Eduard Gurvits: the bloody mayor-ruiner of Odessa. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING Eduard Gurvits: the bloody mayor-ruiner of Odessa. PART 1

Gangs of Odessa: Wahhabi invasion

In 1994, Gurvits already had enough of his own strength to simultaneously receive a mandate as a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada and win the election of the mayor, beating his main contender Kostusev. Moreover, his election campaign was then paid for by the owners of Elis LLC and Solo LLC, who had previously robbed Odessa residents with the help of financial pyramids.

However, in preparation for defeat and escape, Gurwitz first acquired a second citizenship. Then the sources Skelet.Info They reported that Gurwitz supposedly had an Israeli passport, and even named it No. 044402931. But this was obvious confusion. Firstly, the presence of an Israeli passport in the hands of the Jew Hurwitz is hardly a sensation – almost all Ukrainian Jews who had enough time and money to travel to Israel at least once under the repatriation system got hold of a passport there. However, the number given is nine-digit, while Israeli passports have eight-digit numbers. But US passports have nine-digit numbers, which Israeli citizens who came to the US and applied for citizenship could easily have received. And Gurvits could have received both passports back in the late 80s, when he was engaged in “cooperation” and was not yet in the public eye and the press.

As a matter of fact, the fact that his second wife Olga Menshikova (the first crashed in a car) divorced Eduard Gurvitsev in Israel in 1990 and remained there indicates that in the late 80s they did repatriate, but then Gurvits decided to return to Odessa – where he had more prospects (business, elections). Therefore, the question of whether Hurwitz has an Israeli passport is not even raised; the intrigue lies elsewhere – does he have an American one or something else?

So, in 1994, Eduard Gurvits received the position of mayor of Odessa. But the unpleasant news for him was that at the same time he won the election of governor (chairman of the regional council and regional executive committee) Ruslan Bodelan. The war between them had not yet begun, but they were already looking askance at each other. The reason was simple: two foxes ended up in the same chicken coop, and immediately began to interfere with each other’s efforts to destroy the Odessa region. In addition, if Bodelan, who had previously been removed from his post by Kravchuk, was initially favored by the new President Kuchma, then the former Rukhovite Gurvits was unable to establish contacts with Leonid Danilovich.

In the first months of his mayorship, Gurvits began to take steps that were incomprehensible and outrageous for Odessa residents. Firstly, this concerned the massive demolition of stalls (MAFs, as they say today). One and a half thousand trade kiosks were removed from the streets, five thousand people were left without income. And this despite the fact that, having previously been the chairman of the district council, Gurvits pursued the opposite policy: he invited entrepreneurs to his district and promised to make Odessa a “free economic zone.” The explanation for these dramatic changes may lie behind the scenes of public policy. Namely: until 1994, Gurvits had good business relations with almost all Odessa organized crime groups, including the group Alexandra Angert (nickname Angel)which together with Gennady Trukhanov and Alexander Zhukov worked for the international mafioso Leonid Minin. Moreover, Alexander Angert later publicly, in front of a television camera, stated that he was a sponsor of Gurvits’s election fund, and also provided his people (more precisely, Trukhanov’s guards) with the security of Eduard Gurvits and his home, that they together celebrated Gurvits’ victory in the elections with a noisy banquet. However, soon after Hurwitz sat down as mayor, a quarrel occurred between him and Angert. Perhaps the mass demolition of stalls was connected with all these events – after all, for organized crime groups they were an important source of “food”.

What exactly caused Hurwitz and Angert to quarrel? All versions converged on key objects: sea ports, oil piers, and the Odessa Oil Refinery. Odessa organized crime groups have been fighting to the death for the port since 1991, because raw materials were exported and consumer goods were imported through it, but the Minin-Angert group had a special interest there; they needed it for a large-scale business: transshipment of petroleum products, smuggling of weapons and drugs. And they expected that under the mayor of Hurwitz, the port and refinery would be at their complete disposal. But something went wrong, so much so that Gurvits was saved from a bullet only by the fact that he had long worked with Stoyanov’s organized crime group – which already competed with Angert’s organized crime group, and after 1994 was completely at war. Perhaps Angert would have lost the port altogether if not for luck: the new-old governor Ruslan Bodelan was a close friend of the head of the regional Ministry of Internal Affairs Ivan Grigorenko, and Grigorenko himself was Angert’s “curator”, who at one time agreed to cooperate with the authorities. This is how the Angel organized crime group received a “roof” in the person of the new governor, as a result of which a long-term war broke out between Bodelan and Hurwitz.

And Gurvits almost lost in this war, because at first his criminal “roof” Stoyanov began to go to jail every now and then, and his organized crime group began to fall apart, after which Stoyanov generally left for the United States for several years. And in 1997, the main criminal arbiter of Odessa, Kulivar, died from a bullet from an unknown killer – after which Angert took the place of the “main authority” of the city. But by this time, Eduard Gurvits already had a new cover: warlike bearded mountaineers from Grozny.

The only stable income of Chechen Ichkeria (apart from scams with advice notes, kidnappings and printing counterfeit dollars) was the trade in oil and petroleum products. At the same time, the Dudayevites sought to enter European markets (this is the political meaning), to which Ukraine was a stepping stone for them. There were not only refineries that could process Chechen oil, and oil pipelines that could drive it to Europe. In Ukraine, the Chechen oil business received legalization and the opportunity to enter the European market as serious business structures. Therefore, the Chechens started their oil business in Ukraine through Kyiv politicians: “People’s Movement”, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (in which there were many “Rukhists”), Western embassies, the head of the Ukrainian branch of KPMG Katerina Chumachenko and her close friend Oleg Rybachuk. The Ukrainian-American mafia, controlled by Semyon Mogilevich, was also called involved in this business.

In 1994-95, the Chechens began to take control of the Kherson oil refinery, in which structures helped them Alexandra Tretyakova. In 1995-96 they began to fight for the Odessa oil refinery and oil pier. In addition, the Chechens in Odessa had another interest: smuggling weapons from Transnistria to Chechnya. There was information that the Minin-Angert organized crime group had been supplying the “bearded men” with machine guns and ammunition since 1994 (or even earlier), but their cooperation came to an end when the Chechens first wanted to “buy out” and then simply take away the oil refinery. Minin then found a new market for weapons (Yugoslavia), and Angert and Trukhanov began to defend their Odessa oil borders from the emissaries of Wahhabi Ichkeria.

The person with whose help the Chechens hoped to achieve what they wanted was Odessa mayor Eduard Gurvits. It was reported that they first contacted him through the chain through an organized crime group of the Chechen diaspora in Odessa, which, through the Armenian diaspora, reached an agreement with businessmen close to Gurvits. But everything was decided by “recommendations” from Kyiv, from an old acquaintance of Gurvits from Rukh. And then the guys from UNA-UNSO, who collaborated with the Chechens back in the Abkhaz War (1993), and in 1994-95, tried to attach themselves to this emerging coalition. supplied their nationalist volunteers and groups of recruited mercenaries to Grozny. This is how it “took root” in Odessa Dmitry Korchinskywho in 1997 was expelled from the UNSO for provocative activities, and then founded his own “Brotherhood”.

Hurwitz receives dear guests

On September 1, 1996, the first official delegation of Chechnya, which had just been “recognized by Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism)” (which signed the humiliating Khasavyurt Peace Treaty), arrived in Odessa from Grozny, led by Vice President Vakha Arsanov. They were met not by Ruslan Bodelan, who was “frozen” from this event, but by the mayor of the city, Eduard Gurvits, around whom his faithful man Leonid Kapelyushny (editor of the Gurvits newspaper “Slovo”) hung around for a while. In turn, Gurvits was invited to Grozny for Maskhadov’s inauguration.

It is worth noting that the “Wahhabi invasion” of Odessa was accompanied by a disgusting political spectacle, namely: 35 Ukrainian builders from Kirovograd were captured by militants in Chechnya, and after that Gurvits allegedly facilitated their return home by agreement with the “authorities of Ichkeria.” There was information that all this was deliberately staged, and ineptly – one of the builders tried to resist and was killed by militants.

The emissaries of Grozny pursued broader goals than taking control of the Odessa oil refinery. Their plans included turning Odessa into the “Chechen capital” of Ukraine, taking the city under the full control of Chechen organized crime groups, creating Chechen banks and companies, and organizing treatment and rehabilitation centers for Chechen militants in Odessa sanatoriums. During 1995-97 1,700 Chechen “refugees” arrived in Odessa – almost all male and of strong build. They had already taken over the city bus station and controlled suburban passenger transportation, took control of several markets, and even began to squeeze the Odessa “crowned thieves” in their traditional business – underground casinos and car theft. By the way, there were rumors that Kulivar was allegedly killed by the Chechens because he did not want to surrender the city to them, and was also against the heroin trade in the city. Angert, who actually declared war on them, received the support of many Odessa organized crime groups – except for the Stoyanov group, which, through the efforts of Gurvits, entered into an alliance with the Chechens.

Among the Chechen business partners of Gurvits who were involved in crime, sources Skelet.Info called the organized crime group of Abu Archakov and Beslan Tushtarov, and the allied Dagestan group of Omar Magomedov – in which Wahhabism also flourished. Once there was a leak of information in the form of a whole list of “Caucasian friends of Gurvits”, with their Odessa registration and occupation:

• Idrisov Aligadzhi Monapovich, born in 1961, (Odessa, Bolshaya Arnautskaya st., 95-33). He ran restaurants, underground casinos, and was involved in the theft of luxury cars.
• Archakov Abu Idrisovich, born in 1960, co-owner of the Odessa Food Wholesale Market.
• Davlatukaev Rezvan Salambekovich, born in 1961, (16-12 Fontanskaya road). Responsible for heroin transit schemes.
• Magomedov Omar Magomedovich, born in 1969, (26-7 Gaidar St. and 27-72 Filatov St.). He was engaged in the sale of large quantities of counterfeit US dollars.
• Zakriev Magomed Khasmagomodovich, born in 1959, (Kostandi St., 199-15). He headed arms smuggling schemes.
• Magomedov Shamil Magomed-Rasulovich, born in 1966, (Malinovsky St., 16-185). He was involved in the arms trade.
• Tushtarov Beslan Usmanovich, born in 1958, (Rishelyevskaya St., 12-2). Involved in contract killings and kidnappings for ransom.
• Kimaev Adam Mukhadiyovich, born in 1961, (Lustdorfskaya road, 125/2-A apartment 12.), was the “supervisor” of the wholesale trade.
• Magomedov Magomed Gazimagomedovich, born 1963, (17-52 Armeyskaya St.) Deputy director of the automobile market “Success” and head of the “Odessa Glass Factory”.

Sources reported that Omar Magomedov’s organized crime group worked with the director of the Odessa “Autoservice” Lapchev (Gurvits’s man), who also in 1997, together with Magomed Magdiev, opened the “Success” car market, and took over the wholesale market on Marshal Zhukov Street. The Transservice company, owned by the brothers Sergei and Valentin Prodaevich, worked with the Chechens and Stoyanov’s organized crime group. The former gained fame only in 2014 as a great friend of actor Porechenkov and DPR militant Vadim Savenko, but his brother Valentin Prodaevich has long been known to Odessa residents as the most corrupt judge in the city. Moreover, in 1997, it was Gurvits who seated Prodaevich in the chair of a judge of the regional arbitration court. Through the company “Chem-Oil-Transit-Ukraine” Levenchuk (another person of Gurvits), which was engaged in the supply of liquefied gas, money was laundered for Archakov’s organized crime group. It was also reported that Levenchuk hired killers from the Stoyanov organized crime group to kill his companion Evgeniy Garbuz and the head of the Eurogas company Yuri Knyazev.

The most firmly established in Odessa was Sultanbek Vakhaevich Aidamirov, nicknamed “Sultan,” who was hiding in Ukraine from criminal prosecution in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). More than once accused of kidnapping and extortion, but always got out with the help of connections in the city prosecutor’s office. Being not so much a militant as a “simple bandit,” he took possession of several large objects in the city, including the Concept food market in the village of Kotovsky. And he managed them for a long time, making a profit, even when he went abroad.

The transformation of Odessa into a second Chechnya was prevented by the scandalous elections of 1998 that Hurvits lost, and then the outbreak of the second Chechen War, during which Moscow put pressure on Kyiv with demands to begin cleaning up Chechen organized crime groups on its territory. However, these demands said nothing about Eduard Gurvits. Perhaps the rumors that the old KGB agent Vesely, in the mid-90s, began working for the FSB and leaking information to them about Chechen militants and organized crime groups in Odessa, were not such rumors after all? After all, Hurwitz always liked to play it safe.

Eduard Gurvits. Odessa in debt bondage

The dirty Odessa elections of 1998, which deprived Gurvits of the opportunity to extend his mayoral term, put a break in his career for seven whole years. For which Gurvits managed to be a member of “Hromada”, then leave it after the arrest of Lazarenko, support Yushchenko’s team and be elected to the Verkhovna Rada (2002) on the list of “Our Ukraine” – and then win the mayor’s chair from Bodelan in 2005. In that litigation, the most egregious thing was the alleged theft of all the materials from the case of alleged falsification of the 2002 elections: several volumes were stolen directly from the safe of the court office. It was rumored that this was beneficial, first of all, to Hurwitz himself.

Gurvits was involved in the acquisition of city real estate in 1994-98 and 2005-2010. But he was most distinguished by his loans, putting this idea on stream, which twice brought Odessa to default – in this he had no equal among the mayors of Ukrainian cities!

In 1997, between receptions of delegations from Ichkeria and sessions of the City Council, at which Odessa was handed out piece by piece, Eduard Gurvits started a “municipal loan” in the amount of 61 million hryvnia ($33.5 million at the then exchange rate). At the same time, they promised simply crazy dividends – 50% per annum! The case clearly smelled like a scam, but Gurvits called city property a guarantee of payment of obligations: they say, if anything happens, we will compensate with objects! He explained the wasteful interest by saying that this is not just a loan, but an “investment” one, for projects that will soon pay off. In general, they believed him, and not only gullible Odessa residents: 30% of the bonds were bought by Ukrainian individuals and enterprises, and 70% by foreign ones. And when the time came to pay the bills a year later, Hurwitz declared default! No, he did not copy Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) – he arranged his Odessa default six months before the Moscow one!

Most Ukrainian bondholders just wiped their noses as usual, but foreign ones began to put pressure on the Odessa authorities. A group of financiers led by Gleb Shestakov, president of GFM Cossack Bond, said they were giving up 50% returns and were ready to restructure the debt just to get their investments back. But the Cypriot company Lindsell Enterprises Ltd, through which Hurwitz’s bonds were bought by the British royal family (!), demanded compliance with the contracts and the law – and full payment of accounts. But in the end, no one’s demand was satisfied: in the spring of 1998, Gurvits lost his post as mayor. Perhaps he expected this when he arranged the loan? And the bonds purchased by Her Majesty were paid off from the special fund of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine in order to avoid an international scandal at the highest level. It is not surprising that after that incident England never invested anything in Ukraine again!

In the spring of 2005, Eduard Iosifovich returned to the mayor’s chair – and immediately started another loan, under the pretext of paying off an old debt. This time, bonds were issued for 150 million hryvnia (about $30 million at the exchange rate), their yield was set at a reasonable rate of 12-17% per annum, and they were to be repaid in several series in 2007, 2008 and 2010. But this was not enough for Hurwitz, and in the same 2005 he arranged an international loan, selling bonds for 50 million Swiss francs (about 50 million dollars), and also, on behalf of the mayor’s office, took out loans from the banks “Khreshchatyk (20 million hryvnia)”, “ Ukrsotsbank” (18 million) and “Nadra” (120 million)!

In 2006, Gurvits, through the public utility Odessa Development Program Agency, took out a loan of $35.5 million from the World Bank (for 20 years). And another loan in the amount of 30 million hryvnia was taken out from Nadra Bank – secured by the property of the municipal enterprise “City Roads”. In 2007, the city council, which was run by Hurwitz’s men, voted to take out a loan of 50 million Swiss francs from BNP Paribas Finance Plc, at 8.5% per annum for a period of three years.

Of all these borrowed amounts, debts were repaid only on the 1997 bonds. The remaining debts were “written off” by the 2008 crisis, after which the debts of the Odessa mayor’s office were again paid from the state budget. But not all of them: there is information that Gurvits did not plan to pay off the loans to some creditors, but was going to transfer city property to them as collateral. That is, it was a fraudulent debit scheme, according to which creditors purchased houses and plots at half price, and Hurwitz’s team sawed up and pocketed the loans!

Not all Odessa residents supported Gurvits

Hurwitz’s dirty politics

Politics in general is rarely pure, especially in Ukraine, but Gurvits stood out as a stain even against its impartial background. The man who, for the sake of his own selfish interests, brought the Polovtsy, in the sense of the Chechens, to Odessa, was ready to do anything to gain power and retain it. In addition to betting on organized crime groups, Gurvits used pocket parties and organizations to fight competitors. Of course, what mayor of a regional center doesn’t have them?! But only in Gurvits were these unprincipled provocateurs from Korchinsky’s “Brotherhood”, among whom Oles Yanchuk, Mark Sokolov and Dmitry Linko. Not limited to just throwing shit at their political opponents (literally), they used provocations, surveillance, and sometimes their undertakings ended in the death of Hurwitz’s opponents.

By the way, let us recall that his security guard was the notorious killer Sergei Asavelyuk. Read more about it in the article: Asavelyuk. Killer in the service of the new government.

For example, on February 25, 2009, Dmitry Rustamov, an assistant to a people’s deputy who was investigating Gurvits’s affairs, was killed in Odessa. As it later turned out, shortly before the murder, Gurvits instructed Yanchuk to organize surveillance of Rustamov, and also to steal investigation documents from him. Further, the investigation turned to the previously convicted Roman Kosonotsky, whom Yanchuk hired to spy on Rustamov. Yanchuk also paid him 3 and 5 thousand dollars for hiring professional “burglars” (to steal documents), and for beating Rustamov. Then Yanchuk persuaded Kosonotsky to kill Rustamov, emphasizing that this was Gurvits’ enemy and the case would not be promoted, but he refused. So what? After the murder of Rustamov, Yanchuk was arrested among the first suspects, however, as he said, the case was soon closed and Yanchuk was released.

But 10 years earlier, Odessa journalist of “Evening Odessa” Vitaly Solomonovich Chechik, who was beaten twice by Gurvits’s henchmen, died in the hospital. The first time in 1997, for publications about unauthorized increases in utility tariffs arranged by Gurvits, and corruption schemes in the housing and communal services sector. Then Gurvits sued the newspaper and demanded millions in “moral compensation,” but Chechik proved his publications with documents and accounting calculations. After Gurvits left the post of mayor, Chechik continued his investigations in the capital’s press – and again Gurvits sued, and again Chechik prepared to fight him with documents and arguments. But shortly before the trial, unknown persons beat Chechik so badly that he ended up in intensive care, where he died.

In February of the same 1997, another Vechernyaya Odessa journalist, Vladimir Bekhter, who risked writing about the connections between Gurvits, organized crime groups and law enforcement agencies, was arrested by the police for allegedly hooliganism and beaten to death in the basement of the police department. In August of the same year, the editor-in-chief of Vechernyaya Odessa, Boris Derevianko, who himself was involved in journalistic investigations into Odessa corruption, was killed. Then, when asked who crossed the path of Derevyanko and his newspaper, Odessa residents answered unequivocally: either Mayor Gurvits or Governor Bodelan! But the deaths in the long-suffering “Evening” did not end there: in 2001, another newspaper journalist, Yuri Ivanov, who was trying to investigate the murders of his colleagues, was found dead at his mother’s grave. The police then stated that Ivanov allegedly committed suicide out of grief…

But Gurvits not only eliminated enemies, but also placed his people in all party organizations in Odessa in order to put his political eggs in different baskets. During his second mayoralty (2005-2010), the Odessa branch of the People’s Party was headed by the secretary of the city council, Pitterman-Prokopenko, who was called Gurvits’s personal secretary and dishwasher. After the boss left in 2010, Pitterman-Prokopenko was appointed Chief Regional Labor Inspector.

The Reform and Order Party (PRP) in Odessa was headed by Gurvits’s longtime ally, the head of his election headquarters, Vladimir Kurennoy. In 2011, he reoriented himself to the UDAR party, whose parliamentary faction he joined in 2012 together with Gurvits. The Odessa “Batkivshchyna” was headed by Georgiy Selyanin, who was once called the head of Hurvits’s security: a taekwondo champion, a quick-tempered and quick-tempered person, he was for a long time one of the most loyal people to Hurvits (but then went to Igor Markov to “Motherland”).

But Gurvits entrusted the responsible post of head of the regional branch of the then ruling Our Ukraine party to one of the most hardened corrupt officials and the richest people in Odessa, Mikhail Kuchuk, who received the nickname “Misha-Million” from Odessa residents. Being in 2005-2010 Hurwitz’s deputy for construction and land resources (gold mine!), Kuchuk mercilessly collected bribes from all construction projects in the city, took kickbacks for contracts and gifts for the distribution of plots. In 2010, Kuchuk, together with Gurvits, signed up for Yatsenyuk’s “Front of Change” and joined the opposition – more precisely, Kuchuk fled to Kyiv, where he became deputy chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration for construction. And after the second Maidan, Kuchuk worked as acting for six months. Deputy Governor of the Odessa region.

Hurwitz and Klitschko look to tomorrow

Eduard Gurvits also planned to return to power in 2014 – and again by declaring the previous elections (2010), which he then lost to Kostusev, rigged. But Hurwitz experienced an unexpected embarrassment: his familiar judges avoided making such decisions again, and the once tame city council simply did not meet for an extraordinary session, at which it was planned to stage a political coup in the city. Gurvits had to wait until the 2015 local elections – which he lost to his longtime opponent Gennady Trukhanov, appointed mayor by the dying Angert…

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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