Odesa mayor Trukhanov was part of violent crime gang, BBC reports

A violent Ukrainian crime gang, partly led at the time
by current Odesa Mayor Gennadiy Trukhanov, used offshore firms in British tax
havens to secretly invest their ill-gotten gains in the UK, the BBC reported on
Apr. 23 as part of revelations that have come from the Paradise Papers data
breach. The gangsters, and in some cases family members, bought luxurious
property in prime London locations from money gained from the illicit oil trade
in Odesa in the 1990s, as well as drugs and arms smuggling, the BBC reported.
They committed brutal murders as part of their operations that used Italy as a
base, according to an Italian police commissioner. Despite evidence from phone
taps, most of the gang members were never criminally charged because their
crimes were not committed in Italy and the anti-mafia investigation was
concluded.

A former Soviet army captain, Trukhanov trained the
gang members in hand-to-hand combat and sniper shooting with high-precision
weapons. He returned to Odesa in the early 2000s to launch his political
career. Among the other gang leaders, Alexander Angert settled in London and
Nickolay Fomichev is believed to have moved to Belgium, the BBC said. In its
video news report, a member of Trukhanov’s entourage in Odesa kicked the BBC
reporter in the groin, causing him to fall to the ground as he tried to get a
response to the corruption allegations.

Zenon Zawada: Trukhanov
was named a suspect by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine in
several cases of embezzlement of state funds, costing the local budget at least
USD 7 mln. The day after his arrest in mid-February, a Kyiv court released on
bail, to much public outcry, posted by a Poroshenko Bloc MP. Later that month,
an appellate court rejected a request by Ukraine’s independent prosecutor to
detain him and temporarily place him on leave from his post as he awaits a
possible court trial.

Meanwhile, the BBC investigation is another black
eye for Ukraine’s image in the West. The image of gangsters running Ukrainian
government – and watching passively as journalists get assaulted – doesn’t help
to convince citizens of the West that Ukraine should be integrated into
Euro-Atlantic structures.