Alexander Leshchinsky: the burned-out business of a bakery oligarch. PART 1

Once one of the richest oligarchs in Ukraine, he now belongs to those “heroes of bygone times” of whom not even their names remain. After all, if anyone today remembers Alexander Leshchinsky, it is either in the context of the murders of Yevgeny Shcherban and Igor Alexandrov, or in connection with the multibillion-dollar debts leading to bankruptcy of his enterprise. And all because he has been hiding abroad for a long time both from his creditors, and from inconvenient questions from journalists, and from Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.

Leshchinsky is so afraid of unwanted meetings that when one day one of his creditors found him in France to ask him for an old debt, he fled in fear to Morocco, where he hid among the Tuaregs for a whole year. For the same reason, Leshchinsky has not communicated directly with the press for a long time, and therefore only a couple of his old photographs and not a single video can be found on the Internet. And yet he continues his usual luxurious life, he now has a new wife who loves parties and expensive gifts, and he spends a lot of money on all this. The same money that he borrowed on the security of “seized” Ukrainian enterprises, which he extracted from Ukrainians for years, putting his income into every loaf of bread he sold…

May you succeed

Leshchinsky Alexander Olegovich born on March 2, 1964 in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnepr), into a wealthy Jewish family. His dad Oleg Leonidovich Leshchinsky in Soviet times rose to the rank of head of the mine construction department in Donetsk, where they moved with the whole family, so he had a good income and great acquaintances. Then, already in the era of Ukrainian independence, Oleg Leonidovich became a member of the board of trustees of the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk – together with such famous people as Gennady Bogolyubov and Igor Kolomoisky, Victor Pinchuk, Gennady Korban, Alexander Dubilet, Mikhail Kiperman and others. “Spiritual nourishment” of the community is carried out by Chabad under the leadership of the chief rabbi of the city, Shmuel Kaminetsky.

The biography of Alexander Leshchinsky states that from 1981 to 1989 he allegedly studied (with a break for military service) at the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute, specializing in mining electromechanics. In reality, there is no personal file of the former student Leshchinsky at this university – but they were specifically looking for him even before the events of 2014! Because Leshchinsky not only did not graduate from it, but practically did not study there at all, he just entered – as evidenced by his old acquaintances. “Sasha didn’t graduate from college, but his erudition and speed of thinking are enough for three diplomas,” they said about him with respect and noticeable fear.

Well, we shouldn’t be afraid of a man who was Akhmetov’s companion for many years and was involved in the most resonant murders of the 90s! Although, in their own words, Alexander Leshchinsky always achieved his goal not with brute force, but with the ability to persistently and categorically convince, getting into the brain and soul, “pressing with the bazaar.” However, they did not specify how he dealt with those who were not affected by his “hypnotic charms.”

And now about how “the boy went to success” in reality. After graduating from school in 1981, under pressure from his father, Leshchinsky actually went to college – so that later, so to speak, he could continue the family dynasty of mining bosses. But the attempt was unsuccessful, even with all the patronage of his father, and Leshchinsky temporarily got a job as a concrete worker at the experimental base of the Donetsk PromstroyNIIproekt, from where in 1982 he “buzzed into the troops.” After serving in the army, he returned home to Donetsk, and in 1984 he became a simple electrician in Department No. 4 of the Donetskshakhtoprohodka trust. According to sources Skelet.Infothe same one that his father led.

Perhaps for the first year or two he actually worked as an electrical mechanic, maybe he even tried to go back to college – but no one saw him in work clothes or with a textbook in his hand then. But they remember how Sasha Leshchinsky opened a book binding workshop: he himself, of course, was just looking for clients. And then the era of cooperation began, followed by a total shortage, and Leshchinsky became interested in business. He is remembered as a regular at the Donetsk Teatralnoye cafe, where in the second half of the 80s criminal elements, golden youth, black marketeers, speculators of scarce products, all sorts of schemers hung out – in general, the future business elite of Donetsk. There Leshchinsky made useful business contacts, developed schemes, finalized successful deals, and generally felt at home. “He often stood at the bar himself and made coffee for the whole company,” his friends recalled.

He didn’t come into business from the street. At that time, the mines switched to self-government and acquired cooperatives and joint ventures.

Oleg Leonidovich Leshchinsky did not stand aside, and used the resources of his mine construction department for profitable deals and fraud. History is silent about the first schemes of the Leshchinsky father and son, but in the summer of 1989 Leshchinsky became the head of the department of the Illusion youth cooperative association, which is noted in his biography. This association, which even had its own registered trademark, was created with the support of Donetsk officials and directors. And it was ruled not by dashing guys from mining villages, but by Komsomol leaders and sons of bosses – although later, from the beginning of the 90s, they became firmly entwined with the local crime (as well as the police and the prosecutor’s office). It is unknown whether his daddy or his new senior companion placed him there Evgeny Shcherban. But this demonstrates that Leshchinsky even then began not as an ordinary cooperator, and the scope of his business was wide. In 1990, Leshchinsky even went abroad for a long time “to study world experience in organizing food production,” allegedly at the invitation of the American company New Generators. In fact, if it had any relation to America, it was only indirect: in the 90s in the USSR, and then in the CIS, many companies with that name arose that were engaged in the trade of consumer goods, food and alcohol, as well as sewing various “ rags.” At best, these were joint ventures, that is, their founders included a citizen of the United States or a European country – as a rule, he had recently emigrated from the USSR.

Evgeniy Shcherban

It was Yevgeny Shcherban who was the person who made the young co-operator Leshchinsky a vodka and bakery oligarch. Shcherban himself began with the fact that, being the deputy director of sales (and not production, as he later claimed) of the Kirovskaya mine, he organized profitable schemes for the resale (speculation) of scarce products. Moreover, they often became scarce precisely because people like Shcherban and Leshchinsky bought them at the bases – and this was already happening throughout the Union in the late 80s. Shcherban’s relationship with Leshchinsky’s father remained a secret of the past, because Oleg Leonidovich himself tried to keep a low profile in business. But, according to sources Skelet.Infoit was with the business friendship of the director of the mine construction department and the deputy director of the mine for sales that the joint bread and vodka business of Evgeniy Shcherban and Alexander Leshchinsky began.

Alexander Leshchinsky. Bread, vodka and blood

Sugar schemes in Ukraine worked successfully until 1994, when consumers ate it to the point of heartburn and stocked a bag of it in the pantry. And the operators of these schemes faced the problem of where to go for tens of thousands of tons of unsold surplus and how to further benefit from cooperation with sugar factories? Some, like Boris Kolesnikov or father and son Poroshenko, went into the confectionery business. And others, including Evgeniy Shcherban, created schemes for processing sugar lemon balm and grain into “left-handed” unaccounted for alcohol, which was then turned into vodka, which sold with a bang in the dashing 90s. He put Alexander Leshchinsky in charge of the vodka business. It is known that one of the key enterprises of this business was the Mariupol Distillery, which Leshchinsky appointed to manage Alexandra Hart. It is interesting that Hart was then the director of OJSC Mariupol Fish Canning Plant, which Leshchinsky bought, then he headed one of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko’s companies, and in 2011, through the efforts of Andrey Klyuev, he was made general director of the State Enterprise Ukrspirt.

Alexander Hart

In addition to drinking, Alexander Leshchinsky was also involved in snacks in the 90s – taking over meat processing plants in Makeevka and Krasnoarmeysk (Pokrovsk), Donmyasoprom and the Gaysinsky cannery. But his business gained the greatest scope in the bread production sector, for which he was nicknamed the “bakery oligarch.” It should be noted that Leshchinsky made a massive expansion into the bread market twice. First, in the mid-90s, in partnership with Evgeniy Shcherban, he bought bakeries in the Donetsk region. It is interesting that at the same time the regional prosecutor Gennady Vasiliev also got into the bread business, although he started with less – with the “squeezing” of private bakeries. Well, in order to have something to put on the bread, so to speak, Leshchinsky took control of the Donetsk JSC Marg-West (one of the largest producers of margarine) and the Slavic oil and fat plant Slavoliya (finally purchased by Leshchinsky in 2005).

It was reported that through his Ukrinterproduct corporation, Leshchinsky in the 90s controlled 30 grain processing enterprises alone, plus about 20 more food and canning factories, and dairies. But what was his share of ownership in all this? After all, Leshchinsky was then only a junior business partner of Yevgeny Shcherban, and he, in turn, was forced to let into his business not only the prosecutor’s mafia Vasiliev, but also the rapidly growing criminal oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.

On November 3, 1996, Yevgeny Shcherban was killed at the Donetsk airport, and his business empire collapsed, being taken away by his partners and heirs. As the media wrote, Leshchinsky and Akhmetov divided the assets amicably: the first retained a significant part of the food enterprises, and the second took fuel and industrial enterprises, but in some their common shares were preserved (controlled by Akhmetov through JSC Danko and Embrol Ukraine). Leshchinsky also developed more than excellent relations with the regional prosecutor’s office – that is, he also amicably resolved all issues with Gennady Vasilyev, who was then trying to become the regional grain prince. That is, it turned out that without Shcherban they all only felt better, he only got in their way! Which leads us to some thoughts…

But this was not the only death associated with Leshchinsky. Of course, everyone has long forgotten about the murders of several enterprise directors and company owners who did not succumb to Leshchinsky’s “power of conviction.” But the death of Igor Alexandrov, which became the second high-profile murder of a journalist in Ukraine (after Gongadze), will be remembered for a long time – especially since this monstrous tragedy will soon mark exactly 20 years.

It all started during the 1998 election campaign, when Alexander Leshchinsky ran in the 58th district in Slavyansk. He managed to bribe local officials and local newspapers, who began to unanimously sing him such sweet and at the same time stupid praises that they simply curled up his ears.

From the 1998 election campaign

However, at the local Tor shopping and entertainment complex, Leshchinsky was not bowed to the waist, quite the contrary. Whether its editor-in-chief Igor Aleksandrov was a principled lone fighter, or whether he was used by people who were in conflict with Leshchinsky and the Donetsk clans known to us, or maybe it was a personal conflict (Leshchinsky planned to buy a television company), we are now unlikely to know. However, this doesn’t matter, because what difference does it make for what reason Alexandrov revealed the facts of the horrific corruption and criminality that reigned in the region! And so, in one of the programs, he called Leshchinsky “the vodka king of Donbass” and noted that he contributes to the drunkenness of the region’s residents. Literally a few days later, a criminal case was opened against Alexandrov under an article for libel, which was personally supervised by the prosecutor of Slavyansk, Yuri Udartsov. It is interesting that, as it turned out later, Leshchinsky himself either did not submit the corresponding application at all, or then quietly withdrew it, trying to exclude himself from the flaring up conflict, which lasted more than two years. And it ended, as everyone knows, with the brutal murder of Alexandrov on July 3, 2001.

Igor Alexandrov

Leshchinsky’s possible involvement in the murder of Alexandrov has been discussed many times. He himself understood that he was one of the main suspects, therefore, according to eyewitnesses, he was in an extremely agitated state and even tried to help the dying Alexandrov with expensive imported medicines. There was an opinion that Leshchinsky was simply set up to force him to flee.

Well, after a while he did just that! At first, Alexander Leshchinsky simply began to travel abroad frequently, and then settled there altogether. He did not reveal to anyone what exactly made him leave Ukraine at the beginning of the 2000s – apparently, there were several reasons. At the same time, what’s interesting is that while actually living in Europe and only occasionally, almost incognito, visiting Ukraine, Alexander Leshchinsky managed to be a people’s deputy in 2002-2006. (elected in the 58th district) and in 2006-2012. (buying a pass-through place on the Party of Regions list). This did not go unnoticed: for example, Leshchinsky’s absence At all plenary sessions in 2008, then Vice-Speaker Tomenko noted. He was not seen at parliamentary meetings in the second half of 2010. And in 2011, Alexander Leshchinsky became one of the “ghosts of the Rada”: someone used his deputy card to register and vote for bills, although the people’s deputy himself was never noticed in person.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUATION; Leshchinsky Alexander: the burned-out business of a bakery oligarch. PART 2

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