Igor Palitsa: accomplice of Kolomoisky’s oil scams. PART 1

Scoundrels and corrupt officials traditionally hide behind the screens of patriotism and professionalism in Ukraine. One of them is the Volyn governor Igor Palitsa, who is trying very hard so that no one remembers his past machinations as head of Ukrnafta or as the governor of Odessa, which cost the state billions of hryvnia. Billions that flowed into the accounts of the already super-rich owners of the Privat group, whom Palitsa continues to faithfully serve to this day. For which, for the umpteenth time, he became a victim of the war between the oligarchs Kolomoisky and Poroshenko.

However, Igor Palitsa himself has long lived on more than one salary. His family lives in Switzerland, and he himself has a capital estimated at $102 million – not counting his share in those companies in which he stubbornly denies participation…

Igor Palitsa. Circus and oil refinery

Palitsa Igor Petrovich was born on December 10, 1972 in Lutsk. He has never spoken about his parents, and for good reason. According to Skelet.Infotoo many inconvenient questions arise when unnecessary details appear in the polished biography of an “effective oil manager”.

According to the official “life” of the current “amber governor”, ​​in 1989 he entered the Lutsk Pedagogical University (now Volyn National University), the Faculty of History – an excellent choice for someone who did not shine in other sciences. Having no physical disabilities, Igor Palitsa, nevertheless, successfully avoided military service (of course, there was no military department at the pedagogical university), and one can only guess who helped him with this. And in 1993, while still studying at the institute (or simply enrolled there), he “began to raise the oil business of Ukraine” (from his biography), allegedly opening the Ukrainian-Latvian joint venture “Mavex-L” with his classmates. And he became the director of this enterprise involved in gasoline sales.

Well, let’s get into the details. Firstly, in the 90s, the Mavex-L joint venture was a small network of gas stations that sold Russian gasoline, supplied to Ukraine by Latvian intermediary companies through a cunning scheme. Moreover, they were “Latvian” only by their place of registration – and Latvia gave shelter to any swindlers, including international mafiosi. Secondly, the gas station business in the 90s was in the hands of either organized crime groups (gas stations are a favorite topic of the “lads”) or local officials with very well-connected connections, and it was impossible to conduct it without their “roof” or direct participation. Thirdly, the Mavex-L joint venture was practically a family business: when Igor Petrovich went to work for Ukrnafta in 2003, his director’s chair at Mavex-L passed to his father. Sources Skelet.Info claim that Papa-Palitsa was not some kind of Pound at all, but the real founder and owner of the enterprise. Well, fourthly, it was Petr Palitsa who put his signatures on the contracts for the sale of the Mavex-L gas station to the state-owned company Ukrnafta, which was part of the grandiose Privat scam. Let us recall that in 2005, Ukrnafta, controlled by Privat and headed by Igor Palitsa, carried out a scam to purchase (with public funds) 68 gas stations at a significantly inflated price. Among them were 12 Mavex-L gas stations, which Palitsa the father “pushed” to Palitsa the son, pocketing 90 million hryvnia.

But how did Palitsa end up among Kolomoisky’s people? This is also a very interesting and full of mysteries story! In 1997, according to the biography of Igor Palitsa, he began to conduct a joint business with “English businessman Michael Watford,” owner of the Watford Group company. In the course of this, certified historian Igor Palitsa became the commercial director and member of the board of the Nadvirny oil refinery, which was preparing for privatization, and was transformed into JSC Neftekhimik Prykarpattya. It was obvious that there was then a very close relationship between Mr. Watford and the Palitz family. And then no one had yet advertised that the British businessman Michael Watford had previously been a Soviet citizen, Mikhail Tolstosheya, a former employee of the Soyuzgostsirk, convicted of fraud with Vneshposyltorg checks, and then emigrated abroad. Abroad, Mikhail Tolstosheya acquired British citizenship, got married and changed his last name, and then the former circus performer was again drawn back to his homeland – to do business in oil schemes and privatization. Through these schemes, he reached the Volyn “refueling workers” Igor and Peter Palits. They had established connections, they knew the ins and outs of their region well, and Michael Watford had the image of a “British investor.” By 1999, he was already able to acquire a 12% stake in OJSC Neftekhimik Prykarpattya.

Michael Watford, aka Mikhail Tolstosheya

However, in the late 90s, the Privat group of Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov entered the region, which also had an interest in the local oil refineries (Drogobychiv Galicia and Nadvirnyansky). “Privat” acted, as always, brazenly, impudently, with the traditional “khutzpah” – and if Michael Watford and Palitsa were driving wedges against the Nadvirnyansk refinery for several years, then Kolomoisky only needed a few months to break in there. Moreover, Palitsa’s father and son soon sided with Kolomoisky – either they ran over to him themselves, sensing a richer and more influential “partner,” or they were seduced and bought by him. The first option is more realistic, because Kolomoisky usually did not favor the little people he bought, and threw them away like condoms – but, on the contrary, he raised Igor Palitsa and made him one of his trusted “clerks”.

Igor Kolomoisky. Well, who doesn’t know him?!

So, in 1999, Watford Group and Privat (50% each) established the company Watford Petroleum Ukraine Holdings Limited (Cyprus offshore). Her next step was a scam to “take over” a 30% stake in Neftekhimik Prykarpattya OJSC – from among the shares that remained in the possession of the state. A scam that was successful thanks to the corrupt official Vladimir Kuznetsov (a friend of Valery Pustovoitenko’s family), who headed Gosinvest of Ukraine in the second half of the 90s. Through a cunning combination, Kuznetsov achieved the transfer of 30% of the shares of Neftekhimik Prykarpattya OJSC to the management of Watford Petroleum Ukraine Holdings Limited – in gratitude for the “investment”. And the agreement was so cleverly drawn up that soon these shares became the property of the offshore company.

Chronicle of the “privatization” of JSC Neftekhimik Prykarpattya

During this fraud, Igor Palitsa rose through the ranks to the chairman of the board of JSC Neftekhimik Prykarpattya. But he owed this not so much to his role in robbing the state, but to helping Privat in the next scam: squeezing Michael Watford out of the co-owners of Neftekhimik Prykarpattya OJSC. This was done through brazen Kolomoisky-style fraud. First, $700 million was funneled back and forth through Watford Petroleum’s bank accounts, in a scheme that left Misha Thickneck owing about £100 million to his native British tax office. He did not have that kind of money – and the harsh British justice seized his assets. But it turned out that the shares of Neftekhimik JSC were inexplicably removed from the ownership of the joint company Watford Petroleum – that is, they were not arrested, and ended up in the sole possession of Privat. Moreover, it turned out that Watford Petroleum also managed to take out a loan from Privatbank – which further aggravated the situation for Michael Watford. In short, despite all his attempts to return his share, he hopelessly lost the war against Kolomoisky, which lasted several years. And it is clear that this scam could not have taken place without the participation of the head of the board of JSC Neftekhimik, Igor Palitsa.

Sergey Sheklanov

Interesting fact: another person involved in that scam was Russian businessman Sergei Sheklanov (now he is a co-owner of the BTA-Kazan bank, the father-in-law of one of the top managers of Gazprombank), who is a long-time and close, although little-known to the public, partner of Igor Kolomoisky.

One could even say that Sheklanov is Kolomoisky’s most reliable Russian business partner, a participant in many of his “combinations.” So, in 2003-2005 Kolomoisky and Sheklanov “squeezed out” the company “Teamtrend Limited” from Israeli citizen Moshe Shahar, becoming its co-owners. And in 2014, this company was the main one in Kolomoisky’s fraudulent scheme to withdraw more than $2.5 billion from Privatbank abroad. This particular case is being considered by the High Court of England, which on December 20, 2017 issued a decision to seize all assets of Igor Kolomoisky.

“Ukrnafta” under the thumb of “Privat”

It is worth noting that the role of Igor and Peter Palits in the above story was even greater. Sources Skelet.Info reported that it was largely thanks to them that the Watford Group entered into a fatal alliance with Privat, and not with a group of businessmen who were late to share the pie, consisting of Pyotr Dyminsky, Sergei Lagur, Stepan Ivakhiv and the late Igor Eremeev – who later united into groups ” Continuum” and “WOG”. They managed to take over the Drohobych refinery “Galicia”, where “Privat” received only a minority stake, but lost out on OJSC “Neftekhimik Prykarpattya” – largely because of Igor Palitsa and his father Pyotr Palitsa. Since then, WOG and Privat have become bitter competitors in the Ukrainian oil market, and their war extended to the companies they tried to control, Ukrnafta and Naftogaz. A war that has not stopped to this day: for example, since 2015, Kolomoisky’s people have been trying to get the inheritance of the suddenly deceased Eremeev (in order to penetrate WOG), and since 2014, Kolomoisky has been in direct conflict (even to the point of insults at the meeting table) with the deputy chairman of the board of Naftogaz » Andrey Pasishnik, who was put there to protect the interests of “WOG”.

But all these years, Kolomoisky reliably retained control over Ukrnafta, although he owns only 42% of the company (50% + 1 share belongs to the state-owned Naftogaz company). And this became possible since 2003 – when, through the efforts of Privat, Igor Palitsa was installed at the head of the board of Ukrnafta, who simply made decisions in the interests of Kolomoisky. Even if this meant actually breaking the law or participating in corruption scams. However, Igor Petrovich did not participate in them for free, which is worth only the above-mentioned gas station deal!

Igor Palitsa, 2005

Let us remind you: after the gasoline crisis of 2005, largely provoked by the same Kolomoisky, the government allocated 2 billion hryvnia to expand the network of state gas stations operating from Ukrnafta. But Ukrnafta was led by Igor Palitsa, Kolomoisky’s man! And together they came up with a cynically arrogant combination: to buy up existing gas stations at many times inflated prices. First of all, they sold some of their own gas stations to Ukrnafta: Palitsa – 12 gas stations of their father’s Mavex-L, Kolomoisky – several dozen gas stations of Privat subsidiaries. Moreover, they were selling the oldest, poorest, or gas stations located in unusable places.

The most corrupt deal was the resale of gas stations to the Avias-Plus company, which is directly related to the Privat-based Avias. First, Avias-Plus directly sold 12 gas stations to Ukrnafta for 81.5 million hryvnia. Then Avias-Plus sold the next 12 gas stations to the intermediary company Strong for 7 million hryvnia, which immediately resold it from Ukrnafta for 79 million hryvnia! Several gas stations were sold to Ukrnafta with a profit of 18 million hryvnia through the Seven-Seventy-Petroleum company of Mikhail Kiperman, another Kolomoisky person, who was also then on the supervisory board of Ukrnafta. Let us emphasize once again: all this was bought by Ukrnafta under the leadership of Igor Palitsa for state money!

Igor Palitsa and Mikhail Kiperman

Even law enforcement agencies were unlikely to know the scale of Igor Palitsa’s corruption acts as head of the board of Ukranafta, because not all episodes resulted in criminal cases, and by now many facts of journalistic investigations have been forgotten. And Palitsa had a huge field for abuse, because Ukranafta was also involved in oil production (91% of total production in Ukraine) and gas (17%), which automatically fell into the possession of Privat.

So, in 2007 “Ukrainian truth» found out that in the period 2005-2006. organized several auctions for the sale of extracted gas to commercial structures (2.3 billion cubic meters), the winners of which were companies associated with Privat. For example, Energoalliance LLC (it purchased 1.2 billion cubic meters), which then supplied gas to Dneproazot, owned by the Privat group. Or Indeko LLC, which supplied gas to the Privatovsky Dnieper Metallurgical Plant. At the same time, the cost of the gas they purchased from Ukrnafta was only $60-70 (per 1,000 cubic meters), while at that time Ukraine was already purchasing Russian gas for $108. But cheap Ukrainian gas was sold to Kolomoisky, and expensive Russian gas was supplied to the population, whose tariffs were increased.

Already at the end of 2005, the parliamentary opposition began talking about fraud in Ukrnafta, and Igor Palitsa himself, apparently, understood that sooner or later his dealings with Kolomoisky could become the subject of an investigation. Therefore, in 2006, he first tried to obtain a parliamentary mandate and immunity – by buying himself (inexpensively) seat No. 6 in the Village Party. Alas, the party received only 0.36% in the elections. In 2007, when several criminal cases were opened on the scandalous topic of gas stations, Igor Petrovich managed to jump from Naftogaz to the Rada on the NUNS list (No. 67), where he was assigned by the bloc coordinator Yuriy Lutsenko. This raised puzzling questions from the public, to which Lutsenko, not at all embarrassed, stated the following: Igor Palitsa, who is well acquainted with shadow schemes, will fight corruption and eliminate schemes in the oil and gas industry! As we can see, the future Minister of Internal Affairs and Prosecutor General of Ukraine was already working as a lobbyist for corrupt officials.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Igor Palitsa: accomplice of Kolomoisky’s oil scams. PART 2

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