Although it’s time to get used to it, it’s all the same – Ukrainian oligarchs look rather strange, having earned their millions in their homeland and fled from domestic justice, from where they talk about all kinds of oppression in Ukraine and about the plight of the “refugee from the regime”.
A vivid example is the Ukrainian latifundist, the “egg king” and a former banker with gas roots Oleg Bakhmatyuk. Which is hiding in Vienna from the interest of Ukrainian law enforcement officers – for almost three years, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau has been accusing Bakhmatyuk of embezzling 1.2 billion hryvnias of a stabilization loan that he received in 2014 from the National Bank for his VAB Bank. The latter went bankrupt anyway, but the loan was not repaid. As a result, in 2020, the High Anti-Corruption Court arrested Bakhmatyuk in absentia, but he, sitting in Austria, is trying to delay the meeting with NABU detectives and at the same time is fighting off creditors in every possible way, to whom the main asset of the oligarch – UkrLandFarming – owes more than two billion dollars.
At the same time, Oleg Romanovich distributes interviews in which he claims that all the charges against him are far-fetched, and he himself is a businessman with a crystal clear reputation. Well, who would doubt.
True, when you study his biography, the classic phrase said by one of the American millionaires comes to mind – “I am ready to tell you about the origin of all my money, except for the first million.” However, with a correction – Oleg Bakhmatyuk is hardly ready to tell the true story of not only his first million, but also all the rest.
The only thing he does not hide is that his business can now get out of the peak only if he gets rid of the accusations of NABU. They are the obstacle, due to which financial oxygen has been cut off for UkrLandFarming for many years now.
The versions of NABU and Bakhmatyuk about the reasons for this state of affairs, of course, are radically opposite. According to Bakhmatyuk, the accusations are far-fetched, and thus Zelensky’s team is forcing UkrLandFarming to be sold to representatives of the president’s entourage for next to nothing.
However, Bakhmatyuk’s problems in connection with the amount allocated for the refinancing of VAB Bank began even under Poroshenko. According to Oleg Romanovich, he received 1.2 billion hryvnias from the NBU on the security of the plant in Ivano-Frankivsk, which cost more than 20 million dollars. Which exceeded, according to Bakhmatyuk, the amount of the loan several times. However, a simple arithmetic calculation (the dollar exchange rate was then about 25 hryvnias) shows that the plant cost no more than half a billion hryvnias in hryvnia.
But that’s not all – NABU claims that this cost was overestimated by 25 times – an examination conducted during the pre-trial investigation found that the real value of the mortgaged property is UAH 72.62 million against UAH 1.8 billion declared by VAB Bank “. However, the bank received the money. And he did not return, like the previous three billion hryvnias received from the NBU for the same purposes.
40 days later, in November 2014, the NBU declared VAB Bank insolvent. It is worth noting that Bakhmatyuk is involved in the bankruptcy of another bank – Financial Initiative. According to the NBU, the number of depositors of both banks, which Oleg Bakhmatyuk bankrupted, was about 400 thousand people.
By the way, in 2019, when the bankruptcy case of VAB Bank was reanimated, together with Bakhmatyuk, his sister, Natalia Vasilyuk, who was the head of the Supervisory Board at VAB Bank, was also put on the wanted list. She is charged under Art. 191 part 5 (Assignment, embezzlement of property or taking possession of it by abuse of official position), art. 209 part 3 (Legalization (laundering) of proceeds from crime) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Well, completing the banking topic, it is worth noting that Bakhmatyuk became the owner of VAB Bank in 2011. And the former owner of the bank, Sergey Maksimov, agreed to sell the shares of the bank to Bakhmatyuku only after he spent a day in a pre-trial detention center.
Problems with law enforcement officers were not limited to unreturned money for refinancing. The Ukrlandfarming group, which is registered in Cyprus, includes the Ukrainian management companies Avangard and Ukrlandfarming, which, in turn, manage more than 400 companies.
In 2015 Avangard built two egg factories in Kherson and Kamenetz-Podolsk. According to Avangard reports, it cost $500 million, and the group itself was supposed to return VAT from the state in the amount of about UAH 300 million, for which the relevant documents were submitted. But the State Treasury doubted the authenticity of the documents confirming the costs and transferred the case to the NABU, which slowed down the payment of fictitious VAT costs.
Oleg Romanovich has been working with VAT for a long time – the scheme for the return of fictitious value added tax was debugged back in the days of Kuchma, when Bakhmatyuk was engaged in gas condensate trading. Then he left the Itera company and founded his own business in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
With VAT, Bakhmatyuk switched to “gasification of the settlements of the region”, having received money from the state for this within the framework of the program for the gasification of settlements in Western Ukraine. It is known that in 2005 the state allocated 410 billion hryvnias for the gasification of this region. As a result, only a few gas pipelines were built, but not for budget money. Funds for the implementation were illegally collected from local residents.
In the same period, Bakhmatyuk began to take his first steps in the agricultural business – he bought the Avangard poultry farm, which became the basis of his egg production and gave the name to the group of companies.
To buy the factory, he took a loan of one million dollars from Aval Bank. According to Bakhmatyuk himself, a friend from the bank’s board helped him in this. Be that as it may, they gave a loan, and Oleg Romanovich bought Avangard, which eventually turned into one of the market leaders in the production of eggs.
In 2005, Bakhmatyuk got the position of deputy chairman of the board of the Naftogaz of Ukraine company. A year later, he managed to buy out controlling stakes in regional gas distribution companies operating in Western Ukraine. A year later, he sold them to RosUkrEnergo, which was run by Dmitry Firtash.
In 2010, the Ukrainian entrepreneur acquired the assets of the American company Townsends Inc, which is engaged in the processing of chicken meat. Her task was to coordinate a number of poultry companies. Oleg Bakhmatyuk persuaded them to take loans to expand their business. After that, he withdrew the money abroad and appropriated it. As a result, an American court banned him from entering the United States.
In 2011, Oleg Bakhmatyuk established the agricultural holding UkrLandFarming. The main activities of the company were grain production and cattle breeding.
It was at this time that UkrLandFarming became the leader of the agricultural market – its land bank reached 670 thousand hectares, the group owns 24 elevators, 23 poultry farms, eight feed mills and 40 livestock farms. Observers note that Bakhmatyuk’s business went uphill after he agreed to sell his shares in regional gas companies to Firtash.
Bakhmatyuk himself comments on the topic in general terms, but characterizes the period of Yanukovych’s rule as “more specific” and “having rules.” It was during this period that his business empire reached its peak.
After that everything went downhill. In 2015, problems began with the unreturned money allocated by the NBU for refinancing, problems arose with an attempt to obtain a VAT refund using fictitious documents, and the volume of production and sales of agricultural products fell.
Tellingly, then Bakhmatyuk said that Poroshenko was to blame for his problems. In his long interview with Gordon, Bakhmatyuk said that he blames no one but the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, for his failures. In particular, according to Bakhmatyuk, the decision to liquidate banks was made in the president’s office in the presence of Valeria Gontareva.
However, with the change of power in the country, the culprits also changed – as recently as the end of January of this year, Oleg Romanovich gave a lengthy interview to Economic Truth, in which he called Volodymyr Zelensky and the former head of the presidential office Andriy Bogdan the cause of his failures.
In the same interview, he again assured creditors that he would return all debts as soon as he “solved problems with NABU.” The current government prevents him from solving these problems. Bakhmatyuk also assured that the business in Ukraine, which he manages from Austria, although significantly reduced, is under “full control”.
In general, the interview is interesting, we recommend it. But some kind of hopelessness emanates from him. Everyone is to blame but himself. But who is to blame – let Oleg Romanovich decide for himself. But another question – “what to do?” costs much more sharply. And first of all – for his creditors, whom, in Bakhmatyuk’s own words, he has been trying to persuade for several years “not to tear the UkrLandFarming group to pieces”, promising to pay off their debts.
According to him, creditors “tolerate” and believe in his promise to repay debts. However, it seems that in fact UkrLandFarming is not “torn to pieces” because there is nothing to “tear” there for a long time. Oleg Bakhmatyuk has vast experience in withdrawing assets.