Akhmetov: cards, money, two blindfolds
“In the photo of the operational shooting, young Rinat Akhmetov together with their coach Akhatem Bragin (Alik Grek), accompanied by a group of sportsmen-rankers, are sent to the regional competitions in the “thrown fool”.
Apparently, this is how, after the release of an article about the “richest Ukrainian” in The Washington Post on December 8, it is better to sign this picture, writes Ukrrudprom.
The article is certainly epic and seems to prove that bread is not in vain in the SCM press service chew. But no…
Too many stretches and omissions. Yes, and trivial idiocy, as usual, more than enough.
Akhmetov: Maps
The story about Rinat's hard skills as a “thrown fool” once again confirmed our version that the elderly oligarch is on the verge of insanity. The “collective unconscious” of Donetsk remembers that it was a game of “point” and Akhmetov, as a boxing officer, played the role here not of a playmaker, but of a foreman of the “bulls”, whose task was to sort out the results of the “swindle” with the miners fooled by hundreds of rubles. An important detail – the case took place at the local railway station, that is, in the neighborhood of Rinat's native Oktyabrsky microdistrict. That is, we are dealing with small-town organized crime that emerged in the mining region in the late 80s.
In a similar situation, one Donetsk relative acted more creatively. He claimed that in childhood, during a simultaneous game session, he checkmate either Spassky or Korchnoi. It was already impossible to check this (both by that time had already fled to the West), as well as the fact itself, whether they even gave such a session in Donetsk. In any case, it was obvious that the child was a child prodigy and, moreover, knew something about noble intellectual fun.
Despite his illness, Akhmetov clearly understands that chess is not his, and therefore only changes one card game for a slightly more decent one. Moreover, in the course of the text, he has to rebuke the overly zealous Sergei Taruta (whom even the London court recognized as an untrustworthy witness), explaining that he did not win any championships in the “thrown fool”.
However, fantasies on the topic “Akhmetov – a card genius” do not explain anything, but only confuse the reader. If all his talent consisted in his developed skills of playing the “thrown fool” and he has nothing to do with crime (as Tarutu claims when jumping out of his pants), then why on earth does he rush to the football box to the “godfather of Donetsk” Akhat Bragin, and moreover, how does he get the Shakhtar football club after the death of the latter?
Here Rinat could be helped to throw a semantic bridge by the version popular in Donetsk that Rinat was Akhat's nephew through extramarital affairs – such as tribal relations and all that, but our hero does not use a hint, leaving an inexperienced reader in a slight confusion. Really, to become the uncrowned owner of the 5 millionth, most industrialized region of Ukraine for almost 20 years, you just had to play well at the “thrown fool”? Yes, the 90s were a terrible time, but not to the same extent, gentlemen.
Money
In order to better understand the whole picture of what was happening in Donetsk in 1995-1996 (when the “transit of power” to Rinat actually took place) and not to perceive it through separate turned-over pieces from the WP article, it is necessary to return to the recent scandalous statement of Alexander Yaroshenko, the owner such a FC Mariupol:
“Money came to Shakhtar at that time from Russia. Whoever pays orders the music. All the money that was in Donetsk for this project came from Moscow. This is Kobzon's sawn criminal money.
The man was given money that he had to return. Everything was built for this, so no one fought until a certain time. And today, of course, everyone has become patriots. But Russian money came under SCM and Metinvest. ”
Naturally, Yaroshenko, both by age and by status, is not a witness to the events described. Here he broadcasts a kind of consensus of the Donbass elites about what did happen in the mid-90s and how Akhmetov actually became a “hill”.
For the past 20 years, the topic of Russian money in the development of Rinat has been very meticulously studied by investigative journalist Sergey Kuzin. Here is just one of his many articles on the subject. Thanks to his painstaking work, as well as the documentary film “The Heir”, shot much later on the initiative of Yevgeny Shcherban Jr., today we can restore the circumstances of the transfer of power in the Donbass in the mid-90s.
So, by this moment Evgeny Shcherban and Ahat Bragin are partners and the most influential people in the region. The first is responsible for commerce itself, the second is for its power cover. Both in one way or another are trying to influence the political and state elite. Shcherban as a people's deputy is more in Kyiv, at the national level, Bragin resolves the situation on the spot, in Donetsk. At this moment, Akhmetov, Bragin's “right hand”, dreaming of some grandiose schemes than the usual “buy-buy-sell”, aimed at building a business empire for centuries.
In 1994, Bragin and Shcherban borrowed a large amount from the Russians to develop a mega-project to buy up everything in the Donbass that was still moving. Here the versions differ: some say that the money was given by the “Solntsevo” organized criminal group, others – that it was “old money”, almost the KGB of Tatarstan. Most likely, criminal authorities were creditors, and the beggars at that time “specialists” only carried out specific orders of bandits.
The guarantor of the loan, among others, was the post-Soviet idol Iosif Kobzon (a kind of post-Soviet analogue of Frank Sinatra). Since 1995, he was banned from entering the United States as an active member of Russian organized crime. The FBI collected more than a 50-page dossier on the singer, who not only maintained relations with such criminal authorities in Russia as Otari Kvantrishvili, Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov (Taivanchik), Vyacheslav Ivankov (Japanchik), but also smuggled alcohol and cigarettes, as well as illegal international arms trade.
Akhmetov: Two blind man's eyes
A year after receiving the loan, Bragin sends all Russian bandits and Kobzon, in particular, saying that he is not going to return the money. The bloody cleansing of the Donbass by the Russians begins (in fairness, the iconic murders in the region began back in 1992, but their victims are mostly middle-class businessmen). . He is blown up in a box at the Shakhtar stadium. Then a large number of figures surrounding him with a lower rank die – such as Alexander Momot.
The “bloodbath” (at least on an epic scale) stops after the execution of Yevgeny Shcherban at the Donetsk airport on November 3, 1996. By the way, he returned home (before that, Shcherban traveled around the world for almost half a year) immediately after participating in Moscow in the ceremony of celebrating the “silver wedding “of the same Kobzon. Obviously, Donetsk commerce received some kind of security guarantees from the hero of the day.
Instead of the duumvirate of Bragin-Shcherban, Rinat Akhmetov rises to the throne: he begins to take away the property of Yevgeny Shcherban and at the same time build an industrial empire on the basis of the Industrial Union of Donbass. Considering that executions and explosions in the region are practically disappearing, it is logical to assume that Akhmetov gave Russian creditors guarantees to return the money taken by Bragin and Shcherban.
Later, the murders of Bragin, Shcherban, Momot were hanged on a group of mostly already dead killers, of whom only the former Moscow special forces soldier Vadim Bolotskikh survived, from whom there is a clear trail to the Russian KGB officers.
As a result, our master of the “thrown fool” threw a whole deck of criminal and business figures of Donbass “into the furnace” by proxy and remained here (in just a year) in splendid isolation.
***
The question is certainly relevant, how and when did Akhmetov still pay off Russian creditors? Did this happen at the time of the Orange Revolution, after which he began to hysterically build such transparent holdings as Metinvest or DTEK with the prospect of further entering an IPO?
Or maybe much later? Not without reason, we all witnessed not only his stiffness in 2014 in rebuffing the pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk, but also the financing of the same “Vostok” of Alexander Khodakovsky.
Perhaps the “issue was closed” in the spring of 2017, when after the start of the economic blockade by Ukraine, Akhmetov was deprived of control over assets in the “DPR” and “LPR”. But at the same time, they were allowed to freely enter the Dneprovsky metallurgical plant “ISD” in the controlled territory of the country. Many then regarded this as an open exchange of assets between Akhmetov and the Russian Federation.
So far, all this is not known for certain. But as in the story of Russian money foolishly taken by Bragin and Shcherban in 1994, everything will surely become clear over time.
Oleg KALITA, Nikita AFANASIEV
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