Bondik Victor: ammonia schemes of three presidents. PART 2

BEGINNING: Victor Bondik: ammonia schemes of three presidents. PART 1

Big ammonia

Thus, the management of Ukrkhimtransammiak was not just the brother of the Deputy Minister of Justice, but a trusted person of the Donetsk people, an active participant in their corruption schemes and scams. And although mining foreman Viktor Bondik knew little about the technology of pumping ammonia through pipelines, he was well versed in how to take advantage of it and where to safely hide this benefit later.

Ukrkhimtransammiak is a state-owned enterprise that is the operator of the Ukrainian section of the unique Tolyatti-Odessa ammonia pipeline, built in 1981. Unique, because there are very few such structures in the world, but this one is the largest in terms of length and throughput capacity (up to 2.5 million tons per year). It pumps ammonia, produced mainly at the Togliattiazot enterprise, to the Odessa port plant – from where it is then exported to various countries around the world. Until 2014, the Stirol chemical plant in Gorlovka, which also produced ammonia for export, was connected to this ammonia pipeline (via a side section). After the outbreak of hostilities and the capture of Gorlovka by separatists, the plant was stopped.

This ammonia pipeline can be compared with the Ukrainian gas transportation system, and Ukrkhimtransammiak can be compared with Naftogaz. Of course, the amounts circulating there are an order of magnitude smaller, and ammonia is not such a popular commodity, it is more difficult to steal and resell, and it is more difficult to create various schemes with it. But for the people involved, he is a real Klondike, and the fact that few people know about the “ammonia business” was a good cover for the corruption and theft that has reigned in Ukrkhimtransammiak for many years. Reigning, because they took place before Viktor Bondik, and continued after his scandalous dismissal.

Take, for example, Konstantin Kucher, who headed Ukrkhimtransammiak in 2005-2006, and then jumped into the chair of Deputy Minister of Industrial Policy. The coachman didn’t just steal, he stole and partied in grand style – for example, he went to Europe and bought elite “VERTU Gold” phones there (at one time there was such a gold-plated “toy” for millionaires), he tinkered with schemes and at times overpaid shell companies for purchased equipment. Since 2010, Konstantin Kucher has been on the run – but his sons continue their business in Ukraine.

But in 2017 he was arrested as acting director of the enterprise Igor Tregubenko and two heads of private firms, who charged with theft and laundering more than 40 million hryvnia of state funds. In the summer of 2018, during the audit of Ukrkhimtransammiak was establishedthat the new management of the enterprise entered into unfavorable contracts with the Russian Togliattiazot, which brought multimillion-dollar losses (and the same benefit to the Russians). The management also carried out unprofitable operations for the enterprise with Alliance Evolution LLC (the company is associated with Kolomoisky).

Thus, Viktor Bondik was not the first and not the last director of Ukrkhimtransammiak to steal from the enterprise and the state. But he sat in his chair for more than nine years, under three presidents and four prime ministers, successfully surviving the second Maidan and the “lustration.” And one can only guess about the volume of corruption deals and thefts that he managed to pull off during this time.

Bondik’s list

Unfortunately, only a few of them were identified by law enforcement agencies, although law enforcement agencies began to be involved in the activities of Viktor Bondyk as director of Ukrkhimtransammiak back in 2013. However, he had a very powerful cover: according to sources Skelet.InfoViktor Bondyk had a “roof” at the level of presidential administrations, prime ministers and the most influential oligarchs, great connections in the Prosecutor General’s Office and the SBU, as well as the support of the Russians – with whom he concluded contracts that were beneficial to them, which brought losses to Ukraine (primarily, by understating the cost of ammonia transit ). So the criminal cases opened against Bondik were quickly closed – both under Yanukovych and under Poroshenko.

Victor Bondik

In December 2010, Ukrkhimtransammiak received loans (under government guarantees) from Amsterdam Trade Bank NV and Alfa-Bank for a total of $42 million. The loan agreement was “classified”, but it became known that a year later, only for interest payments and under the clause “other loan services” (possibly “loan insurance”), the company was forced to give these banks 108.153 million hryvnia (13.5 million dollars). Moreover, the loans themselves were used inappropriately, that is, they were simply wasted and stolen. Bondik got away with it.

For five years, Ukrkhimtransammiak entered into contracts for security services with Security and Safety LLC, which received a total of 58.45 million hryvnia. It turned out that the founders of Security and Services were the companies of Viktor Bondik himself, Promkeram LLC and Grigorievsky Rudnik LLC. And the director of “Security and Services” was Zurab Asaturov, who is also the director of the Altair Profi Construction Company LLC, the founders of which were the companies Uglepostavka LLC (Bondika) and SK LLC, associated with Alexander Yanukovych.

By the way, Bondik’s Grigorievsky Mine already gave him a good profit, being a co-owner of the Konstantinovsky Weighting Agents Plant OJSC, which brought in up to a million dollars in net profit per year. In 2009, he bought the state stake in the Weighting Agents Plant through the offshore company Richmond Investments. Thus, the director of the state company, Viktor Bondik, not only robbed the state, but also ran his private business with all his might.

In 2013, Ukrkhimtransammiak purchased a batch of pumps for a total amount of 55.4 million hryvnia. There would be nothing corrupt in this if three years earlier the company had not purchased exactly the same set of pumps, for which they paid three times less – 15.2 million hryvnia. This scam exactly repeated the same schemes of Konstantin Kucher, who also overpaid three times for the equipment.

In 2013, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened a criminal case into the embezzlement of 6.5 million hryvnia by the management of Ukrkhimtransammiak, intended for the purchase of equipment. They didn’t buy the equipment, the money disappeared – and then the criminal case itself disappeared somewhere.

For several years, Ukrkhimtransammiak held a tender for the service of aerial monitoring of the condition of the Ukrainian section of the ammonia pipeline. In 2008-2012 These tenders were invariably won by Twin Star AviaService, whose co-owner Svetlana Makarova was associated with Igor Tregubenko, who at that time worked in the management of Ukrkhimtransammiak. The same Tregubenko, who will head the company in 2016 and will be arrested for corruption and theft in 2017, and who was one of Bondik’s loyal people. So, if in 2008 Twin Star AviaService paid about 6 million hryvnia for this service, then in 2010 it was already about 10 million (okay, inflation), and in 2012 it was already 28 million (but that’s theft) .

But in 2013, Ukrkhimtransammiak had to change the airline company: the new winner of the tender was MARS RK Airlines LLC, whose founders were Anatoly Kudrin and Anastasia Shevchenko-Katamadze (daughter of Oleg Shevchenko). The cost of the contract with this company cost the state enterprise Ukrkhimtransammiak 30,490,000 hryvnia – although JSC AS (regional aviation center) took part in the tender, offering the service for only 15,530,000 hryvnia. But the management of Ukrkhimtransammiak rejected her proposal, remaining convinced that AS either had the wrong documents or the wrong model of aircraft (he did not explain which model would suit Bondik). A year later, a contract for the aerial surveillance service in the amount of 37 million hryvnia was concluded with Yana Charter AG LLC – which turned out to be connected with the owners of MARS RK. But this company is only an intermediary in booking tickets and renting charter flights – so it’s not clear why they paid that kind of money? According to sources Skelet.Infoaviation control of the ammonia pipeline was not carried out at all that year, and the money was simply stolen.

All these facts were set out in detail in the deputy request of Sergei Melnichuk, which he sent to Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk in December 2014. In it, he asked to find out about the status of criminal cases previously initiated against the management of Ukrkhimtransammiak. But all in vain: the prime minister remained silent, and Melnychuk received an answer from the Kyiv prosecutor’s office that the cases were closed, but then sent for further investigation.

Corruption is invincible

Melnychuk’s efforts were in vain, because Bondyk continued to confidently sit in the chair of the director of Ukrkhimtransammiak, continuing his corrupt and even anti-state activities. It was reported that in the spring of 2014, Viktor Bondik traveled several times not only to Togliatti, but also to Crimea, captured by the Russians, where he even attended the May parade of Russian troops. At the same time, Bondik claimed that he was supposedly on sick leave, but journalists found facts in the reports of Ukrzaliznytsia confirming that Bondik entered the peninsula on April 30 and left it on May 10.

It was not difficult to guess what Bondik agreed on with the Russians. For years, Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) has been lobbying through personal agreements with Ukrainian politicians and officials, backed by bribes and kickbacks, for low transit tariffs. And in this case, corruption agreements were concluded for years between Viktor Bondik and the Makhlaev family: Vladimir Nikolaevich Makhlai, who led TolyattiAzot until 2011, and his son Sergei Vladimirovich, who inherited his father’s position. Facts of corruption: if at the beginning of the 2000s Russians paid Ukrkhimtransammiak $2 for transit, then under Bondik this tariff dropped to 50 cents! And this despite the fact that after 2008, the economically justified ammonia transit tariff, according to experts, was $3.8.

Another fact of corruption was the “unauthorized withdrawals” of ammonia from the pipeline – that is, its theft (following the example of the theft of gas from the gas transportation system). The media reported that up to 150 thousand tons of ammonia were stolen per year, a considerable part of which was sold to small Ukrainian consumers: for refrigeration units, as well as for farmers (fertilizing the land with anhydrous ammonia). Under Bondik, this was put on stream, since not all Ukrainian farmers could afford more expensive mineral fertilizers, and “tired” ammonia could be sold at a discount.

But 150 thousand tons are small things. The Makhlais sell up to 2 million tons of ammonia (via Odessa) to the USA, where they readily buy it. And in the United States they have their own lobby, which is interested in ensuring that this ammonia does not become more expensive, which means that transit tariffs through Ukraine do not increase. And, at the request of Sergei Makhlai, they, in turn, asked the new leadership of Ukraine (the Americans had enormous influence on the Yatsenyuk government) not to stir up the schemes that had developed at Ukrkhimtransammiak. Therefore, Victor Bondik remained in his chair, becoming more impudent every year. According to media reports, in 2015 he concluded a bunch of tenders worth over half a billion hryvnia, of which only 30% was paid for real services and goods, and the remaining 70% was an overpayment that spilled into the pockets of the participants in these corruption schemes. Alas, only a small part of them were later exposed: for example, when in 2016 the SBU finally got seriously involved in Bondik, it revealed facts of theft of 235 million hryvnia for the period 2012-2015 Only a part, in only four years! Later, new facts emerged, and the amount of theft and damage increased to 700 million hryvnia. However, journalists, social activists and social activists claimed that over nine years Bondik brought damage to Ukrkhimtransammiak ranging from 150 to a billion hryvnia!

The investigation then established that Victor Bondik transferred his money to the Swiss bank Bank Vontobel AG to the account of his Dutch company Spes Asset Management BV. This year, after two years of litigation, Switzerland agreed to hand over documents on this account to the Ukrainian investigation. But how many other such accounts does Bondik have in other banks? And when will he finally be in the dock? By the way, it is still unknown where he is currently hiding.

The Minister of Economic Development, Abromavicius, sought the dismissal of Viktor Bondik for several months; however, he did not go beyond timid calls for voluntary resignation. At the same time, presidential friend Igor Kononenko stood up for Bondik, and this conflict (the case went to court for allegedly slandering Kononenko) became the reason for the resignation of Abromavicius himself. What specific interest Kononenko has in Ukrkhimtransammiak is still unknown, but he defended Bondyk as “his man” in this position. When Bondik disgraced himself too much, Kononenko was not against replacing him – but wanted him to be replaced with another “one of his own.”

And so Bondik was fired – after which he quickly fled, thereby avoiding Nasirov’s fate. Then an open competition was announced for the position of the new director of Ukrkhimtransammiak, in which 32 candidates participated – half of whom were people of Dmitry Firtash, Mykola Azarov, Alexander Onishchenko, four were people of Kolomoisky, and three were called protégés of Viktor Bondyk himself. But the competition was won by Pavel Shebest, a man with diplomas as a veterinarian and a chemist, who had previously worked for Western companies, and did not have clear patrons behind him (although, perhaps, Americans?). Then the results of the competition were simply shelved, and the new acting Director, by order of Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman, was appointed… Igor Tregubenko! Considering that Tregubenko was then 100% Makhlaev’s candidate, this was the result of an agreement with the Russians either by Groysman himself or Kononenko.

But a few months later, Tregubenko was arrested, and a new acting leader was appointed to Ukrkhimtransammiak. director, and thefts and scams continued. Corruption has proven invincible—at least for now.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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