CONTINUATION. START: Borislav Rosenblat. Favorite of the Amber Mafia PART 1
Zhytomyr oligarch Borislav Rosenblat
Borislav Solomonovich Rosenblat was born on May 25, 1969 in Kyiv. However, his family are indigenous residents of Zhitomir. Mother – Shavlina Grigorievna, father – Solomon (Semyon) Abramovich. Boris grew up a daredevil, but was distinguished by his lively mind and ingenuity. His younger sister Elena, with pleasure, at one time, before going into politics, gave interviews and talked about her successful brother. One of her childhood memories: Borislav was saving money for the Lunokhod, when it was given to him, he improved the gift into a submarine.
In 1984, Boris entered the Zhitomir Automobile and Highway College with a degree in “Construction and operation of highways.” After graduation, he worked for two months as a technician in the Zhytomyr department of Ukrremshlyakhproekt. Then he studied at the Kamyshin Higher Military Construction School with a degree in “Team Construction of Buildings and Structures”, qualification – engineer for the construction and operation of buildings and structures.
When “perestroika” and troubled times began, the Rosenblat family bought an old house near Zhitomir in the village of Volitsya with a vegetable garden of 30 acres. They spent most of their time there. Semyon Abramovich lost his job in road construction, the family was left without a means of subsistence. At that time, the main breadwinner was Borislav, a young officer who served in the military unit of the town of Ozernoy as commander of an airfield company. Arriving home, at one of the family councils, it was decided that Rosenblat Sr. would go into private business. Then Semyon Abramovich went to work for the Vozrozhdenie company, which was engaged in the supply of petroleum products. In 1994, massive layoffs began in the army and Boris was offered to resign with the rank of “reserve captain.” When he returned to his parents, he threw himself headlong into the whirlwind of entrepreneurship. At the next family council, the idea arose to create a company. This is how the Favorit company appeared – in a two-room apartment with a staff of two people – Borislav and Solomon Abramovich, who were both lawyers and accountants. Initially, entrepreneurs began to engage in barter, which was profitable in those years. They bought a truck and used it to transport canned meat with condensed milk to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), and back – spare parts for agricultural machinery. In order to sell goods in Ukraine, they met the chairmen of collective farms, established good relationships with them and sold spare parts at a speculative price.
The business quickly gained momentum. Favorit’s activities soon expanded: production and wholesale trade in food products (dairy products, butter), construction business (house construction) and sale of building materials (SE Favorit-Opt), transport transportation (SE Favorit-Trans), sugar production and agricultural business. The company included 7 enterprises in various regions of Ukraine, incl. OJSC Galievsky Creamery, CJSC Priluki Creamery, State Enterprise Koretsky Sugar Factory, Koretsky Agrarian.
The brand name of “Favorita” is a smiling cow with flowers.
How to destroy an empire
Solomon Rosenblat died in 2010. After this, the Favorite empire began to burst at the seams. Rosenblat Jr. was unable to continue his father’s work.
“Pryluky Creamery”. In 2011, a scandal broke out around CJSC Priluki Creamery, once one of the main milk processors in the region. Factory workers protested because of the colossal delay in wages, which had not been paid for more than six months. The debt ranged from 100 to 3000 and more than 10,000,000 hryvnia, depending on the amount of wages. However, Borislav Solomonovich did not react to this. “Go if you want, don’t go if you want,” he told the workers. Of course, people hoped for the best and continued to work. At the beginning of 2012, the plant literally began to be dismantled piece by piece: people came to cut out the equipment and remove the roof. The workers appealed to the courts, the prosecutor’s office and the police. The main radical, Oleg Lyashko, joined them and began to defend people. The problem moved a little, the workers received meager salaries – 200 hryvnia per hand and a promise from Rosenblat “everything will be fine.” The Prilutsk prosecutor’s office did not take the side of the factory workers and did not initiate a criminal case on the fact of arrears of wages. People were left with nothing.
At the beginning of June 2013, the Economic Court of the Chernihiv region declared the Priluki Butter Factory CJSC bankrupt.” This was the point in the long-term legal battle between the plant and Prominvestbank, which holds the entire property complex of the enterprise as collateral. Cooperation between the two structures began in 2008. Then the creamery needed 60 million hryvnia to pay off its debt to Ukrsotsbank. Prominvestbank agreed to give the money on the condition that the property of the enterprise was pledged. When the loan agreements were signed, Priluki was a fairly successful enterprise (in 2007, revenues exceeded 82 million hryvnia, and net profit exceeded 2 million hryvnia). The crisis of 2008 changed everything: the creamery’s income decreased by a third, and the loss reached 4 million hryvnia. Realizing that the loan could not be repaid, the Rosenblats filed a lawsuit to challenge the legality of receiving funds. They also gave the go-ahead to the Pension Fund and KP Prilukiteplovodosnabzhenie (the creamery owed them a total of more than 1 million hryvnia) to declare the enterprise bankrupt. Meanwhile, they began to remove equipment, vehicles and even structures.
So Borislav Rosenblat ruined an enterprise whose capacity allowed him to process up to 250 tons of milk per day. In July 2014, the Commodity Exchange “Electronic Trading Ukraine” announced the holding of a repeat auction for the sale of the property of JSC Butter Factory Priluky.”
Galievsky Creamery. The Galievsky Creamery (Zhytomyr region) also suffered from the strong “economic” hand of Borislav Rosenblat. The company acted as a guarantor for loans issued by Prominvestbank to ZAO Maslozavod Priluky.” In 2013, they demanded 14 million hryvnia from him. The company did not have such an amount, so it ended up in a debt hole. Zhytomyr tax authorities have opened several criminal proceedings regarding tax evasion by employees of the Galievsky Creamery, as well as the subsidiary company Favorit Wholesale. In total – more than 3 million hryvnia.
Borislav Solomonovich was saved from complete ruin by the Maidan. After him, all business was suspended.
“Koretsk Sugar Factory” (Rivne region). The company joined Favorit in 2001. Then the Rosenblatts invested 13 million hryvnia in it. But here we are not talking about patronage. They took up the task of reviving the plant for the reason that most of the region’s farms with which Favorit worked delivered the raw sugar they grew there. After 7 years, production was mothballed. There were good reasons for this: the Koretsk Sugar Factory was mired in litigation with Ukrgasbank, from which it took a large loan amount “for development.” In 2009, the Economic Court of the Rivne region decided to recover from the state enterprise and Koretsky Agrariy LLC, which also belonged to Rosenblat, the overdue amount and interest on the loan of 170 thousand euros. The defendant stated in court that he had no money. The plant stood idle for three years, and during this time equipment was removed from it and the structures were dismantled for secondary raw materials. It should be noted that the Koretsky Sugar Factory provided jobs to three regions: Rivne, Zhitomir and Khmelnitsky. Approximately 800 people were left without jobs. Do you agree that the situation resembles something?
The only industry that is still afloat is construction.
In August 2011, Borislav Rosenblat pompously opened the first stages of apartment buildings in Zhitomir with the former leaders of the city and region – “regionals” Vladimir Deboy and Sergei Ryzhuk. This, by the way, is a clear confirmation that the connection with the Party of Regions in Rosenblat is very close. In November 2012, at the celebration dedicated to the commissioning of the 5-story building, there were more guests: Ryzhuk and Deboy were joined by the chairman of the regional council, Joseph Zapalovsky, and the newly elected deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, Gennady Zubko. The cost of one square meter of an apartment built by Borislav Solomonovich at that time was 8,100 UAH.
However, not all construction projects are so successful. At the beginning of 2013, Rosenblat, together with his friend Vadim Rabinovich, decided to build a new synagogue in Zhitomir with their own money. The politician promised that Jews would celebrate the New Year in the new building. The foundation was laid in the summer of 2014, the first brick was laid in the fall and… the work stalled. Either the money has run out, or the desire to give it has run out.
The local newspaper Saturday published material about Rosenblat’s unfulfilled promises to build a synagogue. The next day, the circulation of this issue was bought by unknown people. Well, what can you do, the truth hurts your eyes.
Borislav Rosenblat. The Art of Adjustment
Borislav Rosenblat began his political career in 2002. Then he was an ideological social democrat – a member of the SDPU (o) party of the all-powerful Viktor Medvedchuk, godfather of Russian President Vladimir Putin (*criminal). This attempt to get under the dome of the Verkhovna Rada failed. The second coming took place in 2010 at the local level. Rosenblat relied on the Party of Regions – during the “reign” of Yanukovych, only the regionals were in favor. True, Rosenblatt did not succeed in becoming a Zhytomyr deputy.
As soon as the Maidan began, Borislav Solomnovich immediately disowned his white and blue past, changing his views to more advantageous ones. By the way, Rosenblat does not advertise his involvement in PR. For example, there is no such information on his Wikipedia page. However, “traces” remained – in the Zhytomyr newspaper of October 16, 2010, in accordance with the law, all lists of parties for elections to local councils were published. The politician was number 104 on the Party of Regions list for the regional council.
By the way, it is still unknown whether Rosenblat wrote a statement about leaving the party, as many politicians did after EuroMaidan?
In 2014, Borislav Rosenblat became a confidant of presidential candidate Petro Poroshenko. This became a ticket to big politics. Although, they say that the resourceful Borislav Solomonovich simply bought himself a place in the Rada. However, on October 27, 2014, he received the mandate of a people’s deputy from the BPP.
In the same year, in the parliamentary elections, he ran in Zhitomir in district No. 62 from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. And he won with 20.81% of the votes. Let us note that in 2012, the current Deputy Prime Minister Gennady Zubko won this constituency. According to Skelet.Infoit was Zubko who put in a good word for Rosenblatt, his close friend and business partner, with Poroshenko. So Borislav Solomonovich became the official “supervisor” of the Zhitomir region.
An interesting point: as soon as the BPP nominated Boris Solomonovich as a deputy, he quickly took up his PR company. He decided to promote not only himself, but also his own company, Favorit, to the masses. On advertising billboards in Zhitomir, Rosenblat’s name appeared not only against the background of Poroshenko’s red stripe, but also with the “Favorite” brand name. He was not embarrassed by the fact that it is impossible to combine political and commercial advertising according to the laws of Ukraine.
In 2014, Borislav Rosenblat joined the volunteer movement, becoming a co-founder of the public organization “Volunteers of Zhytomyr Region” and the charitable foundation “Combat Brotherhood of Cyborgs”. Zhitomir was plastered with posters telling how every week Borislav Solomonovich drives 20-ton trucks with food for our military to the Donbass. Although it’s strange why he, being an officer, sits out in the rear?
In 2016, Rosenblat was involved in a scandal with the raider seizure of the Zhytomyr confectionery factory. Then the raiders handed over the factory to regional Boris Kolesnikov, who is the owner of JSC PA Konti. Borislav Solomonovich began to defend the interests of Zhytomyr products “Zhytomyr Lasoschi”.
Borislav Rosenblat. Wealth – houses and Rolexes
In 2008, the weekly magazine Comments named the Rosenblat family one of the richest in the region – its fortune was estimated at $55 million.
After 8 years, Borislav Solomonovich only increased his income. He declared mansion of 700 sq. m. in Zhitomir, two houses in the Zhitomir region (225 m² and 74.6 m²), half a house in Germany with an area of 270 m², as well as several land plots in Zhitomir and the region with a total area of over 39 thousand m², and 11 companies that, for some reason, they don’t bring in much income. Rosenblat owns 50% of the companies Obereg LLC, Miropolsky Bacon and Koretsky Agrariy, the second part is owned by his sister Elena. He is also the beneficial owner of three companies: Obereg LLC, Miropolsky Bacon LLC and ISR International Ltd, which is registered in the UK. The latter has been led by his son, Oleg Rosenblat, since 2015.
The people’s deputy also keeps $2 million at home, and his wife Zhanna is the happy owner of another 1.4 million euros.
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Rosenblat loves expensive things – he wears only Rolex watches and drives a Mercedes-Benz S-Class, although only GAZ 3309 (2007) is registered to it. But my wife has better transport: she has a license for a luxury Mercedes-Benz 500L (2010 onwards) and a Jaguar XK8 Coupe sports car (2007 onwards). Despite the corruption scandal, Borislav Rosenblat – the main link of the amber business in Ukraine. His companies lease land plots in the Olevsky district of the Zhytomyr region, supposedly for the development of agriculture there. But everyone knows that in this area the soil consists of stones and sand, it is completely unsuitable for growing agricultural crops. The center of amber deposits is concentrated in this area.
The ex-people’s deputy is doing his best to lead the process of legalizing the mining of “sunstone” in order to receive serious kickbacks. And this is not the kind of creamery to develop.
Arina Dmitrieva, for Skelet.Info
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