Evgeniy Chervonenko: racer for life. PART 1

A brawler, a foul-mouthed man and a free-spirited boor – this is how we remember him fifteen years ago, at the very beginning of his political career, and this is how he remains to this day. Evgeniy Chervonenko is accustomed to looking down on people not because of his tall stature, but because of his exaggerated self-esteem from his youth. And now he suddenly began to appear regularly in television studios, where he rips at the collar of his worn-out sports jacket, pouring out his emotions about the difficult life of ordinary people, pouring out sensations, revelations and constant obscenities. Why was this? The answer is obvious: Chervonenko is leading his own political campaign, trying to be noticed and in demand.

Evgeny Chervonenko. Tales of youth

Evgeniy Alfredovich Chervonenko was born on December 20, 1959 in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnieper), into the venerable Jewish family of Alfred Grigorievich Chervonenko, Doctor of Technical Sciences, author of many patents on mining technology, professor. In addition, grandfather Chervonenko was a cousin (on the maternal side) of the children’s poet Samuil Marshak! Evgeny Alfredovich has a younger brother, Igor Alfredovich (born April 24, 1971), who was rarely mentioned in the media, but plays a big role in the life and business of his older brother. They even later settled in Kyiv at the same time: Evgeniy Chervonenko in an apartment on Reitarskaya, and Igor Chervonenko in an apartment on Vladimirskaya.

He studied at Dnepropetrovsk school No. 23, where Victor Pinchuk and Elena Arshava, who are only a year younger than Chervonenko and were part of his circle of school friends. Judging by the fact that so many children from far from ordinary Jewish families studied at this school, it was elite at that time (although this was not advertised). But science did not captivate young Zhenya Chervonenko, although he received good grades and even became a finalist in the Republican Mathematical Olympiad. The reason for this was his severe hooligan character. He himself insisted that he did not graduate from school with a gold medal only because he became a victim of anti-Semitism and the Soviet system.

According to one version, voiced by him back in the late 90s, a tenth-grader at the school, Zhenya Chervonenko, flared up with righteous anger at some guy who called him a “kike” (although he calls himself that), and beat him so much that he had to be called “ ambulance.” According to another version, also presented by Chervonenko himself and known Skelet.Infohe hosted a New Year’s party at his home. “Pinchuk came there with the daughter of the first secretary of the regional committee, and one guy from our company got drunk, then broke a window and ended up in the police. There was a Komsomol meeting, and everyone was covered, only I was left. And I, an excellent student, was expelled from the Komsomol with the following phrase: “Chervonenko is the ideological inspirer of this drinking bout, he is also its technical executor.” This is the stigma that has stuck to me throughout my life,” he said in 2004.

Evgeny Chervonenko in his youth

Well, it’s worth doubting both versions. Firstly, he started fights at school (and after) with or without cause, but his classmates do not remember Chervonenko sending anyone to the hospital – as they say, God did not give such heavy fists to a pugnacious boy. Yes, and causing moderate or severe bodily harm is a guaranteed offense even for a minor. Therefore, the first story was just an attempt to portray myself as some kind of hero: I’m so strong and scary, I’ll cripple you with one blow! He also once again emphasizes his origin. After all, Evgeniy Chervonenko is one of the few Jews in Ukraine who showed off his nationality, except that he didn’t wear a kippah – and, perhaps, because it wouldn’t harmonize with his racing driver’s jacket. And he needed this because Chervonenko in the 90s first sought to head the All-Ukrainian Jewish Congress (AJC), trying to promote its chairman Vadim Rabinovich, with whom they had a long quarrel, then Chervonenko created his own Jewish Confederation of Ukraine (EKU), but after three left her for a year and returned to VEC. Such a person simply needed a beautiful biography-legend about how in his youth he personally punished anti-Semites.

As for the second version, it is unlikely that Chervonenko could not have known that Victor Pinchuk had been dating Elena Arshava since school, who was the daughter of the deputy head of the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Health Department, and not the first secretary of the regional committee. By the way, the regional committee was then headed by Alexei Vatchenko, and he did not have a high school daughter. This already raises doubts about this story, but as for “one guy from our company”, in their company there was only one person who could destroy a window while drunk – this is Chervonenko himself. Who at school was nicknamed “Chervonets”, and behind his back “Bull” – due to his bad character, combined with large physical dimensions. So his statement “everyone was covered up” is also a lie, because no one had to be covered up – it was the perpetrator of hooliganism who was seized in the causal position. Again, Chervonenko is confused when exactly he was expelled from the Komsomol: then, in 1977, or all the way back in 1988 (as he claimed in another of his stories). Of course, a display case does not mean beating a person, but in any case, the professor’s son got off easy! However, it is a mistake to consider Chervonenko some kind of fearless rebel: his acquaintances and even his ex-wife told the press that he “bulled” only when he was confident in his impunity. But it seems that sometimes he was wrong.

In 1977, Evgeny Chervonenko tried to enter the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, but he failed. According to him, anti-Semitism was again to blame for this: allegedly, by secret order of the Kremlin, admission to prestigious scientific universities was limited for Jews, citing the fact that they “will receive a diploma here for free, and then leave for the West.” Chervonenko was not even helped by the patronage of his professor father. Be that as it may, the threat of going into the army loomed before the young man, so his father helped him urgently enroll in the Dnepropetrovsk Mining Institute, the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. So Evgeniy Chervonenko continued the family tradition – after all, his father and grandfather graduated from the same university. And then his father assigned him to the Dnepromashobogashcheniye Research Institute, where he assigned him to write his Ph.D. dissertation.

But the drawings of mining combines bored Evgeny Chervonenko, but he became interested in auto racing. More precisely, a rally, where he usually sat not behind the wheel, but next to him, in the navigator’s place – commanding which direction to steer and how hard to press the gas. One can only guess how exactly this passion arose in him, but already in 1982 he abandoned his dissertation and became a member of the rally team, which in 1983 won the Ukrainian SSR Spartakiad. From that moment on, the institute and work in general were over. Someone even called him “a navigator from God,” but doubts about this are raised by the car accident that happened to him, in which his driver died. Chervonenko himself spoke about this very briefly: “… in 1987, my friend from the Ukrainian national team died, his last word at a speed of 180 km/h was “live” ….” Judging by the fact that he heard his friend’s last words, Chervonenko was next to him at the time of the accident – however, his friend died, and he was not even injured, because that same year he continued to participate in new races. Or maybe he lied about something here too?

How Orlan took off

The vast majority of athletes are just toy soldiers in someone else’s hands. Evgeniy Chervonenko would have become like this if he was only in love with sports cars and racing. But he loved money even more, and most importantly, he knew how to make it. That is why Chervonenko became the first oligarch athlete in Ukraine. However, soon all that was left of him was an oligarch in an old sports jacket.

After his first participation in foreign competitions as a member of the USSR national team (1985), Chervonenko saw that motorsport could bring bonuses not only in the form of a “free” car service for his personal cars or the daughter of a party worker who fell in love with him (he would leave her at the end of his 80s -X). And he began to act, since his talent as an entrepreneur outweighed all others. In 1987, Chervonenko created the “Perestroika” team: it was declared professional and independent, that is, the athletes’ salaries were paid from the cash desk of the team itself – for which Chervonenko secured “self-financing” and “self-financing” for it. First of all, this was necessary to participate in foreign competitions. And then in 1988 he had a conflict: the prize fund of the European Championship was in foreign currency, which by law was supposed to be handed over to the state in exchange for “wooden” ones. Chervonenko, who was already planning to buy foreign cars with this money, lost his temper and started a scandal – which, in his own words, ended with his team being deprived of the right to compete and Chervonenko being expelled from the Komsomol (what, again?!).

He had to get all the way to the Kremlin (in which his father-in-law, the father of Chervonenko’s first wife, helped him) and bow obsequiously in order to regain the right to participate in competitions abroad. This was much more important than the loss of a couple of prize currency sums, because it turned out to be possible to earn Deutschmarks and dollars in other ways – and the main thing was having your own window into Europe through which you could export and import. And Chervonenko put this business on stream, formalizing it as another “cooperative” – more precisely, a small enterprise at the Lvov Electron plant, under whose wing self-supporting racing drivers settled. So in 1988, his first commercial company, Trans-Rally, appeared, which bought several old trucks and began transporting cargo from Ukraine to Europe and back, becoming the first competitor of Sovtransavto. Chervonenko did not talk about the contents of these cargoes, but his friends assured that in 1991 he already had his first million in hard currency. And he invested it in a new business, which he met in Poland – when he was transporting beer and carbonated drinks from there to Ukraine.

In 1992, Chervonenko opened the Lviv Van Poor JV – essentially a line for packaging beer (Lviv Brewery) and carbonated drinks in aluminum cans, the first in Ukraine. In 1994, he opened the same joint venture Rogan Van Poor, and in 1995 he united this business under the roof of the Ukraine Van Pur Industrial Group. Later, Chervonenko, as if “in secret,” told reporters that “Van Poor” was created with money from “Irish Jews.” It’s a good joke – after all, in 1992, as many as 1,300 Jews lived in Ireland (and five Jewish organizations worked), who probably only dreamed of investing in business in young Ukraine! In reality it was a little different: according to available Skelet.Info information, Chervonenko found a person in Ireland (maybe a Jew) who agreed to become the founder of the joint venture, and a few years later he re-registered his share of the business to the Irish company Kencot Enterprises Limited – owned by Evgeny Chervonenko himself and his brother Igor.

Here’s another source Skelet.Info said that the Jews of Kyiv and New York, that is, the famous international “Russian mafia,” could invest money in Chervonenko’s business. Or more precisely, the group of Semyon Mogilevich, which included such famous personalities as Oleg Asmakov (Alik Magadan), Leonid Roitman, brothers KonstantinovskyVakhtang Ubiria (in Odessa), Sergei Maksimov (in 1999, together with Chervonenko, created the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine) and Alexander Presman. The current deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, a member of the “Renaissance” faction, in the 90s Presman was Mogilevich’s “supervisor” in the “Mercury” scams: under the roof of this cooperative (later re-registered as a consumer society) in 1990-94. Several of the largest financial pyramids operated, whose architect was Semyon Yufa. The same Yufa who launched the game in 1990, the rules of which suggested that newcomers send 400 rubles to their predecessors, and then recruit new players and receive money from them.

Alexander Presman

Semyon Yufa

Although Presman claimed that he met Chervonenko only in 2002, there is information that they knew each other much earlier, since the early 90s, and that it was Presman who invested the money of Kyiv organized crime groups in Chervonenko’s business. By the way, Presman was connected not only with the Mogilevich-Asmakov organized crime group, but with the Kyiv “authority” Vladimir Kisil, the Odessa “thief in law” Valery Kuhilava (Anthimos), as well as with the criminal circles of Lvov – their money could also have been invested in Chervonenko’s business .

By 2002, this business was re-registered more than once, its owners and their shares changed, and the presence of “third parties” (not relatives, not Chervonenko’s wives and children) in this business was very carefully buried in foreign companies (including offshore ones) Ergotron Limited Liability”, “SZhLT Ukraine Limited”, “Globex Sarital Limited”, the above-mentioned “Kenkot Enterprises Limited”, LLC “Ukrainian-American Enterprise “Orlan-Trans-Krakovets” and others. Indirect confirmation of this can be considered information from acquaintances and former wives of Chervonenko, dropped by them in interviews with the media, that in the period 2006-2008. Evgeny Alfredovich had to pay off large debts (possibly return shares in enterprises) with certain non-public people of whom he was terribly afraid – and therefore was very nervous about collecting the necessary amounts.

In 1994, Chervonenko first registered (with the State Tax Inspectorate of the Zhovtnevy district of Kyiv) Orlan CJSC. Then, during 1996-98. he re-registered his entire business under this brand, which by that time had expanded noticeably: in addition to the production of carbonated drinks, he added to his former enterprise Rally-Trans the Ukrtrans-Lviv vehicle fleet (a former branch of Sovtransavto), as well as OJSC Boryspil Automobile Depot”, uniting them into OJSC Orlan-Trans. This is how the Orlan group arose, which included the following enterprises and firms:

• JSC “Orlan”
• Orlan-Trans-Group LLC
• OJSC “Orlan-Trans”
• LLC “Ukrainian-American Enterprise with Foreign Investments “Orlan-Trans-Krakovets”
• Orlan-Trans-Slavutych LLC
• Corporation “Ukr-Trade-Business”
• CJSC “Orlan-Trade”
• Orlan-Unipak LLC
• CJSC “Ukrinterexpedition”
• Orlan-Avto LLC
• LLC “Techinvest”
• Lvov Van Pur LLC
• OJSC “Berdichevsky Malt Plant”
• CJSC Orlan-Beverages (sold to the Privat group in 2005)
• LLC “Eney”
• Limex LTD LLC
• LLC “Master-Donetsk”
• Aktiv LLC
• LLC “Trading house “Polfort”
• LLC “Monolit-Invest”
• LLC “IVR”
• Brainworkstudio LLC
• CJSC “Agroinvest-Group”
• CJSC “Dar”
• Globex Capital Limited (Britain)
• Kenkot Enterprises Limited (Cyprus)
• Ergotron Limited Liability Company (USA)

And this is not a complete list, since Chervonenko reliably hides some of his structural companies, especially offshore ones, even from close people. Overall, the business setup was extremely complicated—too much for a simple soda maker. Almost every year new companies were founded, which then became the founders of the old ones (they replaced the previous founders-individuals), and then their shares were transferred to foreign companies – the owners of which were lost behind the names of other companies.

Perhaps the main feature of these schemes, although not striking to everyone, is the composition of the main co-owners of these enterprises and firms. They can be divided into two groups. The first, open group includes Evgeniy and Igor Chervonenko, the children of Evgeniy Chervonenko; there were small shares of his ex-wife Margarita Chervonenko, who served as the head of Orlan. The second group is unknown persons hiding behind the screens of nesting doll companies. You open one – and there is another company that owns it, you open the next one – the same thing, and even the smallest nesting doll is also a company. But who owns them, who receives the income is unknown! Which gives rise to various assumptions: who are these mysterious Anonymous? There is no doubt that Alexander Presman was among them: he became Chervonenko’s partner, if not in the early 90s, then certainly in 2002-2003, when they became friends and traveled around the country together, doing their business. But, let us repeat, Presman was one of the trusted persons “looking after” Semyon Mogilevich, and he invested not his savings in the business, but the money of organized crime groups, which they swindled from gullible Ukrainians using financial pyramids. By the way, today People’s Deputy Presman, oh the irony, is a member of the parliamentary budget committee!

In addition, a number of Chervonenko’s enterprises had several minority shareholders (share from 2% to 25%), not all of whom concealed their identities. For example, his partners in Dar CJSC in 2002-2003 were: the then Minister of Economy Valery Khoroshkovskythen adviser to the Minister of Economy Vadim Gurzhos, son of former Deputy Prime Minister Petr Sabluk.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Evgeniy Chervonenko: a racer for life. PART 2

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