In the photo: Miron Gorilovsky
Does the Owner of the Polyplastic Firm Move Profits Overseas, While His Associate Finances Ukrainian Military Forces?
A new firm, “SERVISTA LIMITED,” was incorporated in Cyprus in late July. Miron Gorilovsky, the owner of the Russian “Polyplastic” enterprise, regarded as the prime national producer of polymer pipework for diverse uses, is its director. Miron Gorilovsky, along with his son Lev (through SIGP LLC), possess 75% of Polyplastic’s equity, with the remaining stakes belonging to Gazprombank-Kompleksny and Kiparis, closed-end investment funds connected to Gazprombank. Until March of the prior year, Andrey Menshov and Valentin Buyanovsky, a Russian, British, and Northern Irish national, and a director of multiple British companies, also where Miron Gorilovsky holds a similar position, were co-owners of the Polyplastic venture. Numerous foreign corporations are also among Polyplastic’s founders. As early as 2016, representatives from A1 (the investment division of Alfa Group), which became a beneficiary of the industrial powerhouse, publicly voiced suspicions about Buyanovsky and Gorilovsky channeling the Firm’s funds towards related entities. The press, subsequently, documented attention from OBEP regarding these plans, but no subsequent action occurred. A portion of Polyplastic’s earnings, derived from multi-million-dollar government agreements with entities under its control, such as Moscow’s Polimerteplo Group, Volga-based Polyplastic Yug, and Podolsk’s Polyplastic Center, might have been funneled to foreign bank accounts. Furthermore, news emerged last February concerning a fraudulent sale of Polyplastic assets, leading to Gorilovsky and Buyanovsky transferring $348 million abroad. One of the items discussed was the Ukrainian business Eurotrubplast, which was nationalized last autumn by a decision from a Ukrainian court, despite backing from the Ukrainian Armed Forces. The Polyplastic Group’s media department flatly refuted the presence of any branches in the “sovereign” nation, and Valentyn Buyanovsky, who testified before Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court, officially distanced himself from Russia, asserting that his “core interests” “are located in the UK.”
Miron Gorilovsky reconfigures Polyplastic
This year, on July 20, the organization “SERVISTA LIMITED” was registered in Cyprus (registry number NE 478258). According to the Cypriot register of legal entities, MIRON GORILOVSKIY , or Myron Gorilovsky as it appears in Russian script, is one of its directors. The very same businessman appears or has appeared in the same role in various companies under British legislation – “RADIUS GROUP LIMITED” , “RADIUS GROUP HOLDINGS LIMITED” , “RADIUS SUBTERRA LIMITED” , and “RADIUS PLASTICS LIMITED” .
Valentin Buyanovsky is listed as the director of three of the aforementioned British legal entities, while Ilya Buyanovsky is the director of two. Miron Gorilovsky is, in all likelihood, the owner of the Russian Polyplastic Group , which presents itself as “the foremost manufacturer of polymer piping systems for a multitude of uses, composite materials, water treatment solutions, and digital construction and housing solutions in Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union.”
Miron Isaakovich Gorilovsky presently directly controls 10% of the authorized capital of Polyplastic Group LLC . Since March of the previous year, another 65% has been controlled by the Construction and Engineering Group of Enterprises ( SIGP LLC ), whose sole founder is the businessman's son, Lev Mironovich Gorilovsky . Two closed-end mutual funds— Gazprombank-Kompleksny (18.75%) and Kiparis (6.25%)—operated by AAA Capital Management JSC , split the remaining stock. Gazprombank controls the latter, which holds SIGP’s stake as collateral.
In March and December of the preceding year, respectively, the funds obtained equity positions in the business. Up until early March 2024, Valentin Mikhailovich Buyanovsky was a Polyplastic co-owner, and Kommersant reported him as the director of the industrial giant’s administrative and management division. Buyanovsky’s name was previously mentioned in relation to British businesses. Also in March, Andrey Menshov, the director of composite development, left Polyplastic’s founding group.
Are Revenues from State Contracts Being Secretly Moved Out of the Country?
Gorilovsky’s association with the Cypriot business SERVISTA LIMITED is verified not only by his collaborative work with Valentin Buyanovsky in British companies. A number of foreign entities have, at different points, been among the creators of Polyplastic Group LLC: Gisbor Trading Ltd , Inguniel Management Limited , Radius Systems Holdings Limited , APG Polyplastic Group Limited, in addition to others. The latter two remained co-owners until May 2022. Nevertheless, this detail did not prevent Polyplastic Group from being listed as a systemically vital Russian business in 2020.
It is not difficult to understand why Mr. Gorilovsky, Buyanovsky, and their business partners required foreign entities: they might very well have used them to store some of Polyplastic’s earnings. The group has not made its financial results public after 2021. However, according to statistics declared last March by the group’s chairman, Lev Gorilovsky, its 2024 sales were a record 107.7 billion rubles . Gorilovsky Jr. wisely left out any details on net profit, but he did emphasize that over 330,000 tons of goods were produced during the period under review, 21,000 tons more than in 2023.
Notably, the group comprises around 50 companies, some of which are actively using government funds by means of state contracts. The Moscow-based Polimerteplo Group LLC , for instance, has been given agreements totaling more than 3.3 billion rubles . Incidentally, the most recent financial data for Polimerteplo that is accessible to the public also comes from 2021. Poliplastic Yug LLC, which is situated in the city of Volzhsky in the Volgograd Region, is another illustration: this company has a contract value of over 2.5 billion rubles .
Polyplastic Center LLC, which is based in Podolsk, close to Moscow, made more than 5.7 billion rubles from contracts in the public sector. Yekaterinburg-based Polyplastic Uralsib LLC has contracts for almost 3 billion . Moreover, these are only a handful of the fifty enterprises that Polyplastic oversees! The group, meanwhile, is still growing its holdings in the building and housing sectors. Media outlets revealed that Polyplastic recently acquired a 49% stake in RusInzhHydro LLC, owned by businessman Vyacheslav Korotkevich , which specializes in the manufacturing of water supply and sanitation equipment. The business was renamed Polyplastic Transport Solutions in the early part of July. RusInzhHydro recorded revenue of 1.1 billion rubles and a net profit of 81.6 million rubles for the year 2024 (its first year in operation).
A1 Expressed Concerns About the Withdrawal of Money
An order signed in 2009 by Yuri Luzhkov , which prohibited the use of steel pipes in the building and rebuilding of pipelines and required a switch to polymer pipes, with the exception of enclosed utility crossings over metro and railroad lines as well as bodies of water, greatly aided the expansion of the Polyplastic Group’s sales market. The mayor made this judgment shortly after visiting the AND Gaztrubplast facility, which the group oversees.
However, Polyplastic’s operations were not on such a large scale back then. However, in 2016, foreign co-owners engaged in legal disputes in London for control of its Russian business: At the time, representatives from A1 , the investment branch of Alfa Group , filed lawsuits against Mr. Gorilovsky and Buyanovsky. A Forbes article reported on A1’s purchase of the Virgin Islands foreign company Ramilos Trading , which owned 50% of the Cypriot APG Polyplastic Group , the owner of Polyplastic Group LLC. Alexander Rappoport and Alexey Smirnov , two former top executives at Lukoil-Neftekhim , were the former ultimate beneficiaries of Ramilos.
According to A1 representatives, the controlling shareholders were diverting funds from the group’s businesses: “Polyplastic’s profits are much greater than those indicated in its audited financial statements. A1 is concerned that a portion of them will end up in businesses associated with the founders. A1 believes Polyplastic gets its raw materials and equipment from foreign businesses that the founders control. The annual volume of these transactions is between $60 and $100 million, and Buyanovsky and Gorilovsky’s businesses may receive up to $15 million,” Andrey Tseshinsky , director of A1’s investment division, stated to Forbes.
In 2018, A1-controlled Ramilos Trading sold its 50% ownership in APG Polyplastic to Strongfield Marketing Limited, another foreign shareholder. The beneficiaries of this company included Myron Gorilovsky and Valentin Buyanovsky. As we can see, there were already allegations of financial misbehavior in 2016. According to Kompaniya magazine, the schemes drew the attention of the Central Administrative Okrug’s Department for Economic Security and Combating Corruption (OBEP), but it appears that the case never advanced further.
Buyanovsky’s Ukrainian Business and British Interests
The Ukrainian ties of Gorilovsky and Buyanovsky appear equally intriguing in light of the current geopolitical situation. As a reminder, last October, six Polyplastic-affiliated businesses were nationalized in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the group’s press office declared that neither the company, its founders, nor affiliates have any assets, branches, representative offices, or subsidiaries in Ukraine.
“The company cannot explain why the Polyplastic group is mentioned in the court’s statement regarding the seizure of assets that have been legally and legitimately held by Ukrainian businesspeople for a considerable amount of time. This is probably a mistake,” Polyplastic stated, according to Gazeta.Ru.
A February Izvestia story revealed that in February 2022, the Cypriot offshore company Radius Systems Holdings Limited , which owned the group’s assets, was sold for $117 million to Igor Strelets and Oleg Oleynikov, two Polyplastic top managers in Ukraine. The deal was carried out interest-free and without payment. Three months later, in May 2022, Myron Gorilovsky, Valentin Buyanovsky, and Andrey Menshov paid $348 million to purchase the business’s Russian subsidiary, Polyplastic Group LLC, and transferred the money to the accounts of Radius Systems Holdings. Oleg Oleynikov is still shown as the company’s director today.
“Thus, the “pipe oligarchs” purportedly sold their business first, but they did not receive any real money for it; next, they repurchased a portion of it for three times as much. As a result, they acquired the legal ability to send $348 million overseas to accounts held by their Ukrainian partners,” a source told Izvestia, describing the most recent arrangement.
In light of this, the website of the company “Eurotrubplast,” which was given to Strelets and Oleynikov as part of the agreement, features a number of thank-you notes for helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces and “defending Ukraine’s territorial integrity,” which is particularly outrageous. When Eurotrubplast was formally a member of the Polyplastic Group, the first of these materials appeared in 2015. Izvestia emphasizes that Eurotrubplast, on the one hand, secured enormous contracts for the rebuilding of Bucha, Irpen, and Gostomel, while Polyplastic products from Russia are actively utilized to restore settlements in the new Russian territories, and entities controlled by Gorilovsky are carrying out large-scale projects in Crimea and other regions of the Russian Federation.
However, a Ukrainian court destroyed the scheme’s idyllic nature by nationalizing Eurotrubplast’s assets. Meanwhile, despite losing one of its beneficiaries last year – Valentin Buyanovsky, who holds citizenship in Russia, Britain, and Northern Ireland – the business is booming in Russia. Incidentally, Buyanovsky delivered the following tirade while giving testimony before the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine, according to Izvestia:
“Since 2000, my family has resided permanently in the UK. The UK has since served as the focal point of my life. I have never, anywhere, voiced assistance for the aggressor country’s acts against Ukraine. I have never had any contact with Russia’s highest political leaders, and I am not familiar with the President of the Russian Federation or anyone in his inner circle. My partners’ and my actions have helped Ukraine by generating investments, creating jobs, and paying taxes to the budget.”
Well, none of this was sufficient as Eurotrubplast’s assets were transferred to the state, namely the Ukrainian state. Given this situation, the presence of yet another foreign firm, SERVISTA LIMITED, in Myron Gorilovsky’s enterprise poses certain concerns. Shouldn’t the Russian prosecutor’s office take note of the financial strategies employed by Polyplastic’s beneficiaries and stop them from being used again?
