Petro Poroshenko
Petro Oleksiiovych Poroshenko is a Ukrainian politician and oligarch who served as the fifth president of Ukraine from 2014 to 2019. He served as the Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2009 to 2010, and as the Minister of Trade and Economic Development in 2012. From 2007 until 2012, he headed the Council of Ukraine's National Bank. He was elected president in 2014.
During his presidency, Poroshenko led the country through the first phase of the war in Donbas, pushing the Russian separatist forces into the Donbas Region. He began the process of integration with the European Union by signing the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement. Poroshenko's domestic policy promoted the Ukrainian language, nationalism, inclusive capitalism, decommunization, and administrative decentralization. In 2018, Poroshenko helped create the autocephalous Orthodox Church of Ukraine, separating Ukrainian churches from the Moscow Patriarchate. His presidency was distilled into a three-word slogan, employed by both supporters and opponents: armiia, mova, vira. As a candidate for a second term in 2019, Poroshenko was defeated by Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Poroshenko is a people's deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and leader of the European Solidarity party. Outside government, Poroshenko has been a prominent Ukrainian oligarch with a lucrative career in acquiring and building assets. His most recognized brands are Roshen, a large-scale confectionery company which has earned him the nickname of "Chocolate King", and his TV news channel 5 Kanal, which he was forced to sell to comply with anti-oligarch legislation in November 2021. He is considered an oligarch due to the scale of his business holdings in manufacturing, agriculture and finance, his political influence from several stints in government prior to his presidency, and his ownership of an influential mass-media outlet.
Early life and education
Petro Poroshenko was born on 26 September 1965, into an ethnic Ukrainian family in Bolhrad, a primarily Bulgarian town in Ukraine's southwestern Odesa Oblast. Poroshenko's father, , was born in the village of Safiany near Izmail, which at the time belonged to Romania, and worked as an engineer and later a government official who managed multiple factories in the Ukrainian SSR. According to Poroshenko, his father's family stemmed from the Danube Cossacks. Little is known about his mother, Yevhenia Serhiyivna Hryhorchuk, but a Ukrainian newspaper said she was an accountant, who taught at a vocational and technical school of accounting. Poroshenko spent his childhood and youth in Tighina, where his father Oleksii was heading a machine building plant and where he learned Romanian.In his youth, Poroshenko practiced judo and sambo, and was a Candidate for Master of Sport of the USSR. Despite good grades, he was not awarded the normal gold medal at graduation, and on his report card he was given a "C" for his behavior. After getting into a fight with four Soviet Army cadets at the military commissariat, he was sent to army service in the distant Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic.
In 1989, Poroshenko graduated, having begun studying in 1982, with a degree in economics from the international relations and law department at the Kyiv University. At this university he was friends with Mikheil Saakashvili, whom he would appoint as Governor of the Odesa Oblast in May 2015, and who is a former president of Georgia.
In 1984, Poroshenko married a medical student, Maryna Perevedentseva. Their first son, Oleksiy, was born in 1985.
From 1989 to 1992, Poroshenko was an assistant at the university's international economic relations department. While still a student, he founded a legal advisory firm mediating the negotiation of contracts in foreign trade, and then he undertook the negotiations himself, starting to supply cocoa beans to the Soviet chocolate industry in 1991. At the same time, he was deputy director of the 'Republic' Union of Small Businesses and Entrepreneurs, and the CEO of "Exchange House Ukraine".
Poroshenko's brother, Mykhailo, older by eight years, died in a 1997 car crash under mysterious circumstances.
Business career
In 1993, Poroshenko, together with his father Oleksii and colleagues from the Road Traffic Institute in Kyiv, created the UkrPromInvest Ukrainian Industry and Investment Company, which specialized in the confectionery and automotive industries. Poroshenko was director-general of the company from its founding until 1998, when in connection with his entry into parliament he handed the title over to his father, while retaining the title of honorary president.Between 1996 and 1998, UkrPromInvest acquired control over several state-owned confectionery enterprises, which were combined into the Roshen group in 1996, creating the largest confectionery manufacturing operation in Ukraine. His business success in this industry earned him the nickname "Chocolate King". Poroshenko's business empire also includes several car and bus factories, Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard, the 5 Kanal television channel, as well as other businesses in Ukraine.
Although not the most prominent in the list of his business holdings, the assets that drew much recent media attention, and often controversy, are the confectionery factory in Lipetsk, Russia, that became controversial due to the Russo-Ukrainian war, the Sevastopol Marine Plant that has been confiscated after the 2014 Russian forcible annexation of Crimea and the media outlet 5 kanal, particularly because of Poroshenko's repeated refusal to sell an influential media asset following his accession to presidency.
According to Poroshenko since becoming President of Ukraine he has relinquished the management of his businesses, ultimately to a blind trust.
Billionaires lists rankings
In March 2012, Forbes placed him on the Forbes list of billionaires at 1,153rd place, with US$1 billion. As of May 2015, Poroshenko's net worth was about US$720 million, losing 25 percent of his wealth because of Russia's ban of Roshen products and the state of the Ukrainian economy.According to the annual ranking of the richest people in Ukraine, published in October 2015 by the Ukrainian journal Novoye Vremya and conducted jointly with Dragon Capital, a leading investment company in Ukraine, president Poroshenko was found to be the only one from the top ten list whose asset value grew since the previous year's ranking. The estimate of his assets was set at US$979 million, a 20% growth, and his ranking increased from 9th to 6th wealthiest person in Ukraine. The article observed that Poroshenko remained one of the only two European leaders who owned a business empire of such scale, with Silvio Berlusconi of Italy being the other.
A total of €450 million is kept in an Amsterdam-based company registered in Cyprus, as a result of which his effective tax rate is 5% rather than the statutory tax rate of 18% in Ukraine. The company is probably to be worth much more, as the annual accounts published by the Dutch Chamber of Commerce only contain the book value of the shares, which is very likely to be lower than the market value. After his election, Poroshenko lost the billionaire status as his net worth dropped by 40% to reach $705 million.
Following the 2014 elections, Poroshenko sold his stake in Roshen. international financial outlets have reported that Makar Paseniuk, owner and managing director of Investment Capital Ukraine, was hired by Poroshenko to act as his personal advisor and oversee the sale of the company. ICU has allegedly utilized an array of offshore companies to hide Poroshenko’s assets and avoid paying millions in taxes to the Ukrainian government.
Associated businesses
A number of businesses were once part of the which Poroshenko headed in 1993–1998. The investment group was dissolved in April 2012. Poroshenko has stated that upon beginning his political activity he passed on his holdings to a trust fund.- Bogdan group, centered in Cherkasy
- Roshen group
- 5 Kanal and Priamyi television channels
- Kuznia na Rybalskomu shipyard in Kyiv
- International Invest Bank, owned through a trust and along with Ihor Kononenko
- Ukrprominvest-Agro, an agrarian holding
- *Zoria Podillia, an agrarian company near Haisyn, specializing in sugar production from sugar beets
- *Podillia
- *MAS-Agro
- *Ahrofirma "Dniproahrolan"
- *Ahrofirma "Ivankivtsi"
- Sevastopol Shipyard
Early political career
Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council
In December 2001, Poroshenko broke ranks with Kuchma supporters to become campaign chief of Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine Bloc opposition faction. After parliamentary elections in March 2002 in which Our Ukraine won the biggest share of the popular vote and Poroshenko won a seat in parliament, Poroshenko served as head of the parliamentary budget committee, where he was accused of "misplacing ₴47 million". As a consequence of Poroshenko's Our Ukraine Bloc membership tax inspectors launched an attack on his business. Despite great difficulties, UkrPromInvest managed to survive until Yushchenko became President of Ukraine in 2005.Poroshenko was considered a close confidant of Yushchenko, who is the godfather of Poroshenko's daughters. Poroshenko was probably the wealthiest oligarch among Yushchenko supporters, and was often named as one of the main financial backers of Our Ukraine and the Orange Revolution. After Yushchenko won the presidential elections in 2004, Poroshenko was appointed Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.
In September 2005, highly publicized mutual allegations of corruption erupted between Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko involving the privatizations of state-owned firms. Poroshenko, for example, was accused of defending the interests of Viktor Pinchuk, who had acquired state firm Nikopol Ferroalloy for $80 million, independently valued at $1 billion.
In response to the allegations, Yushchenko dismissed his entire cabinet of ministers, including Poroshenko and Tymoshenko. State prosecutors dismissed an abuse of power investigation against Poroshenko the following month, immediately after Yushchenko dismissed Sviatoslav Piskun, General Prosecutor of Ukraine. Piskun claimed that he was sacked because he refused to institute criminal proceedings against Tymoshenko and refused to drop proceedings against Poroshenko.
In the March 2006 parliamentary election, Poroshenko was re-elected to the Ukrainian parliament with the support of Our Ukraine electoral bloc. He chaired the parliamentary Committee on Finance and Banking. Allegedly, since Poroshenko claimed the post of Chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament for himself, the Socialist Party of Ukraine chose to be part of the Alliance of National Unity because it was promised that their party leader, Oleksandr Moroz, would be elected chairman if the coalition were formed. This left Poroshenko's Our Ukraine and their ally Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc out of the Government.
Poroshenko did not run in the September 2007 parliamentary election. Poroshenko started heading the Council of Ukraine's National Bank in February 2007. Between 1999 and 2012 he was a board member of the National Bank of Ukraine.