Andriy Portnov was a Ukrainian lawyer, statesman and political figure, advisor to the President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych from 2011 to 2014.

While he was the deputy head of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s administration & responsible for its legal affairs. He drafted the Dictatorship Laws that Yanukovych used to clamp down on the Maidan protests

According to Lursoft ITdata, he was on the Sanctions lists of several countries. He is still on the US SDN Sanctions List

In parallel, he was the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration and dealt with legal issues

Before that, from 2005 to 2010, he was the Chief Lawyer of Yulia Tymoshenko's team.

Member of the Board of the National Bank of Ukraine from 2010 to 2014.

***
Born on October 27, 1973 in Luhansk.

In 1990, he graduated from Luhansk Secondary School No. 50.

In 1991-1992, he served in the Armed Forces of the USSR and Ukraine.

In 1993-1994, Portnov worked as a legal consultant at Yurlit Ltd. in Luhansk, while studying at the correspondence department of the Law Faculty of the Eastern Ukrainian State University. Then, for less than two years, he was a lawyer at the Luhansk Oil Base.

In 1996, he headed the legal office of Ukrinformpravo in Luhansk.

Graduated from the university in 1999.

At the Securities and Exchange Commission
In January 1997, Portnov began working in Kyiv at the State Securities and Stock Market Commission. Initially, he held the position of chief specialist in the department of accounting and reporting methodology and standardization of the corporate finance department. A few months later, he was appointed deputy head of the control and legal department and head of the law enforcement department.

From September 1997 to December 2001, he held the following positions in the Commission: Assistant to the Chairman, Head of the Corporate Finance Department; Assistant to the Chairman, Head of the Group of Assistants and Advisors to the Chairman; Head of the Corporate Finance Department.

From January 2002 to May 2003, he was the Director of the Portnov and Partners law firm, specializing in services in the field of investment business, corporate governance, privatization and the securities market.

In June 2003, he returned to the State Commission and until July 2004 worked as the First Deputy Executive Secretary (Head of the Central Office).

From July 2004 to July 2005, he was a member of the Commission.

In 2004, by the Decree of the President of Ukraine, Portnov was awarded the title of Honored Lawyer of Ukraine.

In parliament
In July 2005, he returned to his legal practice, which he continued until April 2006. After the corruption scandal in Ukraine in September 2005, he represented in court the interests of State Secretary Oleksandr Zinchenko, who accused the head of the National Security and Defense Council Petro Poroshenko and his entourage of corruption. The trial ended in favor of Poroshenko.

Before the 2006 parliamentary elections, Portnov was included in the list of the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, headed the legal department of the faction headquarters during the elections and was elected as a people's deputy of the 5th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

In the 2007 early parliamentary elections, he again entered parliament on the BYuT list, becoming a deputy of the 6th convocation of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine.

He joined the parliamentary Committee on Justice.

In 2008, he was elected deputy head of the BYuT faction.

An informal “Portnov group” operated in parliament, which, in addition to Portnov, included Svyatoslav Oleinik, Valery Pisarenko and Vladimir Pilipenko.

In August-September 2008, Portnov worked on joint bills with the Party of Regions on behalf of Yulia Tymoshenko, which weakened the power of President Yushchenko.

In 2008, together with his legal team, he prevented the holding of early parliamentary elections. In 2009, he was involved in supporting gas contracts in Moscow.

On May 30, 2009, according to the quota of law faculties, by the decision of the III All-Ukrainian Congress of Representatives of Higher Educational and Scientific Institutions, he was elected a member of the Supreme Judicial Council of Ukraine for a six-year term.

In the Presidential Administration (2010–2014)
After Yulia Tymoshenko's defeat in the 2010 presidential election, he defended her interests in the Supreme Administrative Court. He later stated that he considered the lawsuit inappropriate and took up the case under pressure from Tymoshenko. After the presidential campaign, he stopped providing legal services to BYuT and resigned as deputy head of the BYuT faction. Portnov's parliamentary group has switched to the Party of Regions.

On 2 April 2010, he accepted President Viktor Yanukovych's offer to take up the post of deputy head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine and head of the Main Directorate for Judicial Reform and the Judicial System[8]. BYuT considered Portnov's transfer to Yanukovych's administration a betrayal.

Yanukovych introduced Portnov to the board of the National Bank of Ukraine, as well as the supervisory boards of the State Savings Bank of Ukraine and the State Export-Import Bank of Ukraine.

In April 2011, as a result of administrative reform, Portnov was transferred to the position of Presidential Adviser and Head of the Main Directorate of Justice of the Presidential Administration.

In 2011, he led a group that developed a draft of the new Criminal Procedure Code of Ukraine, which was adopted by the parliament in April 2012 and entered into force in November 2012.

During the Euromaidan, he was a member of the working group on resolving the political crisis, together with President Viktor Yanukovych and Justice Minister Elena Lukash. He was considered one of the authors of the "January 16 laws", but despite his positive attitude towards them, he denied participating in their development.

On January 24, 2014, President Yanukovych dismissed Portnov from his position as his advisor and appointed him First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine.

February 26 and. O. President of Ukraine Oleksandr Turchynov dismissed Portnov from the position of First Deputy Head of the Administration.

Emigration

On February 22, 2014, he left the territory of Ukraine. On February 28, the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine requested the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine to detain Andriy Portnov within 10 days.

On March 6, 2014, the European Union and Canada announced that Portnov had been included in the list of high-ranking Ukrainian officials against whom financial sanctions were imposed.

Portnov himself claims that he has no financial assets abroad.

On May 25, 2014, the Russian Federal Migration Service granted Andriy Portnov a temporary residence permit for 3 years.

On August 15, the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv partially satisfied Portnov's claim against the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine for the protection of his honor, dignity and business reputation, ruling that information about his alleged involvement in the mass killings of activists on Euromaidan during the winter events of 2014 was false.

On October 9, the court found false information about Portnov's alleged involvement in the theft of land and real estate in Mezhyhirya and money laundering, which was made public by the leadership of the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine at a press conference on May 20, and instructed the Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine to publicly refute this information within 10 days.

In late December 2014, Portnov, who was living in Moscow at the time, announced plans to return to Ukraine in 2015, as no legal charges had been brought against him. In the autumn, the European Union received a written report on the lack of legal action by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies against the Klyuyev brothers and Andriy Portnov on charges of embezzlement. EU sanctions against Andriy Portnov were lifted on 5 March 2015.

In October 2015, the Court of Justice of the EU ruled in the Portnov v. Council of the EU case, recognizing that imposing sanctions based solely on cooperation with the former regime was unacceptable.

During the trial of Viktor Yanukovych for treason, Ukrainian special services provided recordings of telephone conversations with Sergei Glazyev, an aide to the Russian president, according to which Portnov participated in the drafting of a statement by the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea during the Crimean crisis.

During his years in emigration, he enjoyed the sympathy of the Ukrainian website Strana.ua, which in one of its publications called the politician and official a human rights activist. Portnov had friendly relations with the site's editor-in-chief, Igor Guzhva.

After his return in 2019, the only channel that talked about the "human rights activist" Portnov was Igor Kolomoisky's 1+1 television channel.

During this time, he continued to provide legal advice to businessman Igor Kolomoisky, with whom he began working in 1999.

He also provided legal support to Vyacheslav Khimikus, who accused former deputy Sergei Pashinsky of causing grievous bodily harm.

From August to October 2018, he was the owner of the corporate rights to the information television channel NewsOne, which were eventually transferred to Viktor Medvedchuk's business partner and political associate Taras Kozak.

Return from exile

During the 2019 presidential election, he supported Volodymyr Zelensky against incumbent President Petro Poroshenko, and after both reached the second round, promised to return to the country. The candidate's team and those associated with him denied any connection with Portnova and other officials of the Yanukovych-era government (such as Elena Lukash), who also began to support Zelensky.

On May 19, 2019, he returned to the territory of Ukraine, which became known thanks to Elena Lukash. After that, he began to file mass statements with the State Investigation Bureau against former President Petro Poroshenko: accusations of "criminal actions" during the Kerch Strait conflict, "economic crimes", the illegal acquisition of the Primys TV channel, and "seizure of power" during the elections for a new government in 2016.

This action was approved by Igor Kolomoisky, a business partner of President Volodymyr Zelensky, who also had a conflict with Poroshenko during his last presidency.

At the same time, he was summoned for questioning in cases of murders during the Euromaidan as a witness. In parallel, he lobbied for the termination of criminal cases against video blogger Anatoly