Oleksiy Kostusyev

Oleksiy Oleksiiovych Kostusyev (Ukrainian: Олексій Олексійович Костусєв; June 29, 1954) is a Ukrainian politician and former mayor of Odesa. Kostusyev is the father of fellow Ukrainian politician Oleksiy Honcharenko.^[2] Kostusyev divorced Oleksiy's mother when Oleksiy was three years old.^[2]

Kostusyev previously served as the head of the Anti-Monopoly Committee of Ukraine, the nation's premier competition regulator.^[3]

Oleksiy Oleksiiovych Kostusyev was born on 29 June 1954 to Oleksiy Oleksiyovych (1928–1983), a captain 1st rank and sailor-border guard, and Violla Alekseevna (born 1932), a doctor.

In 1971–1975, Kostusyev studied at the Odesa National Economics University majoring in economics. From August 1975 to January 1991, Kostusyev studied and worked at the Odesa National Maritime University, including as a postgraduate student, assistant, senior teacher, associate professor, and head of the department of social flight. In 2004, he defended his doctoral dissertation on "Methodological principles of forming an effective competitive environment in the economy of Ukraine" (Методологічні засади формування ефективного конкурентного середовища в економіці України).

From 1976 to 1977, Kostusyev also served in the Soviet Armed Forces.

From 1990 to 1994, Kostusyev was a member of the Odesa City Council, where he was chairman of the Odesa city privatization committee. During this time, he successfully petitioned the council to grant official status to the Russian language, which eventually passed and made it co-equal with Ukrainian in city affairs.^[4] From January 1991 to January 1993, Kostusyev also served as deputy chairman for economic affairs in the executive committee of the Kyivskyi District of Odesa.

During the 1994 Ukrainian parliamentary election, Kostusyev ran for the Verkhovna Rada in the Odesa Oblast constituency No. 294, but failed after winning second place in the second round.

From March 1998 to December 2001, Kostusyev was No.20 on the electoral list of the 3rd Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada for the Socialist Party – Peasant Party. At the time of the 1998 Ukrainian parliamentary election, he was the President of the Charitable Foundation. B. Derevyanka, which is based in Odesa. During his time in office, Kostusyev changed his party registration: from May 1998 to December 1999, he was a member of the Socialist Party, and then afterwards a member of Labour Ukraine. During his post from July 1998 to February 2000, Kostusyev was the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Energy Saving, within the Committee on Fuel and Energy Complex, Nuclear Policy and Nuclear Safety. Then afterwards from February 2000 to December 2001, he was the Chairman of the Committee on Economic Policy, National Economic Management, Property, and Investments.^[5] On 14 December 2001, Kostusyev resigned from his post.

In June 2001, Kostusyev was appointed as Chairman of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU), which he headed for seven years. During this time, the committee established a system of repayment for unpaid heat and water bills, recovering more than 3 billion hryvnias. In 2003, the committee ordered Odesa's city executive committee to revise water supply tariffs, resolving the issue of double payment for water losses in in-house networks. The committee also fined two companies with 100 million hryvnias for inflating gasoline prices, five companies with 17 million for inflating sugar prices, and lowered money transfer fees for Western Union for 10 countries with large Ukrainian populations.^[6] In April 2010, the Verkhovna Rada re-appointed Kostusyev as committee chairman.

From 2004 to 2005, he was the chairman of the Soyuz party. Then in 2006, Viktor Yanukovych, the leader of the Party of Regions, encouraged Kostusyev and other members of the Soyuz party to join the party and concentrate politicians opposed to the Orange Revolution.^[5]

From April to October 2006, Kostusyev was No. 29 on the electoral list of the 5th Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada for the Party of Regions. At the time of the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election, he was the Chairman of the Anti-Monopoly Committee. During his 4-month tenure as lawmaker, Kostusyev was a member of the Committee on Budget (July–October 2006). On 5 October 2006, he resigned from his post.^[7]

Following the 2010 Ukrainian local elections, Kostusyev, who ran as a candidate for the Party of Regions, was elected as mayor of Odesa.^[8] On October 31, 2013, Kostusyev resigned from his post as mayor.^[9]

Since 1993, Kostusyev has been the head of the Assoc. privatization bodies of Ukraine. He was also the founder and leader of the Odesa Civil Forum. In 1998, Kostusyev became the president of the charity Boris Derevyanko Foundation, which hosts a yearly drawing competition for children called the "Colours of Odesa".^[10]

Since December 2000, he has been a member of a national council for coordinating multi-level governance across national, regional, and local governing bodies. Kostusyev also participated in a national council for adapting Ukrainian legislation to EU legislation since August 2000. Since 2003, Kostusyev has been a member of an inter-departmental commission on information policy and information security.

In 2004, Kostusyev was elected chairman of the Interstate Council on Antitrust Policy of the Commonwealth of Independent States, becoming the first Ukrainian in this position.

On 8 June 2011, Kostusyev participated in an interview with Echo of Moscow, where he stressed that "any citizen of Ukraine, at least a young one, should know the Ukrainian language". However, Kostusyev also defended his decision to increase billingual schools in Odesa since it gives more choice for parents, raising controversy over his views on the status of the Russian language in Ukraine.^[11]

In December 2010, during an opening session of the Odesa City Council, Kostusyev as mayor requested a resolution to conduct communication in Russian, which was unanimously adopted. This effectively allowed Russian to become a co-official language within the city administration.^[12]

On 9 March 2011, during the 179th anniversary of Taras Shevchenko's birth, Kostusyev was asked to recite some of Shevchenko's works, but the mayor refused.^[13]

In 2010, Kostusyev alongside Dmytro Tabachnyk, Volodymyr Semynozhenko, Irina Berezhna, and Vadym Kolesnichenko, opposed mandatory Ukrainian dubbing in films.^[14]

• Civil servant of the 1st rank (September 2001)^[15]
• Honored Economist of Ukraine (November 2002)^[16]
• Order of Merit III (January 2001)^[17]
• Order of Merit ІІ (May 2004)^[18]
• Honorary Diploma of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (June 2004)^[18]
• Order of the Holy Apostolic Grand Duke Vladimir III (April 2001)
• Order of the Holy Apostolic Grand Duke Vladimir II (June 2006)^[19]

Kostusyev is married to Irina Vasylivna (born 1965), an engineer. They have two children: Oleksiy Goncharenko (born 1980), a lawmaker in the Verkhovna Rada in the VIII and IX convocations, and Viola (born 1988).

In 2005, with the blessing of His Holiness Patriarch Alexy II and Metropolitan Vladimir of Kiev and All Ukraine, A. Kostusev brought to Ukraine a portion of the relics of one of the most revered Orthodox saints, Seraphim of Sarov. The relic traveled to several cities, including Kharkiv, Donetsk, Dnipro, Simferopol, and Odesa, with more than 1.5 million pilgrims having venerated the relics. The relics were subsequently transferred to the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra.^[20]

In 2010, Kostusev declared an income of more than ₴1.7 million, of which one million was listed as "material assistance". The mayor later stated that he had entered in the column "material assistance" — an inheritance from a deceased friend. Subsequently, on January 31, 2011, Kostusev initiated a meeting of the Odesa City Council session where they decided that Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych were not heroes of Ukraine.^[21]

• Personal website
• Profile at LIGA.net