lawsuit of the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant against PrivatBank. In 2009, PrivatBank provided a loan of $36.1 million to the plant, which is associated with Kolomoisky. The Northern Commercial Court of Appeal ruled that the debt of $35 million was canceled.
The second case concerns PJSC Ukrnafta, also associated with Kolomoisky. The panel of judges, which included Barsuk, upheld the court's decision to recover UAH 1.77 million from the state budget in favor of Ukrnafta as material damage.
In addition, Judge Barsuk ruled on cases related to sanctioned businessman Pavlo Fuchs.
In one such case, a panel of judges, which included Barsuk, upheld the decision of the first instance court in favor of Credit Finance LLC, a company associated with Fuchs
In another case, a panel of judges, which also included Barsuk, upheld the decision of the first instance court in favor of Verdict Capital LLC, another company associated with Fuchs.
So we decided to take a look at Marina Barsuk's career.
Beginning of career
The story of Marynna Barsuk, and then Didychenko, began in 2009. After Yanukovych was elected president, the head of the Kyiv Economic Court, Vasyl Saranyuk, began to think about a secure future. In this case, he was actively helped by a young team of judges, whom he himself selected - cynical and greedy.
The importance of this court in the system of commercial courts of Ukraine cannot be overestimated - large companies try to obtain a registration in the capital, so it is here that practically all serious commercial disputes in the country are resolved. This makes being a judge in the Kyiv Commercial Court not only honorable, but also very profitable.
The head of this informal union was Vasyl Saraniuk, who at that time had been the head of the court for several years.
Saraniuk's scheme was based on a group of close judges, including Mykola Yakymenko, Oleksandra Mandrychenko, Serhiy Kovtun, as well as young judges - Rostyslav Stashkiv, Serhiy Mudryi and Maryna Didychenko .
Maryna Didychenko's father held a high position in the Kyiv prosecutor's office at the time, which ensured close cooperation with this institution. Saraniuk's group actively interacted with Deputy Prosecutor General Oleksandr Shynalsky and his partner, former Podilskyi district prosecutor Vasyl Dragovoz.
The activities of the judicial cooperative were particularly evident in their interaction with the Russian Alfa-Bank. This financial structure was known in Ukraine for its use of “crisis” technologies for the seizure of property. The head of the court, Saraniuk, assigned Alfa-Bank cases to only the “right” judges, in particular Maryna Didychenko.
In turn, Maryna Didychenko actively promoted the financial interests of Alfa-Bank. In 2009, she had at least 15 court decisions in favor of the bank. These are only those cases that the Commercial Court voluntarily sent for publication in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions.
Defendants in Alfa-Bank cases often faced the fact that decisions were made without their participation, which violates the basic principles of judicial proceedings. Given that the minimum fee for a positive decision was 5% of the claim amount, the judge's "earnings" in banking cases were significant. For example, the total amount of recovery in 10 cases of Marina Didychenko in favor of the bank was 13,612,820 US dollars and 16,033,268 hryvnias. It is clear that most of this amount went to the head of the court Saranyuk. So, only on some of these cases she could earn at least 680 thousand dollars and more than 800 thousand hryvnias, it is worth recalling that the dollar in 2009 was worth 8 hryvnias.
After such a rise, Marina Didychenko did not hide her luxurious life , despite her official modest income.
Despite her modest official salary of 4 thousand hryvnias per month, Didychenko lived in a spacious three-room apartment on Obolonsky Lypky in Kyiv. The apartment, with a total area of 132 square meters, is estimated at approximately 400 thousand dollars. The question arises: where does a judge who receives such a meager salary get such money? Perhaps it is a gift from her father, prosecutor Anatoly Yakovenko, or from other “grateful” clients of the court?
Interestingly, Maryna Didychenko and her ex-husband owned several parking spaces in the underground parking lot, although no cars were officially registered there. However, there is a suspicion that they could have used the cars of her mother, Antonina Yakovenko, who worked in a private kindergarten. This modest teacher owned three cars at once: a fancy Mercedes Benz GL 450 (2008), a Chrysler PT Cruiser (2004) and an old Mercedes 600 (1997).
Marina Didychenko's vacations were not limited to modest trips either. In 2009, she visited Croatia and the United Arab Emirates.
According to the same scheme of property seizure, in the program "Last Warning" on the First National, journalists revealed the scheme of work of Ukrsotsbank, this was in 2013, because of which hundreds of families in Odessa could be left without housing. In September 2008, Ukrsotsbank stopped financing the construction of housing, which hundreds of Odessa residents had been waiting for for five years. Due to a conflict with the developer, the bank seized apartments and five unfinished buildings that were paid for by investors.
The developer, Alliance Corporation, signed a loan agreement with Ukrsotsbank for 55 million hryvnias. However, the bank suddenly refused to issue the money, stating that there was a shortage of hryvnias in its accounts. The developer was forced to sign an additional agreement for a foreign currency loan. After receiving the third tranche, Ukrsotsbank unilaterally stopped financing, which led to a freeze on construction work.
Ukrsotsbank's trials followed the same pattern. The bank hired the law firm Boyarchukov, Alekseev and Partners, which filed a lawsuit with the Kyiv Commercial Court to recover property in favor of the bank. The case was always handled by Marina Didychenko, who is also the cousin of lawyer Serhiy Boyarchukov. The court made a decision in just one session, transferring all of the client's property to the bank.
This scheme allowed the bank to obtain ownership of any property, which confirms its effectiveness in defending the bank's interests to the detriment of ordinary people.
And these are only 2 precedents, and how much Maryna Didychenko (Barsuk) enriched herself between 2009 and 2013 can only be guessed at
The emergence of Sergei Alekseev and the deriban of Kyiv
In the summer of 2015, Serhiy Alekseev, a People's Deputy and Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on Legal Policy and Justice, was exposed in corrupt practices and lobbying for the interests of his law firm, Alekseev, Boyarchukov and Partners.
According to media reports, People's Deputy Serhiy Alekseyev instructed the judge of the Commercial Court of Appeal, Marina Didychenko, to transfer the amount of 5,000 US dollars to her bank card. In addition, Alekseyev negotiated that Marina Didychenko would help another judge make the decision he needed, which is confirmed by the relevant audio recordings. Looking ahead, we will say that Didychuk and Alekseyev then began a relationship .
As a result, on October 14, 2014, Maryna Didychenko made a positive decision in favor of the company's client, Serhiy Alekseev, PJSC "Ukrsotsbank".
So, thanks to Marina Didychenko's cooperation with the company of her cousin Serhiy Boyarchukov, People's Deputy Alekseev Serhiy received carte blanche for scams with the aim of enriching himself.
In 2016, the important enterprise for Ukraine, Khimnaftemashproekt, became the subject of controversy , which could have led to its closure. The institute, which has been engaged in design activities for decades, was under threat due to the interests of influential people who liked the premises in the center of Kyiv on Pechersk. The main asset of the institution is a building of 6,000 sq. m. on Lesya Ukrainka Boulevard, which houses a scientific laboratory and an archive of projects of strategic plants of Ukraine.
The story began in March 2013, when a fabricated shareholders' meeting was held, at which a decision was made to make Khimnaftemashproekt a guarantor for a loan of almost UAH 300,000,000 for two dubious companies' property with the aim of reselling the company's property for debts.
Six months later, the employees of Khimneftemashproekt managed to change the management, and the new team began to challenge the previous decisions in court. The company began to return to normal work, working on projects of important social and industrial facilities, such as kindergartens, hospitals and ports. However, in 2016, the projects were again under threat due to the blocking of decisions by the Kyiv Court of Appeal.
After a detailed analysis of the case archives, it became clear that the same judge, Maryna Didychenko, participated in all the court hearings where Khimnaftemashproekt was defeated.
It is worth noting that all of her decisions, as well as the decision on "Khimneftemashproekt", were overturned by the next court instance, but neither the resonance in the press nor the threat of an investigation into her actions stopped this judge.
Also, during these legal disputes, it was obvious that Marina Didychenko had a direct connection with MP Serhiy Alekseev, whose law firm, by a happy coincidence, served Ukrsotsbank.
And already in 2019, a high-profile scandal , related to the activities of an organized criminal group that seized real estate belonging to the city's territorial community. This is a non-residential building at 34B B. Khmelnytskyi St., which is located near the famous hotel "11 mirrors", which belongs to the brother of the mayor of Kyiv, Volodymyr Klitschko (owner of LLC "VIT-PLUS"). It was precisely because of this neighborhood that manipulations with the real estate object arose.
On July 23, 2019, the Territorial Department of the State Bureau of Investigation in Kyiv initiated criminal proceedings into the fact of criminal actions committed by employees of the Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) in collusion with a People's Deputy of Ukraine and representatives of private business. The charges relate to the appropriation of property of a territorial community.
The applicant and victim in this proceeding was LLC "Capital", which in 2005 received the status of an investor in the reconstruction of the specified non-residential building. However, the investment agreement was later terminated in court on the basis of a dubious decision, and the facility was transferred to LLC "Alternative", which was to create a museum and library in the premises. In particular, the panel of judges of the Kyiv Appeal Economic Court, which reviewed the specified case, included judge Maryna Didychenko, who was in a civil marriage with People's Deputy Serhiy Alekseev.
LLC "Alternative" belonged to Valery Arakcheev, who was the director of two other companies - LLC "Telbin" and LLC "E-Group". These companies are associated with relatives of the People's Deputy from the "Udar" party, Vitali Klitschko. Subsequently, LLC "Alternative" was acquired by Sergey Boyarchukov, a business partner of Sergey Alekseev.
In summary, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko, using his power and political influence, organized the adoption of the necessary decisions, and Alekseev, together with his common-law wife Didychenko, ensured the termination of the investment agreement in court. Boyarchukov, in turn, drew up a lease and ownership agreement for the object in favor of LLC "Alternative".
Later, the corrupt scheme of terminating the investment contract and seizing the reconstruction object was revealed by a journalistic investigation and covered in the media. According to Boyarchukov, he tried to cooperate with the 11 Mirrors hotel, but met resistance from the investor.
In fact, LLC "Alternative" has not created a museum or a library, but uses the premises to service a hotel owned by Wladimir Klitschko.
Subsequently, the Kyiv City Council began the process of privatization of this facility, and despite the appeal of Capital LLC, the electronic auction nevertheless took place. The winner was the company, the ultimate beneficiary of which is Volodymyr Klitschko's offshore company.
Collaboration with Fuchs
In 2019, Investohills Vesta, which has ties to individuals associated with oligarch Pavel Fuchs, began an aggressive policy of buying up strategic Ukrainian enterprises, undermining their efficiency and ability to function. One of these enterprises was the Bila Tserkva Tire Plant Rosava, a key manufacturer of automobile tires in Ukraine. Previously, this asset belonged to former People's Deputy Kostyantyn Zhevago.
In 2019, the investment company Investohils Vesta acquired 25% of Rosava's assets. After Fuchs' company gained control of the plant, the company's arbitration manager was changed. Further actions, according to journalists, were aimed at bankrupting the plant and its subsequent sale for scrap metal.
Judge Maryna Barsuk (Didychenko) played an important role in these events. According to media reports from August 2022, as a judge, she considered lawsuits related to Investohils Vesta and made decisions that helped the company achieve its goals.
Judge Didychenko's actions contributed to strengthening the positions of Investohills Vesta in the Rosava plant case. This was made possible by her personal connections with influential individuals, which raises questions about a conflict of interest and possible corrupt actions. Despite numerous appeals and complaints from other participants in the trial, the court decisions made with Didychenko's participation, already during the full-scale invasion, were aimed at supporting the interests of Investohills Vesta.
This situation could have serious consequences for the region's economy. The Bila Tserkva CHP, whose shareholder is the Rosava plant, could be at risk of shutdown. I wonder if Fuchs knew about the Russians' plans to destroy Ukraine's energy sector at the time?
Marina Borsuk's married life
Returning to the wedding of Marina Barsuk (Didychenko) and Viktor Barsuk, a lawyer and master of law.
Judge Marina Barsuk does not hide her admiration for luxury and comfort . She dreams of heading the Southern Commercial Court of Appeal. And how convenient it is for her husband, lawyer Viktor Barsuk, who is ready to invest in his wife's career growth. After all, why declare real estate when you can declare a whole fleet of cars, including MERCEDES-BENZ S580/2021, G63AMG/2019, S600/2009 and EQV/2021? Why not omit the indication of real estate if you can simply not do it? That's brilliant, isn't it?
And, of course, there is no conflict of interest in the fact that the husband is a lawyer in the cases that his wife, a judge, is considering. This is obviously just a coincidence. As is their lifestyle, hundreds of thousands of euros and francs have been declared, and all this for one judge's salary.
According to the declaration of Judge Marina Barsuk, her family owns four apartments in Kyiv and one in the UK – where Marina Anatolyivna’s son, Timur Artemovich Pryvalov, lives. Perhaps he is training to be a pilot or tanker – after all, it’s impossible for the son of a Ukrainian judge to evade mobilization, right?
The family also has a parking space, a garage, a residential building and three land plots, all in Kyiv. According to the declaration, their value is 30,117,983 hryvnias. One of the apartments in Kyiv was purchased for 12,746 hryvnias. According to the declaration, of course.
The car fleet is also impressive – Judge Barsuk’s family drives brand new Mercedes, of which they have four. Judge Maryna Barsuk herself, of course, could not afford such a luxury due to her small salary, so the cars belong to other people who allow her to use them. What kind people in our country!
As for money, the lawyer-judge family also does not suffer from a lack of funds. Maryna Anatoliivna herself declared 455,000 hryvnias and 44,000 dollars in cash, and she also has a bank deposit in the amount of 130,517 hryvnias.
The man is richer – he has a total of 600,000 dollars, 500,000 euros, 2,000,000 hryvnias, and 350,000 Swiss francs, also in cash.
There is another interesting story with gifts: Marina Barsuk's father-in-law, pensioner Mykola Vasilyevich Barsuk, gave his son (husband of a judge) Viktor Mykolaevich Barsuk a gift in the form of a "cash form" worth 20,051,060 hryvnias, which he then re-gifted to his beloved wife Marina Barsuk.
I wonder what kind of gift it was and why no one at the NACP asked how a pensioner with an annual pension of 80,166 hryvnias had the opportunity to make such gifts.
As befits people in their circle, the Barsuk family has had several bright episodes. For example, in 2021, they were spotted at the birthday party of oligarch Pavel Fuchs. This is not surprising at all, because Viktor Barsuk represented Fuchs' interests in the court where Marina Barsuk worked.
There was also a scandal surrounding the Poltava Mining and Metallurgical Complex, where Barsuk acted in the interests of Kolomoisky and the Russian financial and criminal group Babakov. But these are all trifles for real professionals, because for them there is no conflict of interest.
Viktor Barsuk is not just a lawyer, but a figure with an impressive track record. His legal practice covers a wide range of cases, including corporate disputes, protection of the interests of big businessmen and even political figures. Barsuk is known for his ability to find "gray areas" in the legislation and successfully use them to protect the interests of his clients. Among his clients can be found famous oligarchs, international companies and even representatives of the political elite.
He began to earn especially actively during the presidency of Petro Poroshenko, working for Oleksandr Granovsky, the curator of the legal sphere under Poroshenko. Barsuk was a "black lawyer" who was engaged in the technical implementation of many dubious cases. Granovsky, formally being a deputy, almost did not appear in the Rada, holding his business meetings in expensive restaurants in Kyiv. He coordinated the activities of Barsuk, who, thanks to "handy" judges, won most of the legal battles.
Barsuk and his partner in the law firm "EQUITY" Oleg Malynevskyi used raider schemes, organizing the filing of identical lawsuits in different courts to choose the "right" judge. Among their high-profile cases are representing the interests of companies in scandalous tenders, protecting the interests of businessmen and politicians, as well as raider seizures of large real estate objects, such as the Sky Mall shopping mall and the Horizont-Park business center.
They also represented the interests of the former head of the State Fiscal Service, Roman Nasirov, who is accused of stealing over two billion hryvnias. In this case, Barsuk even accompanied Nasirov to court on a stretcher, portraying him as frail.
