Volodymyr Shcherban

Volodymyr Petrovych Shcherban (; born 26 January 1950) is a Ukrainian politician and governor of a number of regions in Ukraine.

Brief biography Shcherban was born in the town of Artemivsk, Perevalsk Raion (Voroshilovhrad Oblast) on 26 January 1950. After finishing school, in 1967 he went to work for the Tochmash Factory in Donetsk as apprentice to a locksmith. From 1969 to 1971 Shcherban served in the army. Afterwards, he returned to Tochmash where he worked as a locksmith from 1971 to 1972. From 1972 to 1976 Shcherban studied at the Donetsk Institute of Soviet Trade. From 1976 to 1979 he worked for the fruit and vegetable farms of the Chernivtsi regional department of retail. Later he worked in a number of retail institutions in Donetsk.

In 1990 Shcherban was elected to the Donetsk City Council. From 1992 to 1994 he was a deputy mayor in Donetsk and from 1994 to 1996 chairman of the Donetsk Oblast council. Shcherban was also elected to the Verkhovna Rada from the Budyonnivsky electoral district N107 (Donetsk Oblast). In the parliament he was a member of the Social-Market Choice faction and the Budget Committee. He served as a People's Deputy of Ukraine at the second convocation until 1998. At the same time, from 1995 to 1996, Shcherban was appointed the governor of Donetsk Oblast and was an acting governor of Sumy Oblast from 1994 to 1996, completely ignoring the fact of unlawful conduct by working as legislator and government official.

As a member of the Liberal Party of Ukraine (LPU), Shcherban was elected once again from the Donetsk region electoral district N41 in 1998, joining the parliamentary group the Independents. On July 8, 1999, the decision of the Constitutional Court of Ukraine came into force which prohibited Volodymyr Shcherban from combining the post of the head of the Sumy Regional State Administration with the duties of a people's deputy of Ukraine. In connection with this decision, Vladimir Shcherban had to submit an application for withdrawal from the deputy corps. In Ukraine, he was charged with a number of serious crimes such as abuse of an official post, abuse of power, extortion, fraud of financial resources, hindering the exercise of electoral rights, and others. (Since July 2005, Shcherban and his wife Iryna had resided on north Orange Avenue at his downtown Orlando apartment in the upscale Echelon at Uptown complex.) At the request of Ukrainian authorities who had issued an arrest warrant for Shcherban in May 2005 on charges of threats, extortion, intimidation and exceeding government authority in connection with the November 2004 elections in Ukraine which led to the Orange Revolution, he was extradited back to Ukraine. In November 2006, representatives of the General Prosecutor Office of Ukraine detained Shcherban at Boryspil International Airport, but after a few days he was allowed to go home.

Family Wife – Iryna, chairman of the Vichnist (Eternity) charity fund in Sumy Oblast. Soon thereafter, member of parliament Vlasenko was stripped of his legislative mandate by the Higher Administrative Court of Ukraine (VASU).

In an interview with journalist Yevhen Yevhenovych Shcherban (junior) of Mirror Weekly on September 22, 1997, soon after surviving another murder attempt, he stated that neither the former (Volodymyr Shcherban) or current governors (Viktor Yanukovych) of Donetsk Oblast, nor the mayor of Donetsk (Volodymyr Rybak) helped him and his brother after the murder of their father.

Bread factories At the end of 2011, Shcherban sold his bread factory in Lebedyn to local entrepreneur Oleksandr Marchenko. In addition, Shcherban also listed his factories in Okhtyrka and Hlukhiv (note: all in the Sumy Oblast) for sale. He also sold just over half of the controlling stock in another bread factory in Konotop to Party of Regions politician Vitaliy Khomutynnik in 2008.