Pavlo Ivanovych Lazarenko (; born 23 January 1953) is a Ukrainian convicted criminal, international fugitive, and a former politician who served as Prime Minister of Ukraine from 1996 to 1997. Born in 1953 to a peasant family in southern Ukraine, Lazarenko was active in agricultural activities before joining politics in the late 1980s. Originally Governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Lazarenko was in 1995 made First Vice Prime Minister of Ukraine for energy affairs, placing him in charge of acquiring energy from foreign countries. Less than a year later, he was appointed by President Leonid Kuchma as Prime Minister, serving for just over a year before being replaced by Valeriy Pustovoitenko on 2 July 1997. Lazarenko's time as Prime Minister and subsequent trials have established him as one of the most corrupt, authoritarian, and unpopular Prime Ministers in Ukrainian history. According to United Nations reports, Lazarenko stole around $200 million from the Ukrainian government. Following his 1999 flight from Ukraine, Lazarenko fled to the United States, where he was subsequently been tried for extortion, money laundering, and wire fraud, and sentenced. Since 1999, he has been living in exile in the United States due to criminal charges against him in Ukraine. Early life and career Birth and family Pavlo Lazarenko was born in the village of Karpivka (located near Kryvyi Rih) on 23 January 1953 into a family of peasant farmers. His father, Ivan Tryfonovych Lazarenko, was born in 1926 in the village of Hnidyn, near Kyiv. Following Ivan's birth, the family moved to what is now Kherson Oblast, where they worked as farmers. In 1932, the family Lazarenko family moved again to Karpivka, where Pavlo would be born. Pavlo's grandfather, Tryfon Lazarenko, joined the Red Army in 1944 and was killed during World War II. After the war, Ivan established a farm in Karpivka, where Pavlo was born. Early career In 1970, Pavlo got a job as a driver in the kolkhoz "Zoria Komunizma" (Dawn of Communism), in Shyroke Raion. From May 1971 to June 1973, Lazarenko served in the Soviet Army, on the border with Afghanistan. After his military service, from 1973 to 1978 Lazarenko studied at the in the Agronomic Department. After graduating, Lazarenko was recognised as an agronomist. From 1978 to 1983, he worked variously as agronomist, chief agronomist, and head of kolkhoz administration in the Kalinin kolkhoz in Novomoskovsk Raion. In 1984, Lazarenko was appointed a head