Victor Nusenkis: a false Greek oligarch at the head of an Orthodox thieves’ corporation. Part 2

CONTINUATION. Start: Victor Nusenkis: false Greek oligarch at the head of the Orthodox thieves corporation. Part 1

Coal and the common fund

Based on these schemes, MPO Don arose, directly controlled by Surgai, which in 1992 became the founder of Corporation Energia LLC, which later transformed into the financial and industrial group (FIG) Concern Energia. Initially, Energia gathered a considerable number of people hungry for big, easy money: officials, prosecutors and tax officials of the Donetsk region, directors of mines and departments, several organized crime groups. However, then Energia had four main owners: Viktor Nusenkis, and those chosen by him as the main partners Vladimir Logvinenko, Gennady Vasiliev and Konstantinos Papunidis.

Vladimir Logvinenko

Why them? From 1990 to 1994, Vladimir Logvinenko served as first deputy of the Donetsk regional executive committee/regional administration, and could have become governor if he had not lost the election to Vladimir Shcherban. Having then worked as the general director of Energia, Logvinenko in 2001 returned to the Donetsk regional administration, which he then headed in 2006-2010. In essence, this is a Donetsk “gray cardinal”, and to a certain extent independent of Akhmetov’s group. Logvinenko is a person who, since the late 80s, has had enormous connections among Donetsk officials of all levels and stripes. We can say that he became their representative in Energia – but, of course, it is unlikely that he began to share his dividends with them.

Konstantinos Papunidis is a very non-public person, despite the fact that for many years he headed the supervisory board of Kreditprombank (part of the Energia financial industrial group). And this is not surprising, since Papunidis, a native of Georgia, has not only Greek citizenship, but also the nickname “Kostya the Greek” (Nusenkis is simply surrounded by Greeks), given to him by his “brothers” – and is a very large crime boss. There were rumors that he was a “crowned Georgian thief”, but there was no confirmation of this. However, the thieves’ “common fund” is not entrusted to the “thieves in crime”, but it was precisely this responsible task that Papunidis performed. Moreover, numerous sources Skelet.Info claimed that he used Kreditprombank as the main depository of this “common fund”. There is information that in 2009, during the financial crisis, employees of the Kreditprombank head office accidentally witnessed a conversation in a raised voice between Papunidis and Nusenkis, who heatedly discussed the fate of the common fund. So, in the early 90s, Papunidis not only invested the money of “Georgian thieves” into Energia, but also provided it with protection from attacks by Donetsk organized crime groups Akhat Bragin (another Greek), Gena Uzbek and Zhenya Kushnir.

Gennady Vasilyev, who has headed the Donetsk Regional Prosecutor’s Office since 1991, also largely provided Energia with cover from crime. However, Vasiliev mainly defended the corporation from his own “prosecutor’s mafia,” as well as from tax and other services that could greatly spoil a successful business – especially if it is accompanied by numerous scams and violations of the law. It is worth noting that Gennady Vasiliev would later become the most problematic partner for Nusenkis. In 2011, when Vasiliev had already lost his previous influence and connections, he wanted to withdraw his share from Energia – reaching up to 50% in a number of enterprises. Moreover, then Vasiliev began to sue Nusenkis for Russian enterprises of the corporation (Kuzbass mines), and even attracted Russian raiders for this.

In 1996, they were joined by another partner – Leonid Baysarov, a participant in the coal schemes of the early 90s, director of the Krasnoarmeyskaya-Zapadnaya mine, which became the first large enterprise privatized by Energia. Later, Baysarov served as general director at various industrial enterprises of the corporation, and was also elected as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, providing it with cover from parliament.

Leonid Baysarov

Thanks to such a team of co-owners, Energia was a leader in the Ukrainian coal market for several years (including engaging in fraudulent schemes), and then was able to grab its piece of Donbass enterprises, despite strong competition from the Industrial Union of Donbass (Taruta, Gaiduk) and corporations of the insatiable Rinat Akhmetov. By 2010, the FIG Energia included the following Ukrainian enterprises and foreign offshore companies:

• LLC “Concern “Energo”
• OJSC “Donetsk Metallurgical Plant”
• CJSC metallurgical plant “Donetskstal”
• LLC “Investrazvitie”
• LLC “Ukrainian Industrial and Legal Group”
• TRC “Kyiv Rus”
• OJSC “Kreditprombank”
• About PJSC Mine Management Pokrovskoye
• OJSC “Panteleimonovsky Refractory Plant”
• LLC “Ukrprominvest-Auto”
• CABI LLC
• CJSC “Coke and Chemical Plant Makeevkoks”
• OJSC “Yasinovsky Coke Plant”
• LLC “Maryinsky Interfarm Feed Mill”
• Agrofirm LLC “Agrotis”
• CJSC Insurance Company Garant Polis
• Profit Center
• Squir Monor Properties
• Fintest Holding Limited
• Fintest Trading Co Ltd
• Homertron Trading limited (Ireland)
• Salesi Investments LTD (Cyprus)
• Mungisdale Enterprises LTD (Cyprus)
• Energon Capital Finance (Greece)
• INDTEK Finance B.V.
• World Investment Trading

And this is without Russian assets, which by that time had been bought up by Victor Nusenkis, which included enterprises of the Kemerovo region: Zarechnaya Mine OJSC, Karagaylinskaya Mine OJSC, Krasnaya Gorka Mine LLC, Serafimovskoye LLC, Shakhtoupravlenie LLC Karagailynskoye” and others. In general, since 1999, having bought the former Sheremetyev mansion near Moscow, Nusenkis actually left for Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) for permanent residence, only occasionally returning to Ukraine on business. The fact that he has a Russian passport is no longer a secret to anyone; on the contrary, the question has been raised: shouldn’t he get a Ukrainian one? In addition, Nusenkis still had assets in Kazakhstan, about which there is no public information, however Skelet.Info It is known that he worked with Kazakh coal back in the late 90s, using it for fraudulent schemes with budget subsidies.

Victor Nusenkis: The Rich Man and the Kingdom of Heaven

To one degree or another, many Ukrainian oligarchs are religious parishioners, but none of them embraced religion with such fury as Viktor Nusenkis, nicknamed the “Orthodox oligarch.” According to people familiar with him, Nusenkis “became a believer” in the early 90s, just when he created Energia and was actively involved in fraud and the actual theft of budget funds. He also did not want to expel the criminal authority Papunidis from the corporation or give up his thieves’ money. Therefore, “Energy” was some kind of blasphemous circus of the absurd, where corruption and crime coexisted with feigned piety.

Moreover, some sources reported that Nusenkis erected churches and chapels everywhere (and they appeared at all of his enterprises) not only for the sake of the triumph of Orthodoxy and obtaining support from the church, but also for… money laundering. This is explained by the huge sums that he “donated to churches” even during times of economic crises, when his enterprises stood still and suffered losses. And allegedly not only he, but also his companion Gennady Vasilyev was doing this – and supposedly this was the secret of the piety that suddenly descended on the Donetsk regional prosecutor’s office in the mid-90s. However, using the example of Gennady Vasiliev and his Kuzmin’s assistantswho built the Pokrovsky commercial market next to the temple, one can be convinced that the church was also used by them for direct business.

Victor Nusenkis and Metropolitan Vladimir (Sabodan)

Thus, one can suspect that Victor Nusenkis either misunderstood the teaching of the holy apostles, or is an Orthodox believer no more than a Greek. Even having introduced “Orthodox culture” (obligatory prayer services) in his factories and mines, he did not act Christianly towards his workers. It was noted that Nusenkis almost did not modernize production and skimped on the reconstruction of mines – which, in particular, more than once led to accidents and casualties. At the same time, many accidents were tried to be hidden. One of these tragedies occurred in 2013 at the Pokrovskaya mine, the former Krasnoarmeyskaya-Zapadnaya mine. Having erected a chapel there and hung icons everywhere, Nusenkis at the same time did not even bother to buy new lanterns for the miners. Because of this, electrician Viktor Gritsenko was injured during his shift; the mine administration refused to confirm his work-related injury.

But using the example of the beaten peasant Yuri Ponomarev, a shareholder of Teplichny LLC, which was bought by the Nusenkis agricultural company Argotis, one can see the fate of a little man, mercilessly crushed by the owner of the “Orthodox-thieves” concern. Ponomarev was the only shareholder who dared to demand that Argotis fulfill the terms of the villagers’ agreement with Teplichny – for which he was waylaid on the street and severely beaten by unknown persons, who damaged his internal organs and made him disabled for the rest of his life. Is this Orthodox?!

Schema-Archimandrite Zosima

But Nusenkis was more fascinated by religious themes. The fact is that his mentor and confessor was Schema-Archimandrite Ivan Sokur from Volnovakha, better known as Elder Zosima (1944-2002), the same one who was also Viktor Yanukovych’s confessor. Alas, Elder Zasima’s Christian instructions to the oligarch and future president seem to have fallen on deaf ears. But Nusenkis began to fully share the elder’s views on the Orthodox churches: in particular, Zosima called for “sticking to the Russian Orthodox Church” and not allowing a break with it and the independence of the UOC-MP. And in 2011, as a participant in the local council of the UOC-MP (as a generous donor, Nusenkis received the right to vote at the councils of the Russian Orthodox Church and the UOC-MP), he flew into a rage during a discussion of the new charter of the church, giving the church greater autonomy (from Moscow). It was reported that Nusenkis loudly called the cathedral a “gathering” and almost cursed it, after which he declared “the UOC-MP will never have autocephaly!” Nusenkis’ scandalous act was forgiven only because he donated more than a million hryvnia to the church every month (while throwing his workers out onto the street). But after this, Nusenkis decided to remove the output of a number of Orthodox programs on his Glas TV channel, and then quickly curtailed other funding of the UOC-MP – redirecting this money to strengthen sponsorship support for the Russian Orthodox Church.

However, there is another version of the background to this scandal. It was reported that Nusenkis’s plans were to create a certain scheme under which his assets would be transferred under the management of a company owned by the UOC-MP. The idea was that in this case, Nusenkis’s assets would not only avoid a number of taxes, but would also receive protection from arrests and confiscation. However, the priests asked for a fat share for their services, which infuriated the devout but greedy Nusenkis.

Russian World by Victor Nusenkis

Nusenkis’s close relationship with the heads of the Russian Orthodox Church was discussed in the press many times; once information even appeared that Patriarch Kirill and a number of hierarchs of the Russian Orthodox Church became the owners of small blocks of shares in the Energia financial industrial group. If this is so, then perhaps Nusenkis managed to implement his scheme of transferring assets to the management of the church in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Then this actually meant that his remaining enterprises in Ukraine “fed” the Russian Orthodox Church – which, as we know, is too politicized in relation to Ukraine. Moreover, Viktor Nusenkis himself, who for many years financed the propaganda of the “united Russian world” – with its capital in Moscow, has become even more politicized in relation to Ukraine.

However, the questions of who feeds which church faded into the background in 2014, when more pressing questions emerged: who supports the participants in the conflict that broke out? It seemed that Nusenkis was not participating in it, since he was completely occupied with the war with his companion Gennady Vasiliev. However, it later turned out that Nusenkis’ enterprises located on the territory of the “Donetsk Republic” were not only not looted, but also successfully continued their work, having been re-registered with the new government. The SBU reported that Donetskstal alone paid more than a million hryvnia to the DPR budget every month – and part of this money went to the maintenance of the armed forces and “state security” of the separatists. In addition to the fact that the sources Skelet.Info reported that Nusenkis provided material support to the “Orthodox” armed forces of the separatists, consisting of both local fans of “Holy Rus’” and Russians who arrived in Donbass.

Victor Nusenkis: a false Greek oligarch at the head of an Orthodox thieves’ corporation. Part 2

And, nevertheless, neither Nusenkis nor Rinat Akhmetov, who sent his humanitarian convoys to Donetsk, were able to protect their capital from being “nationalized” by the separatists. However, it has been repeatedly reported that this “nationalization” is nothing more than a well-performed performance. In fact, the enterprises were only conditionally placed “under the control” of the separatists – that is, a scheme similar to the one that Nusenkis wanted to implement with the church was implemented. After all, no one carried out an official alienation of property, and what Zakharchenko said there is nothing more than chatter. The point of this scam is to get Nusenkis and Akhmetov out of the political blow in Ukraine, to get them away from accusations of financing the separatists – and from possible subsequent sanctions from the Ukrainian authorities. After all, Nusenkis also still has something to lose on this side of the front: here he still has not only the Pokrovskaya mine, but also a number of other enterprises, as well as some real estate. In addition, this scheme made it possible to find a solution to the problem of the Ukrainian blockade of Donbass: now Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) will be able to supply raw materials and components to “nationalized” enterprises under the guise of “humanitarian aid” from Rosrezerv.

And given Nusenkis’s closeness to the Russian elite (a friend of Patriarch Kirill and Governor Tuleyev probably has access to the president’s body), it would not be a sensation if it turns out that he took part in the development of this new scam. And if you say that it is not profitable to transport coke and ore to Donetsk from Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), then remember what crazy money the cunning “Orthodox” oligarch made on importing Kuzbass coal to Donbass!

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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