CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Vitaly Antonov: cloudy gasoline “OKKO”. PART 1
Antonov Vitaly: cloudy gasoline “OKKO”. PART 2
Rewards for Judas
Alla Sidorovich
It would have been almost impossible to carry out this blatant raider takeover without the help of Mikhail Sidorovich. Therefore, he received his thirty pieces of silver from Antonov: the position of deputy head of the Galnaftogaz board for development. When in 2005-2006 Antonov expanded his business in the Transcarpathian region, taking over several gas stations there, then Sidorovich headed the local branch of Galnaftogaz and was the director of the regional branch of OKKO. His wife Alla Evgenievna has also been working at Galnaftogaz for a long time, and in two positions at once. Her main position is the head of the quality department, which she also headed in 2006, when OKKO decided to open a mobile laboratory. She also has a part-time position at Galnaftogaz, but this position is not advertised. But Alla Sidorovich receives more than a million hryvnia in salary per year (not counting the 120 thousand annual pension). At the same time, the Sidorovichs have managed for many years now to declare a complete lack of their own housing, which has long been causes confusion among journalists. But the Sidorovichs don’t give a damn about the press, as well as law enforcement agencies.
Mikhail Sidorovich
Another participant in this raider takeover, the director of the Drohobych oil depot Vasily Vesely, soon retired. But his share was enough for him to put his son Vasily Vasilyevich Vesely on his feet and to become a big man. He graduated from Lviv University, became a lawyer, worked in private business for seven years (for some reason hiding where exactly), and in 2012 he headed the Lviv directorate of Ukrposhta. Note: simultaneously with Sidorovich, who then also moved from private business (“OKKO”) to Lvov utility companies. Coincidences? Hardly!
Vasily Vesely Jr.
In 2014, after the second Maidan, Vesely Jr. moved to Kyiv for a promotion, becoming commercial director of Ukrposhta. And in 2016, he became the owner and chairman of the board of LLC Concern Kievpodzemdorstroy (USREOU 31169965), which he bought from Valery Borisov, a partner of the scandalous Dmitry Andrievsky. I wonder what kind of shishi? During his two years as the commercial director of Ukrposhta, Vesely Jr. managed to make a good fortune – or was Antonov “lent” him the money?
Well, there is one more key participant in this big scam, who has successfully distanced himself from it all this time, remaining, as it were, “out of business.” This is Mikhail Gladiy, a native of the Stryisky district, in 1990-91. Chairman of the Stryisky District Executive Committee, since 1992, Deputy Head of the Lviv Regional State Administration, since 1995, Deputy for Privatization Issues (here it is!), in 1997-99, Chairman of the Lviv Regional State Administration. It was Gladiy who decided on privatization issues in the region when Antonov and Sidorovich decided to seize Lvovnefteprodukt CJSC. It was he who headed the region when the raiders achieved their goal and illegally turned the closed joint stock company into an open joint stock company, pocketing its shares – and when the law enforcement agencies of the region for some reason remained deaf to the desperate cries of the robbed shareholders. It was Gladiy who again headed the region in 2001-2002, when Antonov merged the captured enterprises into the Galnaftogaz concern. Today Mikhail Gladiy sits on his laurels at the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, hung with orders and regalia, happy that everything except Skelet.Infoforgot about his corrupt past.
Mikhail Gladiy
If you were amazed by the story of the seizure of Lvovnefteprodukt, then get ready to be even more surprised – after all, Vitaly Antonov carried out several such seizures! It’s just that the details of others, alas, were very well hidden, perhaps even buried (literally), and there the injured party did not try to fight for the truth for years, turning to law enforcement agencies and the public. Meanwhile, the takeovers of Ivano-Frankivsknefteprodukt, part of Zakarpatnefteprodukt, Vinnytsianefteprodukt and the Rivne oil depot, from which the Galnaftogaz concern was formed, were accompanied by their own entertaining and tragic stories of raiding.
It is worth noting that the leaders or curators of the regional branches of Galnaftogaz were either Antonov’s close accomplices or local “princelings” who also helped him in seizing enterprises. For example, in the Vinnytsia region he was Vladimir Skomarovsky, a people’s deputy from Our Ukraine in 2002-2005, the head of the State Customs Service in 2005, one of the people close to Poroshenko and Groysman, the owner of a number of enterprises. It was he who helped Antonov take control first of Vinnitsanefteprodukt and then of Vinnitsahleb.
Vladimir Skomarovsky
Soon, Antonov acquired the enterprises “Vinnytsakhleb” (Gaisynsky plant), “Podolsk flour”, OJSC “Chervonogradsky bakery”, OJSC “Sambir bakery”, created the trade house “Ukrainian bread” and LLC “Podolsk flour”, opened a chain of stores “Khlibna” in three regions hut.” By the end of the 2000s, his Khlebprom already occupied 6% of the Ukrainian bakery market (30% in the Lviv region).
Vitaly Antonov
And yet, at the center of this whole stricture is not Galneftegaz, but that very offshore company Financial & Investment Energy Holding Establishment (FIEH) in Liechtenstein, created by Antonov and his friend Büchel in 1997. This company then became the founder of the Universal Investment Group, which then united all of Antonov’s structures: the Galnaftogaz and Khlebprom concerns, the Universalnaya insurance company, the Efort security company and others. And one more important fact: through FIEH, in 1998, Antonov acquired shares in OJSC Ivano-Frankivsknefteproduct and Zakarpatnefteprodukt, and in 2001, he merged them into OJSC Concern Galnaftogaz, to which the property of OJSC Lvovnefteproduct was transferred. That is, the seizure of regional enterprises of Ukrnafteprodukt took place not only according to different schemes, but also through different companies and even different countries. “Ivano-Frankivsknefteprodukt” and part of “Zakarpatnefteprodukt” were captured relatively easily because they were JSCs. First, the companies of Antonov and his partners drove these enterprises into debt, and then took their shares for the debts – while using a company from Liechtenstein, headed by the former prime minister of this European mini-country, not only as an offshore, but also as a cover. After all, you must admit, the management and teams of these JSCs trusted the “Europeans” more than local businessmen and bandits!
Similarly, through FIEH in the period 1999-2001. insurance companies “Karpaty” (Uzhgorod), “Teren” (Ternopil) and “Salamandra-Desna” (Chernigov) were bought up, which then merged into IC “Universal”. Now Antonov owns 42.3% of its shares through the Cyprus offshore Whiteford Limited and another 7% through the related Genesis Emerging Markets Opportunities fund, registered in the Cayman Islands. The remaining shares of the insurance company are shared by the EBRD and Horizon Capital and Dragon Capital, associated with Soros structures. And, interestingly, from 2008 to 2015, Natalya Yaresko was a member of the supervisory board of IC “Universal”!
“Green roof” of scammers
It would be redundant to tell the story of Antonov’s business from 2005 to the present, since it mainly boils down to fluctuations in the stock market value of his companies and changes in ownership shares. And, of course, tender fraud, which his Galnaftogaz and OKKO were guilty of no worse than other fuel companies. Let us give as an example one of these cases when Antonov’s companies were, as they say, exposed Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and punished with fines.
In 2016, the State Enterprise “Lviv International Airport” held a tender competition for the purchase of fuel in the amount of about 2.9 million hryvnia. It seems like not much, but, let us repeat, Antonov’s companies won dozens of tenders every year – especially after 2014. The private enterprise OKKO – Business Contract participated in this competition, and its competitor was Podillianaftozbud LLC (USREOU 39843507). OKKO won, offering a price of 51 thousand hryvnia less. Everything seemed to be fair, if not for the fact that Podillianaftozbud is a structural company of Galnaftogaz, and its nominal owner is Vadim Vishnevsky, according to Skelet.Info, – Antonov’s childhood friend, with whom they founded the Karat private enterprise back in 1992. Vishnevsky also “rules” the companies “Vinnitsakhleb” and “Zapadneftesbyt”, which are part of Antonov’s business empire. All this was so well known that the AMCU was simply forced to block this tender.
By the way, since 2018 “Podillianaftozbud” started to run in Kyiv gas station under the Chipo brand. Previously, these gas stations operated under the UPG banner, owned by the Zhytomyr company Ukrpaletsystem, and sold fuel from Belarus. I wonder if this was another takeover?
In 2018, OKKO got into a scandal with its gas stations in Crimea. The SBU opened a criminal case under Article 110-2 (financing anti-state actions) and even conducted noisy searches in the offices of Galnaftogaz.
However, the case was closed very quickly and the scandal subsided. At the same time, Vitaly Antonov’s excuses were somehow childish. He did not deny that his company continues to own gas stations in both Crimea and ORDILO, but explained that they had leased gas stations there to some other companies before 2014. Antonov could not explain how they were so different, and why the same OKKO employees continued to work for them – and this was no longer required, because by decree from the very top, all claims against him were removed.
Vitaly Antonov
It would seem that after the change of power in Ukraine, Antonov’s business will have to experience some temporary difficulties. Still, he has a large load of corruption and shady schemes behind him, and he needs to improve relations with the new bosses. But Antonov took care of everything during the elections, when structures associated with him financed the election campaign of Zelensky and Servant of the People. In particular, this is Varuna-West LLC, whose owners are Ivan Kots, Bogdan Kuspis, Anatoly Gursky and Igor Taransky. Through Agroche Plus LLC and Interenergotrade, they invested 6 million hryvnia into Zelensky’s election fund. Now it’s time to harvest: in December 2019, Varuna-West became the winner of the competition for the sale of the Kherson oil transshipment complex, which previously belonged to Sergei Kurchenko and was under arrest.
In fact, the complex fell into the hands of Antonov. The fact is that until the summer of 2019, he himself was the owner of Varuna-West through his other company OKKO-Retail, and its office is located in Lviv at the same address as Antonov’s other companies. But why did he need to buy the complex “secretly”, changing the formal owners of his company? This is unlikely to be the case for honest businessmen working according to transparent, legal schemes. This means that, having received a new “green roof”, Vitaly Antonov conceived some new scam.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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