Alexander Derkach: corruption network of the Komsomol tribe. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Alexander Derkach: corruption network of the Komsomol tribe. PART 1

It is also interesting that from January 1998 to August 2001, young Arseniy Yatsenyuk made his career at the main office of Bank Aval. Moreover, having started as a consultant in the credit department, he ended up as deputy chairman of the bank’s board – who then (since 1998) was Alexander Derkach, who replaced Fyodor Shpyg, who had become a people’s deputy. That is, it was in “Aval” and under the command of Derkach that the future minister, speaker and prime minister gained banking and management experience (as well as corruption), and in the future he did not forget his mentor and his “native” bank. But what remains unknown is this: who exactly recommended him to Shpig and Derkach, and contributed to his rapid career growth at Avala? It seems that here, too, certain unnamed deputies played a key role.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk

However, at the beginning of the 2000s, Aval Bank lost the prefix “pension-postal”. Why? Everyone probably remembers how pension payments were delayed in the 90s – sometimes by a month, and sometimes by 2-3. They were delayed not because there was no money in the budget, but because the funds of the Pension Fund were spent in commercial loans and other profitable operations of Aval, which brought profit to its owners and increased the capitalization of the bank (in which Arseniy Yatsenyuk also participated). However, massive delays in pensions and salaries in the 90s almost led to a “red revenge” in the 1999 elections, so this method was abandoned in 2000. But timely payment of pensions did not bring any benefit to Aval, and the bank soon abandoned cooperation with the Pension Fund, focusing on serving the population and lending to agricultural enterprises. By the way, this is where Alexander Derkach’s interest in agribusiness began, this is where his “Dairy Alliance” began with Shpig.

Alexander Derkach. Cheese Empire

Ukrainian media write about this as restrainedly and correctly as possible: they say, bankers invested in the agricultural sector, and then became owners of creameries. However, they did not build these enterprises from scratch, they bought them, having previously “invested in them,” that is, they gave them loans, putting them on a debt hook, and then demanded tribute for 12 years – taking shares of the enterprises. And in this they were not original; in the same way, other oligarchs privatized enterprises in Ukraine. For example, one after another, Rinat Akhmetov took over the factories. But why do the Ukrainian media always write about Akhmetov that he seized enterprises (and this is true), but about Alexander Derkach and Fyodor Shpyg – that they “invested in the agricultural sector” and “created”? The only difference between them was that Akhmetov’s people often threatened the directors of the purchased factories, and Derkach and Shpig, according to Skelet.Infoagreed with their leaders “amicably.”

Alexander Derkach: corruption network of the Komsomol tribe. PART 2

About the specific amounts of certain investments of “Aval” in agribusiness in the period 1998-2004. it is no longer known, but in general they reached impressive sizes. Thus, in 2001, loans to agricultural producers and companies operating in this area accounted for almost half of the bank’s loan portfolio (about 950 million hryvnia), and in 2004 this figure increased to 1.5 billion. However, one should not be mistaken that all of them were invested in the development of creameries. Not at all! Initially, Aval issued two types of “seasonal” loans to villages: directly to farmers (for growing and harvesting crops, mainly for fuel), and to agricultural traders who bought this crop. And here even an ignorant layman will see that these loans were given not against collateral (what could collective farmers or intermediary clerks pledge to a bank?), but under the guarantees of certain companies or government institutions. But why would they act as guarantors of former collective farms? And here we have Skelet.Info There is information from sources that Bank Aval was part of a large scheme in which villagers were given loans at high interest rates for fuel at inflated prices – and then their crops were bought for next to nothing to offset the debt. The same scheme included the oil enterprises of the Privat group of Kolomoisky and the Continuum group of Sergei Lagur, Petro Dyminsky, Igor Eremeev and Stepan Ivakhiv.

Derkach and Shpig acquired their first creamery (Yagotinsky) in 2000. They knew its director and head of the board of shareholders (the plant was owned by the work collective), Alexander Sirenko, from their Komsomol work, and he himself sought to sell his enterprise to someone – for his own benefit. The plant’s first cooperation with Aval occurred in 1995, when the bank issued a loan to the Yagotinsky Creamery for 1 billion karbovanets at 80% per annum. Issued it in a few hours, by personal agreement with Sirenko. Five years later, the creamery, which had grabbed loans, transferred a controlling stake in its JSC to Derkach and Shpigu – and its director Sirenko was completely satisfied with the deal. Moreover, Sirenko, “out of old Komsomol friendship,” helped the bankers in the same acquisition of the Zalotonoshsky butter-making plant. And the directors of the purchased factories did not remain offended – unlike the abandoned labor collectives, whose shares were bought up for pennies by former Komsomol leaders, who habitually promised the workers a “bright future.”

Over the next few years, Derkach and Shpig became owners of the following businesses:

• *Yagotinsky Creamery (purchased in 2000), TM “Yagotinsky”
• *Zolotonoshsky Butter Factory (2001), TM “Zlatokrai”
• *Gorodenkovsky cheese factory (2002), TM “Great!”
• *Zgurovsky cheese factory (2003)
• *Pyryatynsky cheese factory (2003), TM “Pyryatyn”
• *Varva butter and cheese plant (2005), milk procurement
• *Bashtansky cheese factory (2007), TM “Slavia”
• *Trostyanetsky dairy plant (2007), milk procurement, casein production
• *Novoarkhangelsk cheese factory (2008), dairy products TM “Vys”

First, to manage the new business, the partners established the company “Etalonmolprodukt” – created on the basis of the insurance company Fedor Shpiga “Etalon” (established in 1993) and its brainchildren “Etalon Policy” (2001) and “Etalon Life” (2003). In 2003, it was replaced by the Etalon Trading House, and in 2006, the company that united them, Milk Alliance, emerged (authorized capital 23.5 million hryvnia).

Unfortunately, the partners demonstrated that the cheese business can be just as dirty as the banking business. “Milk Alliance” has more than once become the “hero” of scandals related to the quality of its products. Starting with reviews from ordinary customers, outraged by the fact that the Yagotinskoe milk they bought either does not want to sour into curdled milk at all, or turns into casein toffee – and ending with the well-known “cheese war” with Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Let us recall that in 2012, on the initiative of the head of Rospotrebnadzor Onishchenko, the first trade war arose between Ukraine and Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism): Moscow stated that the percentage of vegetable oils used as a cheap ersatz in cheeses from Ukrainian producers (including the TM of the Milk Alliance group) was overestimated and introduced a ban for their export to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Ukrainian manufacturers, in turn, stated that their products meet all the requirements of the standards, and Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) is simply trying to squeeze them out of its market to make room for its own producers. It’s hard to say how much of this scandal there was truth, and how much of competition and a political component. However, back in 2010, Dairy Alliance was caught producing “dairy” products from vegetable fat. Then the independent center of expertise “Test” conducted research on products sold in stores and produced simply shocking results. In particular, in the Yagotinsky cottage cheese, part of the vegetable oil accounted for 62.2% of the total fat content, and E. coli was found in it!

In 2013, the State Enterprise “Odessa Regional Center for Standardization, Metrology and Certification”, together with journalists and social activists, organized another inspection of the quality of dairy products, during which questions arose about the Yagotinskie butter: it was found to contain the preservative potassium sorbitol (E202), which there shouldn’t be. And in August 2016, the All-Ukrainian Association for the Protection of Consumer Rights “Consumer Trust” and the State Center for Certification and Expertise carried out an inspection of baby milk food, during which a monstrously excessive concentration (7-8 times higher than permissible) of the antibiotic levomycetin was discovered in the products of the Yagotyn Dairy Plant. Thus, it became clear why Yagotinskie milk stubbornly refuses to sour! But the trouble is that levomycetin in baby food is a threat to the health and even life of babies, because it can not only disrupt their intestinal microflora (causing diarrhea and abdominal pain), but also lead to an allergic reaction and anaphylactic shock.

In the same year, another similar scandal arose around the same quality control of dairy products, organized by the Life Without Cheating program. During it, foreign substances were found in Yagotinskoye milk, which, according to the program host Alexei Dushka, could be either antibiotics or even detergents!

So what? Based on all the facts of the inspections, the “Milk Alliance” called it disinformation, a set-up of competitors, demanded either that revealing articles be removed from electronic media, or refutations with apologies published in paper publications, and invited journalists on demonstration excursions to their enterprises. However, he was more concerned about the reaction not of Ukrainian buyers, who had already sharply reduced their consumption of dairy products due to the crisis, but of his “Chinese comrades.” After losing the Russian market, the Dairy Alliance managed to break into the Chinese market – and in 2015 received certificates and permission to supply cheeses, butter and milk powder to the Middle Kingdom. In 2017, Dairy Alliance began supplying its products to Georgia and Azerbaijan, including Yagotinskoe milk. It is clear that the company would really not like these scandals surrounding the quality of its products to reach the ears of foreign buyers.

Alexander Derkach. Where is the money, San?

And now we come to one of the most pressing questions that should be asked to Alexander Derkach and Fyodor Shpig: where did they spend the whole billion dollars (!) they received from the sale in 2005 of 93.5% of Bank Aval to the Austrian Raiffeisen International”?

Really, where? The partners invested part of the money they received in the new bank they created, Prestige, which continued servicing their enterprises, including Dairy Alliance. But even in its “inflated” state, they sold Prestige to the Austrian Erste for only $139.3 million – with the conditions not to create another new bank for their enterprises (since with their departure from Prestige, its value would have sharply fell). At the same time, the cost of the Dairy Alliance was then estimated at a maximum of $50 million. So where did Alexander Derkach and Fedor Shpig spend their billion dollars? Is it really about buying up bakeries that were part of Shpig’s business empire? Or to create a network of Triumph cinemas, jointly owned by business partners?

What’s curious is this: in 2007 and 2008, Fyodor Shpig avoided questions from magazines about the size of his capital; in 2010 and 2010, Forbes practically “out of the blue” estimated his capital at $555 million (simply dividing in half the money from once sold banks), Focus magazine was more objective and estimated his fortune at 372 million.

At the same time, the fortune of his partner Alexander Derkach, respectively, in 2011, Forbes estimated at 184 million, and Focus at only 51 million dollars. In any case, no matter how you add it up, the billion did not come out, and it was difficult to attribute the loss of market value of companies to the 2008 crisis – after all, dairies and bakeries are not metallurgical or construction companies, their products did not become cheaper during the crisis.

Well, it’s clear that the missing difference (and this is hundreds of millions of dollars) would not be lying in cash in the basements of businessmen. Therefore, there are two explanations for this “anomaly”: either Alexander Derkach and Fedor Shpig withdrew part of their capital abroad, or they were not the only co-owners of Bank Aval. And the second version again raises the topic of the participation in the Aval business of certain “gray personalities” from the highest echelons of power. However, is it only “Aval”?

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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