Grigory Tripulsky: lawyer for raiders and “one-armed bandits.” PART 1

Corruption and criminal clans of Odessa have been squabbling among themselves for power in the city and region for more than a quarter of a century. Now Grigory Tripulsky has surfaced. Every local election turns into a war, and the appointment of a new governor becomes an intrigue on an all-Ukrainian scale. Accordingly, there are very influential forces behind each candidate. But when, a few months ago, the position of the new governor began to be assigned to the “famous lawyer” Grigory Tripulsky, many Odessa residents were puzzled. Is this person from the gaming business with a rather tarnished reputation really being pushed into power by big people? But who?

Then, in search of an answer to these questions, we remembered that Tripulsky was recently called a protege of Odessa businessman Kaufman and Granovsky. But is this true? In search of another truth, Skelet.Info I decided to do a little research of my own…

Breaking Bad

Tripulsky Grigory Yakovlevich was born on August 28, 1978 in Odessa, in the family of Yakov Lvovich and Faina Markovna Tripulsky. He has a younger sister, Irina (born 1985). He grew up on Osipova Street in the old Primorsky district of the city, just five hundred meters from the sea – which, however, did not attract him. Therefore, he did not become a sailor, like his heroic great-uncle, but became a lawyer. In 1995, Grigory Tripulsky graduated from high school No. 101, then spent a whole year “pushing pears” somewhere, and in 1996, instead of going to repay his military duty to his homeland, he entered the Law Institute at Odessa State University (now Odessa National Law Academy), from which he graduated in 2001 with a degree in jurisprudence.

Judging by archival information, Grigory Tripulsky’s parents became cooperators in the late 80s. In the semi-basement on Pushkinskaya 45 (former Perosio apartment building, mid-19th century), they opened the Olympus cafe, which in the 90s was registered under the name of the commercial company Samsun LTD (EDRPOU 13917987), which belonged to Yakov Lvovich until 2018, and then registered on LLC “De jure” (EDRPOU 37476376) of his son Gregory.

Cafes from the times of “perestroika” and the early 90s often became “hangout” places for certain social groups who drank not only alcohol. This may explain the persistent rumors that circulated about the young Grigory Tripulsky, and still make him nervous. And since this was repeatedly written about in the media, this does not look like an ordinary unfounded slander. So what did they say about Tripulsky’s turbulent youth? The fact that allegedly, even in his senior year of school, he became… a drug dealer. Of course, not a “huckster” who ran an entire network, but an ordinary “runner” who sold doses to clients. However, his product was elite, not homemade “cubes” for degenerate gopniks, but heroin, cocaine and “ecstasy.” Accordingly, his customers were also not ordinary: “golden” and “bohemian” youth, businessmen wasting easy money, “brothers” and prostitutes, then students of his law academy. In short, those who could afford such expensive drugs.

Well, Tripulsky demonstrated his prudence from a young age. After all, if a dealer serving clients from the “working class” and lower social classes had not so much profit as various problems, then the income of the seller of “coke” and “herych” to rich wasters was an order of magnitude higher. And the police “shaked” such sellers much less often, and some did not touch them at all, because their “roof” was very influential. Here we come directly to the question of who was then covering up the activities of the drug dealer Tripulsky, who was his “huckster” and supplied him with expensive smuggled drugs, who extracted debts from his far from ordinary clients? We will probably never know the answer. Because Grigory Tripulsky is afraid of him. Not the rumors that in his youth he “pushed drugs”, but the question, who did he work for? Apparently, his then “employers” are alive and well, and today are high-ranking officials and respected businessmen.

Gambling addiction

By his third year at the Law Academy, Tripulsky decided to give up drugs, having discovered a much more profitable and completely safe way of getting quick money – gambling. At that time, the gaming business was flourishing in Ukraine, trying to reach all segments of the population: casinos with roulettes were opened for the rich, slot machines known as “one-armed bandits” were placed everywhere for commoners. However, on the new models there was no mechanical lever, and the player only needed to press a large button – like a trained monkey.

Each such machine brought its owners a good income, because gamblers, like drug addicts, spent everything they had. The Odessa company Odrex, opened in 1997, went even further – it produced them. Of course, this is said loudly, because in the first premises of the company there was simply no equipment for a full production cycle of such equipment. According to information from residents of Odessa, this company began by simply importing used machines from abroad, including broken and damaged ones, which it repaired. And after Odrex moved to the building at Raskidaylovskaya 69/71 (in the late 80s, the Akatsiya clothing factory was built there), first renting 2/3 of the premises, and then taking over everything, it began “screwdriver assembly” of new ones, which worked well. In the 2000s, the company produced up to 4 thousand assault rifles a year, more than half of which were exported (to Georgia, Serbia, Spain).

And in 1998, second-year student Grigory Tripulsky came to Odrex and was immediately hired as a legal consultant by the firm. Just like that, right from the street, in the midst of a crisis, when not every experienced lawyer could find a good job in a private firm! It is clear that Tripulsky was not a stranger to the owners of Odrex. There is no information in open databases about who exactly owned Odrex initially, but in the 2000s it was Tigran Harutyunyan and Leonid Kuchuk.

However, there was also someone third who owned the largest share – which now belongs to an almost unknown resident of Odessa, Irina Yuryevna Zaikova, who is a co-owner of as many as 18 enterprises! According to rumors, she may be related to the chairman of the trade union of workers of the Odessa seaport, Nikolai Zaikov, the best friend of the odious director of this port, Vladimir Pavlyuk, but there is no direct evidence of this yet. Although this would also explain a lot: the port, smuggling, slot machines, even drugs…

In 2001, Grigory Tripulsky received his law degree and remained at the academy for postgraduate study at the department of civil procedure. There he defended his Ph.D. dissertation in 2008, and there he still works as an assistant professor – rather, he’s even simply listed as a “part-time student.” Why there? Because the scope of civil cases includes property disputes involving individuals, including the collection of debts from them. Debts that arise when citizens spend everything on drugs and lose money in casinos when they take out loans in “quick money”. These are the issues in which Tripulsky is not just a professional, but an assistant professor! A real candidate of science in seizing apartments from debtors!

He “combined” at the academy, but Tripulsky’s main place of work (and source of income) was private firms. Until 2005, he remained a legal consultant at Odrex, and then moved to Nevada LLC (USREOU 31309716), established by Kuchuk and Harutyunyan in 2001 to manage their own gaming rooms. The Nevada office is located in the same building on Raskidaylovskaya 69/71 as other companies of Kuchuk, Harutyunyan, Zaikova and Tripulsky. Later, “Nevada” was transferred to a Panamanian offshore company “DVD AG Corporation”

Tripulsky became the head of the legal department and a member of the board of directors of Nevada, and due to the fact that the company was one of the largest in the gaming business in Ukraine, he also received the title of vice-president of the Ukrainian Gambling Association. This allowed him to lobby the interests of gambling hucksters at the official level, in Kyiv. This lobbying often took unusual forms.

Since Leonid Kuchuk was one of the sponsors of Eduard Gurvits, he had his own quota in the elections to the Odessa City Council. And in 2006, he brought Tripulsky there, according to the list of the local organization of the pro-presidential “Our Ukraine”. In the City Council, Tripulsky immediately joined the “Our Odessa” faction, completely controlled by Gurvits, and in 2007 he became chairman of the very “bread” commission on land management and land legal relations. Tripulsky, of course, did not advertise how he negotiated with the right people about the division of Odessa real estate, how he “cut off” pieces for the Odrex structures and his other companies. But his public activities, covered in the media, he did… the fight against slot machines. Tripulsky organized a campaign for their mass dismantling in shopping centers, train stations and public transport stops, calling them “disgraceful pillars.” The secret was simple: these machines belonged to small competing firms; often they were not purchased or leased from Odrex, but acquired somewhere “on the left.” And just then legislation was adopted that limited the rampant gambling business and forced the removal of “one-armed bandits” from public places to special gaming halls. But small firms experienced difficulties with such halls, because the same Grigory Tripulsky, as chairman of the land commission, did everything to prevent competitors from getting premises or land for construction.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Grigory Tripulsky: lawyer for raiders and “one-armed bandits.” PART 2

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