Ivan Avramov: “black accountant” of Yura Enakievsky

The more time passes since Euromaidan, the more often its participants wonder why their comrades died. After all, those against whom they opposed not only safely escaped with the stolen goods without suffering any punishment, but are already being acquitted by Ukrainian justice. Among them are the most odious figures from Yanukovych’s inner circle, who, with their greed and lawlessness, precisely forced the Ukrainians to rebel against the power of the “Donetsk people.”

In big Ukrainian business, where setups and raider takeovers have become the norm, a long-term trusting partnership, not supported by family relations, is a rare exception. His examples can be counted on one hand: the famous “Privat” couple Kolomoisky-Bogolyubovshrouded in corruption schemes, Poroshenko’s “family”Kononenkoas well as the almost unknown duet Ivanyushchenko-Avramov. About the latest media, they mainly wrote only that Ivan Avramov is the “supervisor” of Yuri Ivanyushchenko, who in turn was the “supervisor” of Viktor Yanukovych – and almost nothing about the details of their almost quarter-century cooperation, replete with corruption and crime. Well, Skelet.Info will fill in some of the gaps in this exciting puzzle!

Heavy metal

An order of magnitude less is known about the early years of Ivan Ivanovich Avramov than about the past of his scandalous companion. He was born on September 2, 1965 in the village of Kalchevo, Bolgrad district, Odessa region, in 1983 he graduated from high school, and in 1988 from the Odessa Institute of National Economy (now Odessa National Economic University). He also has a brother, Sergei, about whom there is no information at all in open sources – which leads to certain thoughts. Indeed, simple honest businessmen would hardly have to hide their biography and even the date of birth of their brother from people.

Based on scant information from various sources Skelet.Infocommerce (farming) Ivan Avramov became interested in while still a student – after all, Odessa has long been the southern gateway for imported consumer goods (both legal and smuggled) into the USSR. Then the smart young man realized that it was much more profitable to sell not overseas “clothes” for Soviet rubles, albeit at speculative prices, but domestic valuables for dollars. However, he did not have access to the Odessa flow of exported contraband (antiques, icons, jewelry).

Student photo of Ivan Avramov

But he was rescued by the “wind of change” that blew in the country. Immediately after graduating from university, Ivan Avramov took up “cooperation”, looking for channels to export Soviet raw materials through various joint ventures. And by the beginning of the 90s, Ivan Avramov found his niche – he began exporting first non-ferrous scrap metal, and then larger quantities of ferrous metals. This is where he made his business acquaintance with Yuri Ivanyushchenko, a crime boss from Enakievo, then known under the nickname Yurets Maloy, and later as Yura Enikievsky. By the way, even then, Anatoly Zuev, the godfather of Viktor Yanukovych, was in Ivanyushchenko’s “brigade”.

Ivanyushchenko also got involved in metals: the Donbass was full of metallurgical plants, but the sales of their products slowed down in the early 90s. In search of access to foreign buyers, Ivanyushchenko found a common language with Ivan Avramov: as they say, we have a product – you have a merchant! Avramov’s services turned out to be so useful that Ivanyushchenko immediately made him his business partner, and then his most trusted confidant. For Ivanyushchenko, who was not very versed in the intricacies of economics, he began to play the role of a kind of partner-accountant, primarily involved in “black accounting” and intricate schemes. This is how their duet came together.

Yuri Ivanyushchenko

But metal alone was not enough. “Shadow” Odessa in the first half of the 90s was a huge communal apartment in “five dimensions” – that is, in parallel there existed a purely thieves’ Odessa, a smuggling Odessa, an Odessa of semi-legal business, a corrupt Odessa, etc. And each was divided between dozens of “princelings”, above whom the successive “overseers” towered. That is why there were always several such “overseers” in Odessa: thieves put their “overseers” purely over the criminal world, theirs were assigned by those protecting smuggling and the shadow business of organized crime groups, and there were “overseers” from the corrupt authorities. And Yuri Ivanyushchenko, who then just in time broke with the Enakievo group of the Dolidze brothers, who had started a war with the Donetsk group of Alik the Greek, began to look closely at Odessa as a new region of his influence. He was primarily interested in the smuggling going through Odessa, which was becoming increasingly widespread.

However, the mid and second half of the 90s were marked by a number of tough criminal showdowns both in Odessa itself (the murder of Viktor Kulivar “Karabas”) and in the Donetsk region (the murder of Alik Grek and Grigory Dolidze). It was during this period that Ivan Avramov left Odessa and moved to Yura Enakievsky, and then the two of them “went to the bottom” – there are no details about their activities during this period. But one day Ivanyushchenko himself said about Avramov: “His head is very bright. For a man from Odessa, dealing with the mines is incredibly difficult, but he did it.” And just in 1994, Ivanyushchenko became a co-owner of the Yenakievo coke plant (where, according to the official biography, he allegedly worked in the 80s), which participated in the “coal-coke-metal-export” scheme, and he needed his own mines to maximize the reduction cost of coal. During this period (1996-2005), Ivanyushchenko was listed as the president of the NPP Alvi-Invest, which was engaged in trading everything in a row (from coke to shoes), but next to him loomed the figure of an unnamed deputy for economics, shrouded in a gray fog. There is an opinion that it was Ivan Avramov.

Ivan Avramov. Coal Baron, Spirit King

It was only in 2004 that Ivan Avramov first openly appeared on the public stage of the Ukrainian economy as the modest and little-known president of CJSC Luhansk Coal Company (by the way, this is why he was often mistakenly called a Luhansk resident). This CJSC is 50% owned by Financial Company LLC, which in turn is half owned by Ivan Avramov. According to official information, in all related companies and firms of Ivanyushchenko and Avramov, Ivan Ivanovich owns controlling stakes in only a few, in the rest he is only a co-owner who carries out management. The second co-owner of these companies is Yuriy Ivanyushchenko or his relatives (children). The names of the remaining shareholders are not directly mentioned, and only from fragmentary information can one find out that they are Sergei Avramov (how could he leave his brother without income!), as well as several other business partners of Avramov and Ivanyushchenko – for example, Luhansk businessmen Igor Antimonov and Konstantin Khvorostyany. Thus, the scheme of business relations between Ivan Avramov and Yuri Ivanyushchenko is an almost equal partnership (at least in terms of the number of shares), in which Avramov took over the management of the business, and Ivanyushchenko carried out its “protection.” However, considering that Ivanyushchenko’s fortune in 2012 was estimated at 756 million dollars, and Ivan Avramov’s “only” 252 million (plus a certain share of his brother Sergei), it can be understood that not all of Ivanyushchenko’s business was divided exactly in half with Avramov. In addition, Yura Enakievsky had many other sources of income – the participation of Ivan Avramov in which remained unknown.

But let’s return to CJSC Lugansk Coal Company. Together with Antimonov, she owned OJSC Lugansk Repair and Mechanical Plant, while Ivan Avramov also had a share in it (17%) through the Odessa LLC Ukragrokomp. Also, the Lugansk Coal Company owns 51.77% of the shares of CJSC Donbassholding, but he, in turn, owned stakes in CJSC Yanovskoye (former central processing plant Yanovskaya), LLC Group Concentrating Plant Mikhailovskaya, “Central enrichment plant “Nagolchanskaya” and “Group enrichment plant “Belorechenskaya”. Antimonov and Khvorostyan had their shares in them, but it was reported that they were going to sell their shares to Ivan Avramov – who thus concentrated in his hands control over the coal enterprises of their joint business with Ivanyushchenko.

Among other enterprises of Ivan Avramov it is worth highlighting:

• Grand LLC, (Donetsk region) – co-owner of the Bolgrad winery
• Stavr LLC is a co-owner of the Yenakievo Coke Plant
• Private enterprise “Rodon” (Odessa) – co-owner of the Bolgrad winery
• LLC “Rukan”
• LLC “Enakievo Transport Company”
• LLC “Depas Ltd” (Odessa)
• Private enterprise “Donbass-Odessa”
• Parrox Corporation Ltd (Britain) – owner of a stake in Promtovarny Market LLC (Odessa 7th Kilometer)

It is worth noting that Avramov’s schemes often use a sophisticated technique where the companies he manages are owners of each other’s shares – a kind of “snake chewing its own tail.” For what? Maybe to make these tails (ends) harder to find?

In 2010, Avramov and Ivanyushchenko began to take control of Odessa. By this time, their power had reached its maximum. Thanks to Ivanyushchenko’s personal relationship with the Yanukovych family (Viktor Fedorovich and his son Alexander, nicknamed Sasha the Dentist), he was able to obtain from the hands of the presidential family the powers of “supervisor” of most regions of Ukraine. Here it is necessary to clarify: the Ukrainian “supervisors” from the presidents (not only from Yanukovych) mainly “protected” corruption in government and law enforcement agencies, shadow business, redistribution and raider takeovers, and also played the role of a shadow court of appeal. The task of the “overseer” is to be aware of shady affairs and corruption schemes in his region, to ensure that local “don’t be bullies” (respect the center and share income), resolve conflicts, and also use his capabilities to destroy some businessmen or officials, and for a bribe to save others from attacks. That is, these are not the classic thieves’ “watchers” of the criminal world, but something like unofficial representatives of the president with a lot of unofficial powers and capabilities.

In turn, Ivanyushchenko appointed Ivan Avramov as his “supervisor” in the Odessa region. However, Ivan Ivanovich and his mysterious brother Sergei Ivanovich already had enough personal connections. Thus, through Ivanyushchenko they became close to the Yanukovych family, and especially to Alexander – with whom they found a common hobby such as boar hunting. But the main thing that connected them was the coal business. When the media wrote about the mines and “digs” of Sasha Stomatolog and Yura Enakievsky, they were somewhat mistaken: Alexander Yanukovych’s partner in the coal schemes was the “bright head” Ivan Avramov, it was he who worked with them – but habitually ceded all the “glory” to his partner Yuri Ivanyushchenko, on whom all the cones fell wholesale. That is why Avramov’s name was hardly heard later in public coal scandals—he modestly remained in the shadows.

The Avramov brothers and Alexander Yanukovych

So, in 2010, Ivan Avramov had already thoroughly settled down in his native Odessa, first of all taking control of the Southern Customs. Few people knew the true breadth of their plans, because customs provided enormous opportunities, but Avramov and Ivanyushchenko “got burned,” one might say, on little things. First, they established their full control over the only monopoly producer and seller in Ukraine of ethyl rectified GC “Ukrspirt”, surrounding it with their schemes. Then they used the capabilities of the Southern Customs for its intended purpose to block the supply of smuggled alcohol to Ukraine from Transnistria, Moldova, Bulgaria, Georgia – leaving all producers of “scorched” alcohol products without raw materials. After which they were offered to buy “left-handed” alcohol from themselves (including those produced by their Bolgrad plant). And Avramov-Ivanyushchenko themselves purchased part of this “left-handed” alcohol abroad and transported it through their personal channel through the Southern Customs. Also, customs was used to import duty-free fuel into Ukraine (treasury losses amounted to billions of hryvnia), and in this case Deputy Prime Minister became Avramov and Ivanyushchenko’s partners Andrey Klyuev and former Minister of Environment Nikolay Zlochevsky).

It was on the fuel that they burned out: in Kyiv they were angry that Klyuev and Ivanyushchenko had “lost their edges,” and besides, they had enough ill-wishers both from among Akhmetov’s team and among the local Odessa “barons” – not to mention the constantly looking for mistakes opposition authorities.

From that moment on, Ivanyushchenko’s rapid rise slowed down, he had a conflict with the presidential family, the SBU became interested in Ukrspirt, and at the beginning of 2012, Ivanyushchenko and Avramov even temporarily left Ukraine, fearing serious troubles, generously paying Ukrainian websites for deleting information about themselves. However, everything worked out, and although after this Ivanyushchenko’s influence in Odessa fell sharply (he was moved), and the Southern Customs was “taken away” from Avramov, they continued to “spud up” the city. They said that this was helped by the personal and business connections of Avramov and Alexander Yanukovych, who had better relations with the flexible fat man Ivan Ivanovich than with the tough “Uncle Yura.”

Since 2012, through the efforts of Avramov and Ivanyushchenko, the company Parrox Corporation Ltd began to increase its shareholding in Manufactured Market LLC, becoming the main owner of the 7th Kilometer (they literally “squeezed out” the first 27% stake from businessman Viktor Dobryansky in 2011). Control over one of the largest markets in Ukraine, through which there was a flow of wholesale trade in consumer goods, promised good dividends, and in the form of “black cash” that was not controlled by anyone. True, part of it had to be given to the needs of the Party of Regions – this was one of the conditions of the presidential “family”, which allowed Avramov-Ivanyushchenko to “gobble up” the market. And they began to mercilessly milk the “7th kilometer”. Sources reported that Ivan Avramov, through his trusted man Oleg Gres and market director Boris Melnichuk, imposed new fees on traders: for space, for rent, for the right to trade, for security, for utilities, as well as for an additional unofficial service – protection from visits from sanitary and fire inspectors. In addition, at the end of 2013, with the beginning of the Euromaidan, when the “Donetsk” people started smelling like a mess, the market stopped paying payments to the budget and related enterprises (Oblenergo, Vodokanal), which became the reason for its scandalous bankruptcy.

Ivan Avramov. Maidan, Anti-Maidan and Girkin

Another old acquaintance of Ivan Avramov and Yuri Ivanyushchenko is Armen Sargsyan from Gorlovka. His father Nagapet Sargsyan was a very respected person in the Armenian diaspora of the city, but his son put together an organized crime group in the 90s, the debut of which in an interesting way turned out to be very successful: just the day before, the old Gorlovka gangs were defeated by the forces of the OBOP (chief Yuri Shrubyanets). So Sargsyan’s “brigade” actually came to a cleared place – immediately taking over first the entire shadow economy of the city, then the economy in general, and at the same time the law enforcement agencies. Why did the “cops” who destroyed the Gorlovka organized crime groups of the early 90s suddenly give in to Sargsyan? Because he made such influential friends as Yuri Ivanyushchenko, as well as Gennady Uzbek (former leader of the Donetsk organized crime group “luxury”, now honorary president of Union Boxing Promotion), who made Sarkisyan the “supervisor” of Gorlovka.

This is how he received the nickname Armen Gorlovsky, became the vice-president of the Donetsk Boxing Federation, the owner of the Gostiny Dvor restaurant (which became his headquarters), the owner of the Krasnoarmeysky Machine-Building Plant, the best friend of the head of the Gorlovsky Internal Affairs Directorate Pavel Panasyuk (already former), etc. etc.

By the way, back in 2013, on the initiative of Armen, a small “decommunization” took place in Gorlovka: Klokov Street (a Bolshevik, an active participant in the events of 1917) was renamed the street… Nagapet Sargsyan. So the grateful son decided to perpetuate the memory of his father. Moreover, when colleagues Skelet.Info turned to the residents of the renamed street with a question whether they approved of such a surprise, they only nodded their heads in fear – they say, we have nothing against it, leave us alone! And this is understandable: people were simply panicky afraid of the omnipotent and cruel “beholder”.

Armen Sargsyan

When Euromaidan began, Sargsyan’s “boys” (athletes and strong guys with a criminal record) were “mobilized.” However, they did not sit out with other “titushki” in Mariinsky Park, but participated in “special operations,” including criminal ones. In particular, on January 19, 2014, they staged a hooligan attack on the Donetsk Maidan, during which they beat its participants. At the same time, one of the leaders of the attackers, Eduard Polepkin (Sarkisyan’s business partner), also broke poles with the state flags of Ukraine over his knee. On January 26, Sargsyan’s people, together with the arriving “boys from Avdeevka,” as well as with the participation of some disguised Cossacks, staged an attempt to seize the Regional State Administration in Donetsk – during which they beat up… peaceful supporters of Yanukovych, who were quietly rallying nearby.

And on the night of February 18-19, already in Kyiv, as representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Security Service of Ukraine later officially stated, it was Sarkisyan’s people who took part in attacks in the area of ​​​​Mikhailovskaya Square – during which 5 people were killed, including Vesti correspondent Vyacheslav Veremiy . So, witnesses noted that at that time Sargsyan’s people were regularly seen near the Kyiv office of Ivanyushchenko-Avramov (Rylsky Lane, 4), where they had something like a base and gathering point. And here’s what’s interesting: there was information that on February 18-19, 2014, Ivanyushchenko was no longer in Kyiv, and he “gave up” much earlier. That is, Ivan Avramov was in the office these days – who, it turns out, could coordinate the “work” of this gang of killers. Moreover, immediately after these high-profile crimes, on February 20, Ivan Avramov hastily left Ukraine for two weeks. Let us emphasize: the flight of Yanukovych and his entourage began only on January 22.

But the most interesting thing happened later. On March 6, Ivan Avramov returned to Kyiv, and the media directly wrote that the reason for his visit was concern about the risk of “looting” of Avramov-Ivanyushchenko’s business in Ukraine. And two weeks later, the media reported that the office on Rylsky 4 continued to operate, while it was carefully guarded from a possible pogrom by overly active revolutionaries. Journalists found out that the new guards at Avramov’s office appear to be “Maidan self-defense”, and are indeed either people from groups brothers Konstantinovskywho during Euromaidan specialized in protecting offices and boutiques from pogroms, either by specially selected people Igor Krivetskywho was the main creator and curator of “Self-Defense”. This news shocked the idealists: Euromaidan activists are guarding the office of their killers! But pragmatists did not see anything surprising in the fact that the “supervisor” from Yura Enakievsky received protection from the “Karamazov brothers” (former henchmen of the leader of the Ukrainian-American mafia Alik Magadan) or the Lviv crime boss Pups. This was the wrong side of the Maidan – disgusting, stinking of corruption, lies and thieves’ “agreements”.

But the story of Armen Sarkissian did not end there. In April 2014, his people, according to witnesses, participated in the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in Donetsk and the proclamation of the DPR, and then joined the militant group of Igor Strelkov (Girkin), which captured Slavyansk. When the militants decided to retreat from Slavyansk, Sargsyan’s people did not leave with the others to Donetsk, but were transported under the guise of refugees to Ukrainian territory – after which, according to the source, they headed to Odessa. Where they settled and came under the complete control of Ivan Avramov to carry out specific instructions from the “supervisor” of the Odessa business, Yuri Ivanyushchenko.

And here’s another little-known fact from informed sources Skelet.Info: during May-July 2014, when Sargsyan’s “boys” fought in Slavyansk against the Ukrainian security forces, Avramov’s business structures financed them. From them, according to unconfirmed information, another militant leader, Igor Bezler “Bes,” the former head of Arthur Gerasimov’s security, received a “salary” for several months. It is interesting that Gerasimov, who now heads the Petro Poroshenko Bloc faction in the Verkhovna Rada, ran for elections in 2012 as part of a “team Sergei Shakhov” And in 2015, Shakhov and Avramov became the main details of the unofficial presidential project “Our Land”.

Ivan Avramov. Return of the “beholder”

Created in 2011 by an Odessa businessman Anton Kissethe “Our Land” party vegetated in the gallery of political fringes for several years, until suddenly in 2015 the team of President Petro Poroshenko drew attention to it. She needed some kind of counterbalance to the clone “Opposition Bloc” – the most intractable fragment of the Party of Regions, which threatened to take an absolute majority of mandates in the local councils of South-Eastern Ukraine in the 2015 elections.

Was it a coincidence that the choice fell on “Our Land” by Anton Kisse? And why, literally immediately, Ivan Avramov became its main unofficial curator of the party, one might even say its “supervisor” – he enthusiastically took on this assignment, as if it was a condition for his rehabilitation before the new government?

It is curious that simultaneously with the successes of Ivan Avramov in the field of the presidential project “Our Land”, information immediately appeared that the “supervisor” from Yura Enakievsky was doing everything to protect their common Odessa business. And it was not only about the conflict over the “7th kilometer”, which Viktor Dobryansky began to fight back.

Well, it looks like Avramov turned out to be indispensable for Bankova. Judge for yourself: despite the fact that Kisse was once a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, he remained a provincial Odessa oligarch, and his old connections (Litvin, Brodsky) had lost their influence by 2015. It is unlikely that such a person would have coped with the task of quickly promoting his pocket party to the state level. But then Ivan Avramov, out of breath from zeal, appears. And the most important thing he does is immediately organize a branch of “Our Land” in the Lugansk and Donetsk regions, where he has extensive connections and acquaintances. This alone helped the party become one of the election favorites. Kisse’s gratitude knew no bounds, especially since the “parteigenosse” immediately had some kind of common business in Odessa. And in 2016, Kisse, as chairman of the Association of Bulgarian National-Cultural Societies and Organizations of Ukraine (which he simply turned into a pocket organization), petitioned the Bulgarian government to grant Ivan Avramov… honorary citizenship of Bulgaria! By the way, Kisse has had his own Bulgarian passport for a long time. And it seems that the leaders of “Our Land” do not care at all about such open disregard for the laws of Ukraine.

U Skelet.Info It is not surprising that the Kharkov branch of “Our Land” was headed by an oligarch Alexander Feldman. It is worth remembering 2011, when numerous rumors appeared that Yuri Ivanyushchenko wanted to take over not only the 7th Kilometer, but also Feldman’s Kharkov Barabashovo. And then witnesses reported on a meeting between Feldman and Ivan Avramov, and it ended very amicably – apparently, the parties found common interest and understanding. After this, Feldman personally called the rumors about the possible seizure of Barabashovo by Ivanyushchenko nonsense, and he, in turn, no longer showed any interest in him. Thus, Ivan Ivanovich recruited his “good friend” into the party.

Meanwhile, in 2015 and 2016, Avramov-Ivanyushchenko’s structures, in particular TsOF Nagolchanskaya LLC, re-registered in Kyiv, continued to work in the “LPR”, not only paying salaries to their workers, but also taxes to the treasury of the “republic” – which went to finance the separatists. But Avramov was not even reprimanded for this.

He also got away with the epic “7th Kilometer”. Only in the fall of 2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office again closely took up the case of Yuri Ivanyushchenko and Ivan Avramov regarding the raider takeover of market shares in 2011. In this regard, Avramov even left Ukraine for some time – apparently realizing that even a dozen orderlies would not be able to carry him into the courthouse on a stretcher. However, at the beginning of 2017, serious negotiators intervened in this matter: one of them was called Grigory Surkisand the other Presidential Advisor Boris Lozhkin. Both negotiators had common business interests with the Avramov-Ivanyushchenko duo, and with Lozhkin they overlapped in Ukrspirt – he was called the next, after Avramov, “curator” of this enterprise, so one could initiate the other into very interesting schemes.

And here is the result: at first, the political noise around this case was reduced only to the personality of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, who was too well known to Ukrainians. But the name of Ivan Avramov was almost never mentioned in this context, they began to forget about his past, and they didn’t even think about putting Avramov on the wanted list. And then in February 2017, the Supreme Court made decisions to close criminal cases against Ivanyushchenko and Avramov. It is clear that in relation to Ivanyushchenko, this decision only frees his foreign property from seizure, but such an odious figure will still not be able to appear in Ukraine for the time being – other cases will immediately be remembered for him. But Ivan Ivanovich can now safely return home and continue his hard work, perhaps even preparing for new elections. And the question “why did the Heavenly Hundred die?” no longer sounds purely rhetorical…

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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!