Hennadii Olehovych Korban (; born May 24, 1970) is a Ukrainian former businessman and politician.
Biography
Early life and education
Born to a Jewish family of Soviet engineers. His elder sister Victoria Korban (b. 1962) moved to Israel in 1990 with her family. Korban's parents also have Israeli citizenship.
He grew up in Dnipropetrovsk, where he graduated from secondary school No. 21 in 1987. After graduating from school, he entered the Faculty of Philosophy at Rostov State University, but was not enrolled because he could not provide a recommendation from the local party body of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
The same year he returned to Dnipropetrovsk and entered the Metallurgical Institute. Soon he suspended his studies and was drafted into the Soviet Army.
In 1988–1990 he served in the army, with the rank of ryadovoy in the Aviation Guards Regiment.
After demobilization in 1991, he entered the Maxim Gorky Literature Institute, but soon he skipped studying at the institute in favor of a job as a broker.
In 1997, he graduated from the State Mining Academy of Ukraine with a degree in finance and credit.
Business career
In 1991, he began working as a broker at the Center Soyuz Commodity Exchange and the Russian Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange.
In 1992, he returned to his native city with start-up capital and founded a brokerage office “Ukraine”.
In 1994, he started his investment company OJSC IC Slavutych Capital and headed its Board of Directors.
In 2001, he headed the Supervisory Board of Yuzhniy Mining and Processing Plant.
In 2005, he became a member of the Supervisory Board of the Ukrainian oil and gas company Ukrnafta, the largest producer of oil and gas in the country.
In business, Korban focused on primary privatization, securities trading, and the construction of large office and shopping centers in Kyiv and the Dnipro. He invested heavily in a number of blue chip stocks in Ukraine and abroad.
Political career Head of the political council of the Ukrainian Association of Patriots - UKROP from July 12, 2015 to January 23, 2016.
Chief of Staff of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration from March 6, 2014 to March 24, 2015.
Since March 5, 2020 he is the head of the Community Board, a consultative body to the Dnipro City Council.
After the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, on February 28, 2022, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Dnipro Defense Council.
Involvement in the Revolution of Dignity
Korban supports Euromaidan in Dnipropetrovsk
During the Revolution of Dignity, he organizationally and financially supported the protests in Dnipropetrovsk, provided the protesters with legal and informational assistance. For this activity, together with his business partner Borys Filatov, he was persecuted by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul, who influenced the regional authorities. On November 21, 2015, two years after the beginning of the Euromaidan, Korban recalled:
So Korban and Filatov mobilized pro-Ukrainian sentiments in Dnipropetrovsk. In addition to 5 Kanal, with the help of these advertising screens, residents of the city could watch live broadcasts from protests in Kyiv and other cities by Espreso TV satellite channel, which at that time did not have a license to broadcast in Ukraine. Also, businessmen hung the flags of Ukraine and the EU on the buildings of their hotels and business centers in Dnipropetrovsk.
According to Korban, the broadcast of 5 Kanal on the advertising screen of the “Passage” mall in the center of Dnipropetrovsk was organized during the events on Hrushevsky Street.
According to some evidence, the broadcast of 5 Kanal on the “Passage” advertising screen began on January 24.
It was on this day that the Dnipro city council met in an extraordinary session to vote for an appeal to Yanukovych to use all legal methods to resolve the situation (a veiled call to disperse the Euromaidan). This appeal was initiated by the Party of Regions.
In early February 2014, Korban explained his motivation to openly oppose the Yanukovych regime: “We decided that we had to do something as citizens, to send a signal that not all businessmen are afraid… We want to live in Europe, not in an outpost of the Russian empire.”
On Saturday, January 25, at about 5 p.m., the lights were turned off in the Passage, Europe and Library malls, escalators and elevators stopped; thousands of visitors were forced to leave the buildings in the dark.
In independent media, the incident was characterized as “sabotage” and “revenge”, organized by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul. The municipal services of the city did not respond to messages about the blackout.
On January 26, the main advertising screen at the Passage shopping center broadcast the Swan Lake ballet (a reference to the coup attempt in the USSR in August 1991, when this ballet was broadcast on all TV channels), one of the side ones - the flags of Ukraine and the EU.
It was on this day in Dnipropetrovsk that about 3,000 participants in the Revolution of Dignity gathered at the Regional State Administration. They were brutally dispersed by the police and paramilitary “titushky” groups.
On the night of January 27, mass arrests took place, people were seized right on the street and beaten. At night, the judges sent the detainees en masse into custody. According to Borys Filatov, the “titushky” were brought to Dnipro from Kryvyi Rih. Among them were employees of security firms associated with local representatives of the Party of Regions, high-ranking police officers and the Security Service of Ukraine. The judoka Danylo Volovich, who commanded the titushkas, subsequently fled to Russia.
On January 27, when another Euromaidan rally took place on the European Square of Dnipropetrovsk, which was attended by about a hundred people, the Swan Lake ballet continued to be shown on the advertising screen of the Passage mall.
Appeal to the authorities of Ukraine
On January 27, on behalf of Dnipropetrovsk businessmen, Korban appealed to Viktor Yanukovych, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada and local authorities with a call to stop using force and make concessions for the sake of the country’s unity. He urged the authorities and the opposition to negotiate on the basis of the unity and indivisibility of Ukraine and the rights and freedoms of its citizens.
Political persecution by the Yanukovych regime
The persecution of Korban and Filatov began after the protesters were dispersed on January 26. According to Borys Filatov, “Berkut” squads searched the offices of Korban, Filatov and partners under the pretext of looking for extremists. They did not have documents authorizing the search. One of the well-known “Maidan judges” (judges who persecuted Euromaidan activists) Mykola Bibik, decided to forcibly bring Korban and Filatov to court, which in fact meant detention and arrest.
Emigration
On January 28, Korban and Filatov left Ukraine, after declaring that they were being persecuted for their citizen’s position by the authorities of the Dnipropetrovsk region, supervised by Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Vilkul. As Korban recalls, Ihor Kolomoyskyi provided them with his private jet for an urgent departure from Ukraine.
On January 30, 2014, Filatov announced that the court's decision to bring them to court was officially cancelled. However, the pressure on the supporters of the Maidan continued. Borys Filatov described the situation in Dnipro:
On February 2, Korban and Filatov were invited to Knesset and met with the deputies there, and in the evening Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein had an informal conversation with them.
On February 4, on the advertising screen of the Passage mall, after the break, broadcasts of protests in Kyiv continued.
Proposals for resolving the conflict between government and society
On February 5, in Tel Aviv, Korban gave an interview in which he outlined his vision of the situation in Ukraine, the main risks and ways out.
Korban sees the way to save Ukraine in asking the oligarchs for help in running the country:
Korban named Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk as possible candidates.
After the victory of the Revolution of Dignity, the new authorities offered some of the leaders of the largest financial and industrial groups to become heads of regional state administrations in their respective regions. As a result, only Serhiy Taruta and Kolomoyskyi agreed.
According to his own statement, Kolomoyskyi himself proposed this HR initiative to the new authorities. In an interview with the WSJ on June 27, 2014, Kolomoyskyi recalled that he discussed the issue of his governorship with someone about a month before the fall of Viktor Yanukovych.
Appeal to big business
On February 19, after an attempt by the authorities to suppress the revolution by force, which led to mass casualties, Hennadiy Korban publicly addressed the leaders of all financial and industrial groups in Ukraine, urging them to take responsibility for saving the country:
In public service
Historical context of public service appointment On March 1, 2014, in the cities of the south and east of Ukraine, Russian saboteurs and pro-Russian fringe groups tried to seize administrative buildings, rip down Ukrainian flags and hang up Russian ones. In particular, in Dnipro, from 1,000 to 3,000 people gathered near the opera house, went to the Dnipro City Council and hung flags of Russia and Ukrainian SSR near it.
To stabilize the situation, on March 2, acting President Oleksandr Turchynov signed a decree appointing Kolomoyskyi as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. In general, then the governors of 18 regions of Ukraine were replaced.
The National Defense Headquarters of the region was established in Dnipro. The deputies of the regional council and activists of various movements in the region adopted a joint document in which Yanukovych, separatism and Russian aggression were condemned, and the new leadership of Ukraine was recognized as legitimate. The document was signed by representatives of the regional branches of the Party of Regions, Batkivshchyna, the UDAR party, the Svoboda party, as well as activists of the Right Sector, Euromaidan and more than a dozen movements and parties.
On the same day, the new leadership of the Dnipropetrovsk Region sent assistance to the 174th anti-aircraft missile brigade of the city of Sevastopol. This is the first known case of organized volunteer assistance to the Ukrainian military during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
March 3, 2014 in Dnipropetrovsk Ihor Kolomoyskyi spoke to representatives of local self-government bodies and activists of the Revolution of Dignity.
The new regional authorities, together with local activists formed the Coordination Center of Public Order and Peace, which immediately declared a moratorium on rallies, and called leadership of the settlements of the region to protect strategic facilities and ensure timely social transfers.
Close cooperation with local civil society volunteers was typical for Kolomoyskyi and his deputies Korban and Filatov throughout their term. This cooperation became the basis for defending the Dnipropetrovsk region from Russian military aggression and transforming Dnipropetrovsk into Eastern Ukraine’s Outpost.
On March 6, 2014, Filatov announced that Korban had been appointed Deputy Governor - Chief of Staff.
The powers of Korban in the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration
The day after his appointment, Korban presented his powers as an operational management and economic bloc.Ukraine Turns to Its Oligarchs for Political Help, nytimes.com (2 March 2014)