Ivan Vinnik: the life of a Kherson swindler. PART 1

NABU does not need to look for corrupt officials, their names and faces have long been known: it is enough to open the deputy lists of the parliamentary majority and point a finger at anyone. And here are some of them: people’s deputy Ivan Vinnik. While millions of Ukrainians are afraid of losing a roof over their heads due to debts for utilities or an outstanding loan taken out to buy a washing machine, Vinnik is not bothered, remaining in debt to creditors for almost 400 million! Moreover, he is not going to repay his debts, because officially this servant of the people is poorer than most pensioners, he does not even have his own home, and he borrowed a car from someone by proxy.

Prosecutor’s family

His official early biography resembles a Hollywood fantasy script about a superhero, an ordinary schoolboy who one day wakes up with superpowers and rushes to save the world. Ivan Vinnik once also turned out to be an unusual person – with super connections in law enforcement agencies, but he rushed not to save the world, but to fill his pockets, and in the most lawless ways.

So, Ivan Yulievich Vinnik was born on January 3, 1979 in Novaya Kakhovka. Until 1993, their family lived in an old private development area, where Vanya went to school No. 4, and in 1993 they moved to a five-story panel building on Dovzhenko Street 25, and Ivan transferred to school No. 10. At the end of which, the young man, who did not shine with any talents, went to work at the Novokakhovsky Electrical Machine-Building Plant as a simple instrumentation mechanic. At the same time, since 1996, Ivan Vinnik was listed as a student at the Kherson Industrial Institute (now Kherson National Technical University), but which faculty he initially enrolled in (and in what form of study) remains unknown. Ivan Vinnik did not serve in the army – and the reason for this is also unknown.

Everything changed in 1998, when, according to Skelet.Info19-year-old Vinnik suddenly abandoned the disgusting plant, where wages were always delayed, and got a job at the recently opened and successfully developing Swedish-Ukrainian company Chumak in Kakhovka. And he got a job not as a mechanic, not as a simple worker, but as the deputy head of supplies at Chumak CJSC. This incredible leap from rags to riches of a simple Kakhovsky undergrowth still causes surprise – because no one knows exactly the reason for this transformation, even more fantastic than the transformation of Peter Parker into Spider-Man.

However, if you delve into the life of our “superhero”, then among his family connections such a character as Viktor Petrovich Lakizyuk has repeatedly surfaced – allegedly either the husband of an aunt, or the uncle of Ivan’s wife Elena Zhmailo (born 1980). His name was first mentioned in 1998, when Mikhail Potebenko became the new Prosecutor General of Ukraine. At one time, Potebenko worked in the prosecutor’s office of the Kherson region for more than 30 years and acquired numerous connections and “reliable people” there, one of whom was Viktor Lakizyuk, appointed in 1998 as the new head of the press service of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Being Potebenko’s confidant, Lakizyuk was one of the channels of access to the Prosecutor General for resolving all sorts of important issues. Well, Lakizyuk himself had access to his relatives – including his niece’s husband.

Thus, it turns out that the ticket to a new life for Ivan Vinnik was an early marriage: the handsome guy managed to “bewitch” the niece of an employee of the Kherson prosecutor’s office just before his promotion to Kyiv. Was Ivan Vinnik hired for a position at Chumak by a call from the Prosecutor General’s Office (as a wedding gift to the newlyweds), or did he pluck up the impudence himself and go get a new job with the words “do you know who my wife’s uncle is?” also remains unknown. But the fact is that since 1998 he has become a person with great connections, and many companies would like to see such a person on their staff. At least at that time, prosecutorial raiding (“squeezing out” private enterprises in favor of their relatives) was not yet flourishing in the south of Ukraine, and business was not afraid to hire prosecutor’s nephews.

The further career of Viktor Lakizyuk himself is quite interesting. In 2000, it was he who saved the Prosecutor General’s Office from numerous attacks by journalists and social activists who were interested in the progress of the Gongadze case. During the first Maidan, senior justice adviser Lakizyuk “hid”, going to work at the National Academy of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine, but already in 2005 he appeared in the Supreme Court of Ukraine. He changed his prosecutor’s uniform to a judge’s robe for a long time, since in 2012 Lakizyuk received the position of head of a department at the National School of Judges of Ukraine. And all these years he played a very large role in the life of his wife’s nephew – he played behind the scenes, secretly, which is why the success of Ivan Vinnik’s dizzying scams was often unreasonably attributed to his ingenuity and luck.

Ivan Vinnik. From Chumak to foam concrete

Although all packages of Chumak ketchups and tomato sauces claim that they are made from “sparkling Kherson tomatoes”, in reality this information is far from reality – at least this was the case in the late 90s, when Ivan Vinnik came to work at the company . The fact is that tomato sauces (which, in principle, includes ketchup) are made on the basis of tomato paste. But not every cannery produces tomato paste: it’s not like pouring freshly squeezed tomato juice into cans; this requires special equipment. Numerous sources Skelet.Info They report that in the first years of its operation, Chumak preferred to use tomato paste from Uzbekistan and China as raw materials, purchasing it in bulk at a low price. And that’s exactly what the deputy head of the supply department, Ivan Vinnik, was doing then.

In this position, he gained good experience and numerous business connections, which in 2003 he decided to implement in his own business. A year earlier, Vinnik created the company Global Concentrate (USREOU code 31966466), which imported food raw materials to Ukraine – primarily tomato paste and juice concentrates, reselling them to branded manufacturers. In 2004, he, together with Stanislavov Tkachuk (20%) and the Russian company DALK (50%), presumably owned by Russian businessman Zykov, created the company Zed-Service. In 2005, Vinnik and Tkachuk established the companies Tomato Country (90% and 10%) and Concentrate Trading (80% and 20%). In this business, Vinnik had many partners, but Vinnik’s attitude towards them was completely different: having teamed up with some, he “cheated” others. This happened in the story of Construction Materials Plant No. 1 LLC.

The second turning point in the life of Ivan Vinnik was the period 2007-2008. It was then that he became the swindler and “swindler” that he is known today. For some reason, Vinnik personally destroyed his tomato concentrate business: having received substantial advance payments for the goods, he never delivered it to the Vitmark companies (Jaffa juices) and Erlan (Biola juices), owing them a total of $2.7 million. Then his own Chumak cheated in the same way, failing to supply it with raw materials amounting to over a million dollars. At the same time, he owed his Russian partner Zykov more than $7 million – and instead of returning it, he convinced him that he would invest it in a new profitable enterprise, making Zykov its co-owner. It seems that this enterprise became the main scam of his entire life.

So, in 2007, Ivan Vinnik founded Construction Materials Plant No. 1 LLC, which became the owner of the Novokakhovsky plant for the production of aerated concrete (foam concrete). It was for this enterprise that he accumulated debts and loans. In particular, these are Privatbank loans issued to his company Global Concentrate: in 2013, he owed Privat 22.51 million hryvnia; in 2016, Vinnik’s companies still owed the bank 35,570,000 hryvnia. Well, let’s add here the above-mentioned 7 million dollars from Zykov and almost 4 million dollars, which Vinnik “threw” Ukrainian juice producers with. A very impressive amount had accumulated, but how much of this money he actually invested in the plant remained unknown. And then Vinnik took out an impressive loan from Alfa Bank secured by 70% of the company’s shares. He himself, with 30% of the shares, remained the head of the board and general director of Construction Materials Plant No. 1 LLC.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Ivan Vinnik: the life of a Kherson swindler. PART 2

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