Yuri Elistratov [ru], Hennadiy Balashov, Vadim Chuprina, Sea of Azov, in 1989 Ukraine, Kiev city, party office 5.10 September 2021.Freedom for Gennady Balashov.
Hennadiy Viktorovych Balashov (Ukrainian: Геннадій Вікторович Балашов, born 20 February 1961, Dnipro, USSR) is a Ukrainian businessman, blogger, politician and leader of 5.10 political party.[1][2] He is an advocate of a radical reform of Ukraine's tax system, so-called "Tax Paradise for humanity".
During Euromaidan events, Balashov sided with the protesters and was actively campaigning for his ideas, calling for the introduction of 5.10 system. At the beginning of March, as the crisis in Crimea was deepening, he travelled to Simferopol, but was kidnapped by allegedly local self-defense forces.[3] Upon his release and return to Kyiv, Balashov said that he was kidnapped, robbed and was being beaten for eight hours by local bandits.[4]
In the early elections of the President of Ukraine in 2014, Gennadiy Balashov and his party "5.10" supported Petro Poroshenko in order not to let Yulia Tymoshenko win the election.[5]
On 19 September 2018, the leader of the 5.10 party, Gennadiy Balashov, announced his intention to nominate his candidature for the presidential election of Ukraine on 31 March 2019.
Balashov urged party members and party supporters to finance his election campaign through contributions to the party account. The reports of the party indicated that at the beginning of 2019 1.2 million UAH were collected. This is 47% of the collateral (UAH 2.5 million), which should be submitted by the candidate to the CEC for registration. Balashov pledged to add the rest of his own money.
On 15 January, registration documents were submitted to the CEC. On 18 January, the CEC approved the candidate.
On 22 January 2021 the National Police of Ukraine opened a criminal case against Balashov as he received funds totaling $28,000 as an investment in the construction of an elite apartment building. However, after the house was built, he did not give the investors their funds, but instead began to lease the premises of the house for office rent.[7][8]
The erection of a house by Balashov in the buffer zone of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "St. Sophia Cathedral and Adjacent Monasteries, Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra" caused a high resonance in society. Architects and archaeologists, including a representative of the Institute of Archeology of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, said that Balashov built his house with numerous violations, which gives UNESCO the full right to exclude the Cathedral of St. Sophia and the adjacent monastic structures, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra from the list of World Heritage Sites.[9][10]
During the discussion of the Ukrainian language legislature at one of the all-Ukrainian TV channels, Balashov said that he spoke Russian out of principle[11][12]
