Elena Shulyak: from the auditor of the “Steel Jews” to the chairman of the “Servant of the People”. PART 1

If Ukrainians knew who they voted for in the summer of 2019, their choice would probably have been completely different! Unfortunately, the true faces of many “servants of the people” were then hidden under the masks of honest professionals, experienced reformers and principled social activists. They were dropped only after the new “corruption guard” took their places in the session hall of the Rada…

Take, for example, the current chairman of the ruling Servant of the People party, Elena Shulyak. What do we know about her? Almost nothing except an official biography, a small interview and a couple of scandals that have already been quelled. But believe me, she is a much more interesting person who deserves the attention of not only the public, but also law enforcement agencies!

Elena Shulyak. Relatives, husband, scandals

Shulyak Elena Alekseevna was born on January 24, 1976 in Kyiv, and then bore the surname Oksenyuk (sometimes it is incorrectly written as Osenyuk). She has a sister Tatyana, about whom she recently it became knownthat she works as the financial director of Aurum Trans LLC and Nasosholding, and is also a member of the supervisory boards of Nasosmash and Svesky Pump Plant, owned by the family of ex-Minister of Defense Pavel Lebedev (wanted since 2016). Although this fact greatly angered Ukrainian patriots, it was ignored in Servant of the People (like other scandals surrounding Shulyak).

Elena’s father is from the Volyn region, and her mother is from Cherkasy. In the 70s, the parents received an apartment in the Minsk (now Obolonsky) district of the capital, where Elena grew up and graduated from high school No. 231.

In 1992, she entered the Faculty of Economics and Management of the Kyiv Automobile and Highway Institute (KADI, now the National Transport University). Elena Shulyak graduated from it in 1997, and then there is a small gap of two years in her biography. More precisely, it says that she “started her entrepreneurial activity after graduating from university,” however, there are serious doubts about the reliability of this information, since Shulyak registered her first enterprise, LLC Auditing Firm “Standard” (USREOU 30531131), only in August 1999. What kind of business? What did she do before – sell from a stall? Most likely, none, since at that time she was organizing her personal life by marrying a graduate of the Faculty of Law, Alexander Alexandrovich Shulyak.

What is known about the husband of the “servant of the people”? Since January 1998, Alexander Shulyak has been working as a lawyer. In 2012, he co-founded a law firm in the field of purchase and sale of real estate, Enghiay Group. The salary of the manager and specialist in it alone brought him up to 20 thousand dollars a year, but in 2020 he sold his share in it to a certain Victoria Leonidovna Rogach for 1 million hryvnia. In 2013, Alexander Shulyak received 5% of the VSP Group law firm, and in 2016 he became the founder and director of the company Business Travel Solutions, which also provides legal services in the field of real estate.

In 2021, Elena Shulyak filed an impressive family declaration (with the outbreak of the war, the declaration was canceled). According to it, the couple owned four apartments in Kyiv, had 465 thousand dollars and 30 thousand euros in cash, borrowed and invested more than 2.5 million hryvnia. Quite rich, by Ukrainian standards! And yet this does not explain where Alexander Shulyak got $1.3 million in cash in March 2022, not counting a collection of icons, three fur coats and several Swiss watches with which he fled from Ukraine – either fleeing Russian aggression, or from mobilization. He was accompanied by a certain Alexander Zaremba, who was called the brother of Elena Shulyak (relative or cousin, unknown). Almost nothing is known about this man, unlike his wife Olga Zarembe, who is a close friend and business partner of Elena Shulyak (more on this later). So, Shulyak and Zaremba, who fled the country, avoided declaration of material assets and inspection – perhaps, having previously agreed on this with the leadership of the Border Service. It is interesting that this information was published by Seyar Kurshutov, well known to readers Skelet.Info as a defendant in a number of corruption scandals. He has extensive contacts with customs and the Border Guard Service, so he is well informed about who, what and how is transporting across the Ukrainian border. Perhaps, by leaking this information, Kurshutov took revenge on the “Ermak group”, for which Elena Shulyak works, for his removal from smuggling schemes.

Best years with Midland Group

How could a simple auditor become such a rich man, get number 13 on the Servant of the People list and then lead the ruling party (albeit formally)? The secret of Elena Shulyak’s success can be easily learned from her official biography – to do this, you just need to further clarify some details that Skelet.Info will reveal it to you now.

It all started with the fact that the aforementioned auditing firm “Standard”, opened by Elena Shulyak in August 1999, literally immediately found a permanent and very “fat” client – the Ukrainian representative office of the financial and industrial group “Midland Group” (registered in the British offshore Guernsey). It was created in 1994 by the former shop manager of the Dneprospetsstal plant, Eduard Shifrin, and the son of repatriates from Leningrad who settled in Toronto, Alexander Schneider.

The secret of Shifrin’s own success may have its roots in Dnipropetrovsk school No. 23, where he studied in the same class with Evgeniy Chervonenko and was friends with Victor Pinchuk and Elena Arshava. As you know, the parents of these future billionaires and oligarchs were difficult people who occupied leadership positions in Soviet times (Shifrin’s father was a professor of metallurgy). They were also united by their ethnic origin (the Jewish community of Dnepropetrovsk is the richest and most influential in Ukraine).

Perhaps this also helped Shifrin find a companion in Canada. In 1993, Shifrin and Schneider engaged in barter schemes for Russian coal and Ukrainian metal, with the help of which they became entangled in debt and took over the Zaporizhstal metallurgical plant, from which their multibillion-dollar business began, and they themselves received the nickname “steel Jews.” And here’s what’s interesting: just in 1999, the partners began preparations for the privatization of the last 25% of this plant, which they then acquired in 2001 for only 13 million dollars! And so, in preparation for this openly corrupt scam, they hired the auditing firm “Standard”, which had just been opened by 23-year-old Elena Shulyak, who had just received an auditor’s license. Coincidence, Elena Shulyak was just lucky? This is hard to believe! But the miracles continued, and just a few months later, Shifrin and Schneider included Standard in the Midland Group, making Shulyak their personal auditor. And here one can only guess how and with what Elena Shulyak (apparently Ukrainian by origin) was able to please the pragmatic “Steel Jews” so much!

Thus, it was in the Midland Group that Shulyak received her experience of great serious work, rose as a businessman, earned her first big money and made numerous useful connections. From 2000 to 2006, she headed the department of audit and analysis of financial and economic activities at Midland Group – a very responsible assignment, given that in those years the enterprises of the oligarchs maneuvered between the law and outright crime.

The “face of audit” of such a large company needed to improve its level, so in 2003-2005. Shulyak completed distance learning at the International Institute of Management, receiving a Master of Business Administration (MBA) diploma. The Midland Group also paid for her to take a short course of lectures at the Carnegie Mellon Tepper business school, which Shulyak later added to her portfolio as an “internship abroad.”

Having become a confidant of Shifrin and Schneider, Elena Shulyak received new important assignments from them. So, in 2005, they delegated her to the supervisory board of Express-Bank CJSC, which was controlled by Igor Dvoretsky, a shareholder and member of the board of Zaporizhstal. And in 2007, when Midland Group began investing its “steel dollars” in real estate, it was Elena Shulyak who headed the Midland Development department. Moreover, interestingly, at first it was the Kiev branch of the Russian division of the company (and the real estate was registered in the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism)), and only a year later, Midland Development Ukraine was created on its basis, of which Elena Shulyak was appointed director. So the auditor became a developer, and Elena Shulyak began to acquire new useful connections in the Kyiv City State Administration and the capital’s “construction mafia.”

In 2008, Midland Development Ukraine managed to complete a number of large projects – for example, the capital’s office center on Turovskaya. But then a global crisis occurred, the consequence of which was the division of the business empire of the “Steel Jews”. In 2009, Shifrin, who received the Eurasian part of the Midland Group, decided to leave Ukraine altogether, and the process of gradual sale of his assets stretched from 2010 to 2014. At the same time, financing for construction projects in Ukraine was transferred from Ukrainian banks to Russian branches, and then it dried up. Thus, the commissioning of the Sigma business center was first postponed to 2012 (and the money went through VTB Bank), then to the beginning of 2014, but was actually completed only in 2015.

Elena Shulyak had to look for other sources of financing for already started projects. She approached other developers, inviting them to take part in the project, tried to sell the plots, and looked for loans. Her life was no longer as measured and calm as before, and she had to give up her third higher education (KNU, Faculty of Psychology). On the other hand, the need to save the remains of Midland Development Ukraine gave impetus to her independence and activity, which was noted in 2010: the Delo newspaper included her in its Top 100 Ukrainian “business ladies”. At the same time, Shulyak became one of the laureates of the National Real Estate Award.

Elena Shulyak, Zaremba, Stolar and offshores

At one time, many “servants of the people” were associated with Russian business, and some even with Russian officials. But after coming to power and politically “changing their shoes” into patriots of Ukraine, they had to refute this. So Elena Shulyak in 2020 tried to disown her past, declaring journalists the following:

“Until 2014, Midland Development was part of a financial and industrial group that operated in Ukraine, Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), Canada, the USA and European countries. But when the Revolution of Dignity took place in Ukraine, the company’s shareholders decided not to work in our country.”

She may have been believed then, but we now know that this statement was a lie from start to finish! After all, “Midland Group” split and began to withdraw from Ukraine long before Euromaidan, leaving “Midland Development Ukraine” and Elena Shulyak for independent financing. So her appeal to the “revolution of Dignity” in this case is simply political antics. But why? And then, then, in September 20202, Elena Shulyak was elected a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Verkhovna Rada on issues of investigating corruption in the bodies of state architectural and construction control and supervision. Journalists immediately remembered who she was in the past and with whom she did business – so Shulyak had to hide behind the “Maidan ideals,” which she hardly shared.

In 2014, Shulyak had other concerns: finishing her projects against the backdrop of a new, already internal Ukrainian crisis, when the country’s economy was going downhill. Judging by the fact that Midland Development Ukraine retrained from construction itself to providing auditing and consulting services in the construction business, Shulyak did not find money for new projects. This cast doubt on her previous credentials as a construction businesswoman.

However, Shulyak was far from poor! Her partner in the Standard company was Ekaterina Redko, another Kiev businesswoman, who is also the director of Parus Holding LLC (44064310), owned by the scandalous developer Vadim Stolar (in the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation he was a deputy of the OPZZH faction). This eloquently testifies to the connections between Shulyak and Stolar, no matter how our “servant of the people” denies it!

Shulyak’s partner in Midland Development Ukraine is the same Olga Zarembawhich we mentioned above. Based on the information released by Kurshutov, Zaremba may be for Shulyak the wife of her brother (brother, cousin?). But in any case, they have been friends for a very long time: back in 2005, Olga Zaremba was invited to work in the budget department of the Midland Group, and in 2007 she became the financial director of Midland Development Ukraine, in which she then received a 50% share . And in 2020, the authorized capital of this company miraculously increased in one day from 100 thousand hryvnia (50 for Shulyak and Zaremba) to 3.6 million (1.8 million for each). Good money for auditors and consultants! Let us also add that since 2014, Zaremba has been the executive director of MA.Group (owned by Andrey Malafeev) and the head of the supervisory board of the Institute of Urban Civil Design. Shulyak herself is personally connected with this Malofeev: in 2014, she became the head of the supervisory board of Ukrainian Building Community LLC, the founder of which is Andrey Malofeev. However, this organization has not shown itself in any way and is possibly fictitious.

And now about the offshore scandals of Elena Shulyak. During the reorganization of Midland Development Ukraine, Shulyak and Zaremba registered it with the Virginia offshore company Infrair Assets LTD (reg. No. 1791268). Another company registered under this offshore company is Creator LLC (USREOU 34980661). The history of this acquisition attracts attention: in the summer of 2017, the authorized capital of this company increased from 0 to 99 million hryvnia, of which 75.24 million was the share of Olga Zaremba. And then Zaremba transferred half of her share (37.62 million hryvnia) to Shulyak, making her friend a co-owner. Passed it on, just like that? It looks like they really are related!

CONTINUATION: Shulyak Elena: from the auditor of the “Steel Jews” to the deputy chairman of the “Servant of the People”. PART 2

Mikhail Shpolyansky, Skelet.Info

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