Source: www.irishtimes.com --- Monday, June 20, 2016
Four summers ago, Football fans from across the continent were heading for Donetsk for a semi-final of Euro 2012. The match would be a sporting celebration for Ukraine and a crowning achievement for the Donetsk elite, a moment in the spotlight that would help banish the shadows that clung to them and their hometown. Long associated with grime and crime, this industrial city and region were now pre-eminent in Ukraine. Local man Viktor Yanukovich had overcome youthful convictions for robbery and assault, and a 2004 Orange Revolution that stopped him taking power through election fraud, to finally become Ukraine’s president in 2010. Two years on, Yanukovich’s allies were running the government and security services, and his extended “family” of friends and relatives was swiftly turning political connections into immense personal wealth. At the top of Ukraine’s economic tree sat a billionaire who had funded the rise of Yanukovich and his Regions Party, and whose own ascent and current travails are inextricable from those of his hometown. The son of a Donetsk coalminer, Rinat Akhmetov came to prominence when his associate Akhat Bragin, known as Alik the Greek, was blown up while watching his Football club play in October 1995. Akhmetov took charge of Bragin’s business and sporting assets, growing the former into a coal- and metals-based empire that now employs 300,000 people in Ukraine, and transforming the latter – Shakhtar Donetsk – ...
from Football http://ift.tt/28NY7Sv
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