Evgeny Geller. Survival secrets of ex-“cashier” Yanukovych. Part 1

The name of Yevgeny Geller has been familiar to everyone since the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych – he is an influential associate and friend of Rinat Akhmetov. He executed and pardoned in hryvnias, heading the budget committee. However, Geller also controlled another cash desk – the party one. He is called the “cashier” of the Party of Regions.

After Maidan, Evgeny Geller is one of the few who managed to remain in big politics. He stopped serving Yanukovych and Akhmetov and became Igor Kolomoisky’s man. And also a patriot and democrat.

The head of the PR “black fund” in the new “European” country will talk about how he stayed afloat Skelet.Info.

Evgeny Geller. Candidate “with the letter G”

At the end of March, during a meeting of the Verkhovna Rada, journalists captured an interesting correspondence between people’s deputy from the Opposition Bloc Yuriy Voropaev (formerly Akhmetov’s lawyer) with a member of the Vozrozhdenie deputy group Yevgeny Geller. “Servants of the People” corresponded that Rinat Akhmetov’s energy holding DTEK showed an unprecedented increase in profits.

• – “Hooray!!! Now we’ll live!!!)))” – Geller writes to Voropaev.
• “Tell me how we get along,” Voropaev answers.
• – “Fine!!! Let’s live!!! And this is indisputable,” Geller rejoices (and there is a reason).
• “And today the bonds of Detek have grown even more. You are getting rich faster than Pyotr Alekseevich. This is indecent,” notes Voropaev.

Correspondence between Voropaev and Geller

Evgeniy Borisovich Geller decided to “live in a new way” in 2014. He threw off the blue and white flag, disowned the fact that he held Viktor Yanukovych’s presidential “treasury” and managed the money of the PR fund, “forgot” about his connections with Rinat Akhmetov and that he was considered his personal lawyer. After this obligatory ritual of exorcism, the Donetsk businessman was taken under the wing of the newly minted patriot Igor Kolomoisky.

In the early elections after the Euromaidan, Yevgeny Borisovich was ensured immunity by Igor Kolomoisky’s group. Geller ran in district No. 50 as an independent candidate in his native Donbass in Krasnoarmeysk. He was led to victory by the Dnepr-1 battalion, formed by the Privatists. They did it as usual: they began to put pressure on Geller’s opponent, Leonid Baysarov, director and co-owner of the Pokrovskoye mine management. By the way, for a long time he oversaw the Krasnoarmeyskaya-Zapadnaya mine, which belongs to the owner of the Donetskstal company. Victor Nusenkis. So, Baysarov is the head of the city-forming mine, the largest employer and long-term philanthropist, whom every person in the town knew. It is logical that he had more chances in the elections than Geller. However, Kolomoisky and his army decided differently. Men in black, calling themselves representatives of the territorial self-defense of the Dnepropetrovsk region, surrounded the Pokrovskoye enterprise and threatened to destroy it. Moreover, a few weeks before these events, Baysarov was invited to the carpet at the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration to see Deputy Governor Gennady Korban. The official had to convince the miner to withdraw his candidacy, but the head of the mine refused. Then they brought in heavy artillery in the face David Zhvaniawho is considered Petro Poroshenko’s authority to drain majority constituencies. Zhvania gave the word to “cover up” the candidate “with the letter G”.

After this, Baisarov’s deputy reception office in Krasnoarmeysk was destroyed. Miraculously, Geller began to lead the district.

He mentioned that Geller betrayed PR and stopped serving Yanukovych and Akhmetov Boris Kolesnikovone of the leaders of the blue and white and ally of Rinat Leonidovich. He explained the situation somewhere like this: “Zhenya just sort of left the party, his act was unworthy, but God will be his judge.”

Needless to say, Evgeny Geller won the race with 39.54% of the votes. The gap between him and Baysarov was 4,666 votes. It should be noted that the Central Election Commission decided to recount votes in the district due to facts of falsification. The same was demanded by the residents of Krasnoarmeysk, who came out to rallies. But all without results.

The most interesting thing is that after the elections Geller disappeared, or rather, he was in Kyiv as before. He never came to the district where he won. Activists even wrote telegrams to the Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Vladimir Groysman asking him to find him.

Then Geller was not at a loss and sent “hello” to the residents of Krasnoarmeysk in the form of congratulations on March 8th.

Of course, after the fall of Viktor Yanukovych’s regime, a lot of cases of such “transfer” appeared. Only the story with Geller is worthy of special attention. His activities are so shocking – criminal warfare, raiding, fraud, but the new government does not see this at all. The fact is that such a person is beneficial to any team, because he knows everything – the names and accounts of offshore companies, the account numbers of “black” accounting, the routes of cash flows.

Evgeny Geller. We are from simple people, from Donetsk

Evgeny Borisovich Geller was born on May 12, 1974 in Donetsk. After graduating from school, he entered the Donetsk State Technical University with a degree in economics and management in mechanical engineering. In 1996, Geller received his diploma.

A year before graduating from university, Evgeniy Borisovich came to work at the Victoria private enterprise. The director of the small company was Vasily Dzharty, known in criminal circles as “Vasya-bita”, and in the future – Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. Chepeshka specialized in non-ferrous metallurgy and mechanical engineering. Its “legal” activities were provided by the late Alik Grek, one of the most authoritative “heads of enterprises” in the Donetsk region in the mid-90s. By the way, not only Dzharty, but also Rinat Akhmetov himself came out from under the wing of the Greek. 21-year-old Geller took the position of deputy director at the company. Why did such a position go to a student? According to information Skelet.InfoGeller met Dzharty at Donetsk University. There Vasya-bita received a second education at the Faculty of Public Administration in order to “brighten up” his engineering past. The young people became friends. Dzharty saw potential in the simple guy Zhenya.

After working for only a year, Evgeniy Borisovich quits his position as deputy and moves to the position of head of the management department of CJSC Ukrmetalloprodukt. He stays here again for a year.

The Ukrsplav case

In 1997, Geller (then 23 years old) founded TPK Ukrsplav, and also became its main shareholder. The corporation, in which Evgeniy Borisovich secured the position of commercial director, began processing scrap and non-ferrous metal waste. It’s unlikely that anyone could seriously think that the young guy had the money to create a structure of such a scale. Ukrsplav was fully financed by Rinat Akhmetov and the SCM group. Only this remained a “big secret”. In 1998, the corporation began to expand and organized a full cycle of metallurgical processing of non-ferrous metals. This allowed it to become a virtual monopolist on the Ukrainian market and take over the entire industry. Moreover, Ukrsplav began exporting alloys based on non-ferrous metals.

Let’s get ahead of ourselves. In 2002, when Evgeniy Geller went into big politics, Spartak Kokotyukha, a major Donetsk businessman and a completely non-public person, began to manage his business. However, Evgeny Borisovich did not retire from business, he constantly kept his finger on the pulse. Spartak Kokotyukha and his brother Grigory, a former SSB officer, were needed by the corporation in order to increase capacity. The Gradient company was added to the board of Ukrsplav, where 54.88% of the shares are concentrated in the hands of the Kokotyukh brothers.

So, at the beginning of the 2000s, the corporation’s annual turnover exceeded 100 million hryvnia. Having earned some money, the corporation’s management decided to expand. Of course, under the extension Skelet.Info implies a raider takeover of industrial enterprises. Or to be more precise, an elegant process leading to bankruptcy, and then buying it up. So, Ukrsplav included:

• Zinc JSC. In 2003, zinc capacities (hydraulic workshop and roasting production of zinc oxide and zinc sulfate) were removed from the practically bankrupt Ukrtsink. 49% of the shares of Zinc remained in the ownership of Ukrtsink, and control over the created CJSC was given to the Kharkov company Angram-Ukraine. According to the plan, Zinc CJSC was to reach the global level. However, this did not happen, and Angram-Ukraine quietly sold the CJSC to companies controlled by the Donetsk CJSC Ukrsplav;
• OJSC DonMash “Astra” The company is owned by the Kokotyukhi brothers;
• reinforcement shop of the Donetsk large-panel house-building plant. The company was declared bankrupt and Evgeniy Borisovich invested the required amount of money into its part. Naturally, the plant did not restore its activities, but was repurposed for the production of non-ferrous alloys;
• OJSC “Konstantinovsky Plant of Reinforced Concrete Structures”. Geller and his colleagues crushed the enterprise in 2008. Unexpectedly for everyone, local entrepreneurs and the former head of the board of the OJSC Ivan Zozulya “just like that” gave more than 70% of the shares (48% to the brothers Grigory and Spartak Kokotyukh, and 25% to Evgeny Geller).

In November 2004, the SBU opened a criminal case against Ukrsplav CJSC for smuggling, or more precisely, fictitious export. It was like this. Geller’s brainchild sent abroad non-ferrous metal processing waste under the name “TS-150 Pantograph for Mine Electric Locomotives” (a pantograph is a device through which current is supplied to a vehicle, similar to the “horns” on a tram). So, in October 2004, at the customs office in the Mariupol port, a batch of these same “pantographs” was processed for export. The cost of goods according to invoices is 406.4 million hryvnia. In fact, there was aluminum waste in boxes with colorful stickers. The scam was started to reimburse export VAT from the budget. Let us note that at that time there was a scheme in the country: for goods that were sent abroad, the supplier was reimbursed for VAT. Therefore, all entrepreneurs inflated the price of their products through a chain of shell companies, and then sold them again to their own companies. It turned out that the fraudster had a million-dollar income from a penny product. Geller worked according to the same scheme.

So, when the Ukrsplavovsk “current collectors” were in the port, SBU officers tried in every possible way to delay the departure of the vessel “Wotan” under the flag of Antigua. But this was not successful. Then the security forces prepared a resolution on the seizure of goods, which was to be signed by the Prosecutor General Victor Pshonka. And he did put his signature, but a few hours later he recalled the document and carefully sketched out his autograph. On the same day, by order of the commander of the Mariupol border detachment, the ship “Wotan” safely departed for its destination. Despite the criminal case being opened, Ukrsplav CJSC received a VAT tax credit, including UAH 134.4 million in cash. Let us note that the prosecutor’s office charged Kokotyukha with smuggling, but no one touched Geller. By the way, when Pshonka was interrogated in this case in 2005, he stated that he did not put his signature on the document, but sketched the place so that no one would sign instead of him. The matter was hushed up and forgotten about.

In 2005, Ukrsplav was included in the “Rating of large enterprises that most actively used schemes to minimize the tax burden in the third quarter of 2005,” prepared for publication by the State Tax Administration. Also during this period, the company was the general sponsor of the Donetsk futsal club Shakhtar, which was originally called Ukrsplav.

After 2 years, the owners of the closed joint-stock company withdrew all main assets from it (capacities capable of annually smelting 32 thousand tons of aluminum, as well as 10 thousand tons of copper and brass). The court also cleared Startak Kokotyukhi of all suspicions.

In 2010, the Economic Court of the Donetsk region declared Ukrsplav CJSC bankrupt. This came as a surprise to many, but Donetsk businessmen acted purposefully. One can talk about a crisis and unprofitable production due to the collapsed demand for non-ferrous metal, but one thing is clear – at that time the non-ferrous metal processor had become obsolete. In addition, Evgeny Geller and Spartak Kokotyukh had multimillion-dollar debts of their brainchild that had to be repaid. To do this, they pulled off a scam within the framework of “legislation.”

The case of JSC Ukrsplav started in the Donetsk court with the filing of the private enterprise Heron. Chapashka accused the production of a debt of more than 200 thousand hryvnia for unpaid products. No one was surprised that “Heron” belonged to Geller and Kokotyukha. The court made a positive decision and all the property of Ukrsplav CJSC was transferred to Ukrsplav Trade and Industrial Corporation LLC. Needless to say, the owners of the “oooshka” were Geller and Kokotyukha. Thus, the CJSC became a “dummy”. The absurdity of this case was that Ukrsplav had accounts payable in the amount of 326 million hryvnia – Beta-Factor LLC and Eurasia LLC, owned by Mariupol businessman Dmitry Lizunov, invested 270 million and 49 million hryvnia in the enterprise, respectively. However, the court was not interested in this. Naturally, after the company was declared bankrupt, no one returned the loan money to Lizunov.

Then the liquidation of JSC Ukrsplav began. The court appointed another creditor of the enterprise, Victoria LLC, as liquidator. This company represented itself as the holder of a bill of exchange from Ukrsplav for 9.83 million hryvnia. But there is an interesting detail – in the mid-2000s, the company was a co-owner of Victoria LLC, and in 2008 it was transferred to a private individual. And the most interesting thing is that a year later the same Economic Court of the Donetsk Region declared Victoria LLC bankrupt.

Today the saga with Ukrsplav has not ended. The company continues to operate as a commercial and industrial corporation.

Moreover, after the Maidan it cooperates with the DPR and finances them, but more on that later.

Arina Dmitrieva, for Skelet.Info

TO BE CONTINUED…

CONTINUED: Evgeny Geller. Survival secrets of ex-“cashier” Yanukovych. Part 2

Subscribe to our channels at Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And YandexZen – Only dossiers, biographies and incriminating evidence on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!