Gennady Bogolyubov, one of the richest Ukrainians, fled his homeland at the end of June, to avoid possible prosecution, and currently lives in Vienna, Ukrainian media reported, citing Austrian news agency APA.
Ukraine's State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) accused the oligarch's business partner Igor Kolomoisky, who has been in prison since 2023, of illegal border crossing and declared him wanted. Bogolyubov denies the accusations.
"On June 24, 2024, the oligarch traveled on the Kyiv-Helm train (to Poland), accompanied by a close relative, although according to Ukrainian databases he did not cross the border,", a press release of the SBI stated. Bogolyubov used an invalid passport belonging to a Ukrainian who was in the country and did not leave Ukraine, authorities said, prompting an investigation into illegal border crossing and confiscation of the passport in question. There is also talk of the arrest of an involved border guard officer. However, Bogolyubov's subsequent entry into Poland was regular, with his own passport, the online media "Ukrainska Pravda" reported, citing leaked documents.
After a stint in the UK, where the 62-year-old entrepreneur visited his ailing mother, he left for Vienna on Tuesday July 9, denying he had traveled on a fake passport but saying he had already had problems with leaving his homeland in 2023. During an attempt to cross the border, his passport was confiscated and destroyed on suspicion of forgery, and another attempt last year failed after initial problems. According to "Ukrainian Pravda" the head of the Ukrainian border guard in Kyiv intervened personally in favor of the oligarch.
Bogolyubov, whose condition in 2022 the Ukrainian magazine "Forbes" estimated at one billion dollars, is a long-time associate of the once extremely influential oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, whose TV channel "1+1" played an important role in the election of Volodymyr Zelensky as president. In 2019, the two entrepreneurs were also suspected of corruption by the US, and regardless of this, Kolomoisky has been in pre-trial detention in Ukraine since September 2023 for alleged economic crimes. The charges are also related to "PrivatBank", which was forcibly nationalized in 2016, having previously been 50% owned by Kolomoisky and Bogolyubov.
"Bogolyubov plans to publish information that mentions a proposal addressed to him that criminal proceedings will not be initiated against him in Ukraine if he pays $100 million," wrote the online media "Dzerkalo Tizhnya", citing to anonymous sources. The online media also reports on a conflict with President Zelensky's office, which has refused to issue the entrepreneur a diplomatic passport, in his role as the husband of the diplomat Emine Japarova.
Former deputy foreign minister Japarova was appointed by Zelensky as Ukraine's permanent representative to international organizations in Vienna in February 2024, but before taking up the post, she announced her resignation from the diplomatic service last night. "The events that unfolded around me and my family were unfortunately manipulative and unfair," he wrote on Facebook. Japarova and added that now she must protect her family, including her three-month-old child. The senior diplomat, a Crimean Tatar by birth, was in particular responsible for the events organized by the "Crimean Platform" in Kiev, in which Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg also participated more than once.
It remains a mystery on what grounds Bogolyubov was banned from leaving the country in the past. Because of his age of over 60, he is not subject to any war-related restrictions, and prior to the present case, there are no known investigations or court decisions on the basis of which he could be denied legal entry. At the same time, there are parallels with another case - a few days before Ukrainian entrepreneur Vitaly Kropachev, who has an affinity for Austria, was arrested by the SBI in May for alleged economic crimes, a planned trip from Kiev to Vienna failed due to "suspected forgery". on his real passport, a person close to him told APA. He finds the basis for the investigation against Kropachev in a conflict between the businessman and the influential bureaucrat Oleg Tatarov, who is in charge of the investigative bodies, including the DBI, in President Zelensky's office.