Ghosts of the past in the “new” Kolomoisky case: Pinchuk, Piskun and a $50m bribe.
9 May 2024 15:18
Odious businessman Ihor Kolomoisky has been charged with ordering the murder of a lawyer and director of a law firm who refused to cooperate with the businessman in an illegal deal involving a steel plant.
The case is an old one, as the attempt on the law firm director’s life was made more than 20 years ago, in 2003. The attackers were detained back then, but the alleged customer was only notified of suspicion today.
At the same time, in 2005, a criminal case was already initiated against Kolomoisky in this regard, which was subsequently closed. Back in 2015, former MP and now advisor to the head of the Prosecutor General’s Office Serhiy Leshchenko wrote in his blog why the case was closed and what it had to do with former Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun and oligarch Viktor Pinchuk. Kommersant Ukrayinsky 
will recall the circumstances of that case.
According to the ex-journalist, in the summer of 2005, the decision to initiate a case against Kolomoisky for the attempted murder of a lawyer (according to Leshchenko, it was Serhiy Karpenko, who refused to cooperate with Kolomoisky on the issues of the Dniprospetsstal steel plant) was signed by the then investigator of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Ihor Sholodko, and his visa was put by the Deputy Prosecutor General at the time, Viktor Shokin.
However, at the request of the then Prosecutor General Svyatoslav Piskun, Sholodko withdrew the motion to detain Kolomoisky from the court. Although at that time the judge held a hearing and ruled to take Kolomoisky into custody. According to Leshchenko, these events were preceded by negotiations between Piskun and envoys of Kolomoisky, who allegedly paid a bribe of $40-50 million to the then Prosecutor General to close the case against him.
“After that, the case of Karpenko was cleared by the same investigator Sholodko. And, instead of holding a confrontation, the same Sholodko closes Kolomoisky’s case under Article 6, paragraph 2 of the Criminal Procedure Code – the absence of corpus delicti,”
– the former MP wrote in his blog.
According to Leshchenko, the whole story, including the bribe to Piskun, was known to oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, who in 2013 launched a lawsuit against Kolomoisky over shares in the Kryvyi Rih Iron Ore Plant and decided to use information about Kolomoisky’s involvement in the order for Karpenko’s murder in court.
For this reason, in 2014, Pinchuk tried to reopen the case, with the aforementioned investigator Sholodko as one of the defendants.
“By chance or not, on 4 August 2014, Sholodko was called up for military service. He went to serve in the ATO zone, where he came into contact with Kolomoisky’s entourage. And on 30 November 2014, the former investigator of the Prosecutor General’s Office, Ihor Sholodko… died at the Donetsk airport. He was buried on 4 December 2014 in Zhytomyr,”
– leshchenko wrote, adding that this was the death of one of the key witnesses who was directly involved in the opening and then closing of the Kolomoisky case.
However, 10 years after Sholodko’s death, the case was not just reopened – Kolomoisky was eventually served with a notice of suspicion of ordering the murder. It is not known whether the names of Piskun and Pinchuk were mentioned in the law enforcement investigation. Currently, 23 more searches are being conducted to collect additional evidence.
Attempted premeditated murder committed by a group of persons by prior conspiracy is punishable by imprisonment for up to fifteen years or life imprisonment.
