Raisa Bohatyriova

From 1997 to 2003, Bohatyriova was the Secretary of the Supervisory Board at the National Fund of Social Protection for Mothers and Children Ukraine to Children.

Bohatyriova was a member of the Communist Party of Soviet Union and a member of the organizing committee in the creation of the Socialist Party of Ukraine. She was elected to the Verkhovna Rada by the members of the Kramatorsk city hospital as a people's deputy, a duty she accepted on May 15, 1990. On her website, Bohatyriova claims that her initial experience in the Verkhovna Rada gave her a real sense of the Ukrainian language. In March 1994, Bohatyriova was not re-elected, yet was appointed as a Deputy of Minister of Health Security. She made a career in this position, working her way up to be appointed Minister of the portfolio on January 27, 1999. On January 12, 2000, Bohatyriova was deposed as a Minister of Health Security when the Prime Minister of Ukraine was appointed, Viktor Yushchenko. However, in a few months, she was appointed as a science adviser to the President of Ukraine.

In July 2000, Bohatyriova was again elected to the parliament as a member of the Christian Democratic Party of Ukraine. She left her faction once she became a people's deputy and was unaffiliated until March 2001. In March 2001, Bohatyriova joined the Regions of Ukraine group and, in November, its faction. In April 2002, she was re-elected by the United Ukraine block as the leader of the Party of Regions. Bohatyriova was re-elected in April 2006 as the Party of Regions member, placing sixth on the party list. From July 2006 until February 2007, she was a member of the Budget Committee.

In November 2007, during the all-national reelections, Bohatyriova again became a member of the Verkhovna Rada from the Party of Region. On December 24, 2007, she received an appointment from the President of Ukraine to head the Secretariat of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.[2] On January 28, 2008, the administration of the Party of Regions excluded her from the party's list.[2]

On February 14, 2012, Bohatyriova was removed from the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and appointed Minister of Health.[1]

On February 24, 2014, just after the "Maidan revolution,"[9] the Verkhovna Rada dismissed Bohatyriova.[10]

In 2008, both Dmitry Itkin (Russian: Дмитрий Иткин; born October 23, 1963) and Viktor Naishuller (Russian: Виктор Найшулер; born 1956 Murmansk), who are very close to Semion Mogilevich, assisted Raisa Bohatyriova with numerous suspicious real estate purchases and alleged money laundering through the La Jolla, California based firm Ideal Real Estate.[11][12][13]

On October 20, 2014, Bohatyriova was declared a suspect in the large-scale embezzlement of ₴6 million in budget funds. The next day she was placed on the wanted list, and the court ordered the seizure of three apartments in Kyiv, one apartment in Yalta, and three houses in (the village) Pidhirtsi (in Obukhiv Raion) owned by her and her husband.[2]

Early March 2014, the European Union froze all funds belonging to Bohatyriova because they also suspected her of illegal use of budget funds.[14] On January 12, 2015, Interpol published an international red notice again Bohatyriova as wanted for corruption and charges of "misappropriation, embezzlement or conversion of property by malversation."[15] According to the Ukrainian government, she has since repaid government funds that had been allegedly misappropriated.[3] For this, her funds in the EU were unfrozen.[3]

In the years following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, Bohatyriova's whereabouts were unknown.[4] On August 27, 2019, Bohatyriova returned to Ukraine and was immediately detained by the police.[5] She was released from the pre-trial detention center two days later after Vadym Novynskyi had posted bail for her.[5]