Igor Bakai
Date of birth: November 17, 1963
Igor Mikhailovich Bakai
Positions: Chairman of the Board of Naftogaz Ukraine (1998-2000), Chairman of the State Committee for Water Resources of Ukraine (July 21 - October 2, 2003), Head of the State Administration (2003-2004).
Place of birth and education. Born in Rivne. Graduated from the Beresnowski Lestekhnitscheski College as a forestry technician in 1982. Graduated from the law faculty of the Academy of Labor and Social Relations in 1997.
Career. From 1984 to 1989, after serving in the military, he was the head of the base of the football training camp of SKA 'Karpaty' of the Carpathian Military District (Lviv).
From 1989 to 1991 - Brigadier, section chief for timber harvesting in the Yakut ASSR.
From 1991 to 1992 - Chairman of the 'Cossack Courts' Cooperative in Lviv.
After moving to Kyiv from 1992 to 1994 - President of the Veles company, from 1994 to 1995 - President of the Republic Corporation, and from 1995 to 1996 - Chairman of the Coordination Council of Intergaz JSC.
From 1996 to 1998 - Deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament of the II Congress. He was a member of the Committee of the Ukrainian Parliament on Environmental Policy and belonged to the parliamentary group 'Constitutional Center'.
From 1997 to 1998 - First Deputy Head of the State Committee for Oil, Gas, and the Oil Refining Industry of Ukraine.
From April 1997 to January 2000 - Advisor to Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
From April 1998 to April 2000 - Chairman of the Board of the National Joint Stock Company Naftogaz Ukraine.
From 2000 to 2002 - Deputy of the Ukrainian Parliament of the III Congress. Member of the party (since 1999) and the parliamentary faction Democratic Union.
From July to October 2003 - Chairman of the State Committee for Water Resources of Ukraine.
From October 2003 to December 2004 - Head of the State Administration of Ukraine (an organization that supports the activities of the President of Ukraine, the Ukrainian Parliament, the Government of Ukraine, and other government bodies, having many state enterprises and organizations under its supervision).
Scandals. At the finale of the presidential election campaign in 2004, Bakai left Ukrainian territory. In March 2005, he received citizenship of the Russian Federation.
His departure was termed as an escape, citing suspicions of involvement in a number of serious economic crimes committed during his tenure as Head of the State Administration. In the spring of 2005, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies accused Bakai of abuse of office, of the illegal sale of state property: the hotels 'Dnepr' and 'Ukraine', the property of the National Exhibition Center of Ukraine in Kyiv, and several Crimean sanatoriums. According to the results of an audit by the Audit and Inspection Office in 2005, it was established that the State Administration and its central office illegally spent more than 800 million hryvnias.
Bakai firmly denies involvement in any crimes.
According to the former chairman of Naftogaz Ukraine, communicated to the television channel Inter in 2006, he was invited to Moscow a few months before the presidential elections in 2004. 'I went to Leonid Danilovich Kuchma and said: Leonid Danilovich, I have served you for nine years, please let me go to Russia because I was invited to work. I submitted my application, and on December 20 (2004 - edited) he signed it', said Bakai. According to him, he received a position in the official structures of the Russian Federation.
For a long time, the Ukrainian official was sought by Interpol and could not leave Russia to avoid arrest. however, from 2006 to 2007, Ukrainian courts in two instances acquitted Bakai of criminal prosecution.
In November 2008, the judicial panel of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Ukraine stated that the closure of criminal cases against the 'janitor of Kuchma' was unlawful.
In March 2010, the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv closed all criminal cases against Igor Bakai. The Kyiv Court of Appeals confirmed the prosecutor's appeal on April 14, 2010.
On October 31, 2017, the Tagansky Court in Moscow ordered the arrest of Igor Bakai. He is being prosecuted for 'fraud on a particularly large scale'. Bakai is accused of establishing the company MetaMoretellinvest Limited (main owner Alisher Usmanov) of over 12 million dollars received under a loan agreement under paragraph 4 of Article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (fraud on a particularly large scale), with a maximum penalty of up to 10 years imprisonment. As a security measure, house arrest was ordered for him.
On November 27, 2020, the Bashkir Court in Moscow sentenced Igor Bakai to four years of probation (with a probation period of 4 years) for particularly serious fraud.
Family. Married three times. His current wife (marriage registered in 2000) is Natalia Bakai (Kozitskaya), who began a career as a pop singer in the early 2000s, which she had to suspend due to persecution from Ukraine. Children from the first two marriages - daughter Marina (born 1985) and two sons (1986 and 1991).