Lavrenko Nikolai Nikolaevich – from rags to riches or the history of VS Energy International Ukraine

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The last years of the owners of the holding were not the sweetest. After Russia’s aggression against our country, the company had problems on the territory of Ukraine, and it became much more difficult to service loan portfolios, which the business group had a great many. The influence of serious “Moscow uncles” has become much less, moreover, their names have become toxic in Ukraine for objective geopolitical reasons. There were even rumors that the group might even sell its Ukrainian assets and exit the game. However, the rumors were exaggerated.

Until 2015, the Ukrainian business of the group was led by Mikhail Spektor. This imposing man is a fairly well-known Ukrainian businessman who in certain circles had the fame of a casino gambler and a person who loves a luxurious life (private jets, yachts, an environment of model-looking girls, guard motorcades and similar attributes of a luxury life). However, in 2015, this interesting person left this company, for reasons unknown to us for certain. There were rumors that he had a personal conflict with one of the owners of the holdie.

 Evgeny Giner, who became the main reason for Spector’s departure from such a prestigious position as president of VS Energy.

However, the main surprise for many uninitiated in the internal “kitchen” of this business group was the appointment of such a provincial character Nikolai Lavrenko as the president of the company. His inner circle simply calls him Kolya. In order to briefly but succinctly sum up the image of this person, we must remember that before being hired by Russian businessmen, Kolya worked for some time in the civil service. His places of work were the position of deputy head of the Kirovograd Regional State Administration, as well as the head of the Vinnitsa tax inspectorate. However, it was a very long time ago, in 1999-2003. He was “left” from both places of work not without involvement in corruption scandals, as is typical for many officials of the ex-Komsomol hardening. Lavrenko tried to promote his entire career, back in Soviet times, by worshiping the ideals of communism. But we will not judge him strictly for this, since in those days it really could significantly help to move up the career ladder.

Nikolai is described as an uncouth provincial peasant who literally speaks on a mat, while not distinguishing people by gender. Subordinates among themselves call him a “collective farmer” because he gives the impression of an absolutely uneducated, almost illiterate person who even can’t read well, all texts are read aloud to him by his secretary. Kolya writes very rarely and very little, extremely short text messages without punctuation marks. In general, education is not his forte. His usual communication with the company’s employees is an indefatigable scream and scream, boundless mountains of obscenities and, as a result, the inability of anyone to recognize the true essence of all this random collection of Kolya’s words. However, this level of intelligence does not prevent him, as a serious person, a high-level manager, from having several mistresses at the same time right in the company’s office. Rumor has it that Lavrenko loves the attention of not only his personal secretary, but also an accountant and even a personal hairdresser. Kolya also does not forget his ex-lovers, even those whose age no longer allows them to attract his attention. Although our hero himself is no longer a boy, he is 65, but he loves women, of course, younger. Nikolai brought several of his former muses to Kiev from Kirovograd and Vinnitsa, employed them in the company, gave them, so to speak, a start in life. A man of the broadest soul, you can’t call it otherwise.

The appointment of Nikolai Lavrenko to this high position came as a surprise to those who did not know the true relations within the group. In fact, the reason for such a castling was that Giner, who, as we indicated above, did not like Spector, on the contrary, warmly treated Lavrenok. The reasons for this are quite trivial – Lavrenko, like Giner, is a longtime football fan. Giner had his favorite brainchild in the Russian Federation – CSKA, and Lavrenko had his football brainchild – the Polygraphtekhnika Football Club in his native provincial town of Koli, Alexandria, in the Kirovograd region. The Ukrainian football club, of course, is difficult to compare in terms of level with the Moscow one, but the passions of these two people converged precisely in the football field.

Nikolay Lavrenko scammed Giner

However, Giner’s “love” for Nikolai Lavrenko did not last long. As soon as Evgeny Giner realized the essence of Kolya, namely, his innate kleptomania and chronic passion for lies, even a common passion for football did not help, a wall of misunderstanding immediately grew between them. However, several factors helped Nikolai Lavrenko to gain a foothold in his position: the owners of the business group were actually isolated from their Ukrainian assets after the start of the war between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, Giner’s son, Vadim, who was in charge of the Ukrainian business of the group, left Ukraine, fearing persecution “Russian sign”, thereby only strengthening the position of Kolya, actually cementing him in the position of president of the holding. In addition, there is a legend that Kolya has some serious compromising evidence against the shareholders of the group, which also made him largely “untouchable”. The last factor sounds a little unfounded, however, having learned the essence of things, which we will try to tell you below, it is difficult to find other adequate explanations for the fact that Lavrenko has been in office for more than six years.

So, Lavrenko Nikolai Nikolaevich, sitting in the chair of the head of this serious business group, began to very quickly “roll in” money in serious amounts. A person who, after joining the holding as director of industry on a salary of $5,000, has become a virtual dollar multimillionaire over the past six years.

Today Lavrenko is the owner of three hot-dip galvanizing plants in Ukraine, becoming in fact the domestic leader in this area. We are talking about factories in the Kiev region, Odessa region and not far from Kharkov. According to preliminary estimates, the cost of construction of each of these enterprises is about 20 million US dollars. That is, the total cost of this part of Lavrenko’s business alone is about $60 million. In addition, in recent years, Kolya has acquired a dairy production plant in the Kiev region, actively trying to promote his Lago brand in retail chains, and is also trying to establish a full cycle by starting to produce milk on his farm. According to the information we have, the value of Kolya’s dairy business is about 5-7 million US dollars. In the metropolitan area of ​​Osokorki, where our hero settled densely, he became the owner of many hectares of land on which he built several cottage towns, the Pioppo Nero pizzeria restaurant, the Nicolas country restaurant and hotel complex, the yacht club, the Daughters and sons”, as well as as many as 3 (!!!) football stadiums, an ice arena, tennis courts and other sports infrastructure facilities. You might be thinking, why does Kolya need three stadiums? It’s just that Kolya, remembering the past years, decided to return to those glorious times and created a new, already, metropolitan football club “Left Bank”, which is still only at the origins of its development, in the second professional football league. However, Lavrenko understands well how to quickly and effectively “move” to the Major League. After all, it’s just a matter of financial investments. By the way, he created a football club together with a certain Yura Dovgalenko, better known by the nickname “Dovgal”, who has a specific reputation in his past life, as he held the “position of foreman” of the organized crime group of the late crime boss Rybka. Kolya and Yura agreed on the basis of land interests in the capital’s Osokorki. By the way, Dovgal has his own “business” with the same name as the football business – Left Bank. This is a public organization, which is actually a combat unit, recruiting groups of titushki to fulfill orders for the extraction of land, extortion of money and other similar issues. Now Kolya has begun active construction of the fourth stadium in Osokorki, which will meet the requirements of the Major Football League. They say that the land under this new stadium was actively squeezed out with the help of the same public organization of the same name. Kolya also has a medical clinic in Osokorki, as well as 2 solar power plants in the Kherson and Odessa regions, 10 megawatts each. The cost of building each such station is $10 million. It would be strange not to have an energy business while in such a chair. Nikolai also reached a new level a couple of years ago, he became the owner of a wind farm on the island of Cyprus, worth about 3 million euros, and also acquired 4 villas on this sunny island with a total value of about 4 million euros. And all this is by no means a complete list of his merits and achievements in the chair of the top manager of VS Energy International Ukraine.

Perhaps you think that Lavrenko, holding the position of president of such a serious holding, receives such a high salary that allows him to have such serious personal assets and build a personal, not at all small business? Of course, the salary of such a manager cannot be small, by the standards of our country, it is even sky-high – 35 thousand dollars a month. Agree, our hero began to receive big money since 2016. However, even with such a cosmic, in our understanding, salary, building a business and acquiring assets worth more than $100 million in six years is an unattainable task. Then what is the secret, you ask? The secret of Kolya’s success is that he, being the owner of the very compromising evidence on his Russian employers, became truly “inviolable” and learned to use the business of his Moscow masters for his own personal purposes.

What is the energy business owned by the VS Group Management holding? Is it possible, you ask, that Kolya can steal so much from the pocket of shareholders that in a few years you can so quickly acquire so many personal assets? Here we will explain that the main sources of business income for Russians are kickbacks from tenders for the purchase of equipment and construction and repair work in power grids, which are carried out as part of the implementation of investment programs of energy companies. Yes, yes, the very money that we, the inhabitants of Ukraine, pay in the tariff that comes to us in bills. We pay, we suffer, we quarrel, we arrange Maidans, the government promises populistically not to raise tariffs for the population, while the oblenergo swears at the government, allegedly wanting to improve and upgrade the power grid, while Kolya simply receives mega-kickbacks from this all, buying equipment at inflated prices and ordering overly expensive works and building his personal “kingdom” for hundreds of millions of dollars. Another significant cash flow is bribery for the issuance of technical conditions for oblenergos for connecting to power grids. The amounts that appear in this business are unknown only to those who have never encountered these issues. We are talking about millions of US dollars monthly, which fly into Kolya’s pocket. At the same time, part of the money that the VS Group business brings in obviously reaches both shareholders and Ukrainian officials, since everyone is happy with everything. They say that the business of VS Energy is built in such a way that kickbacks and bribes are brought to Kolya directly to the office, on Hospitalnaya Street in Kiev. He has a couple of specially trained people who run this cash register. In general, Kolya knowingly had experience in tax, he definitely learned how to collect taxes. It is difficult to assess who earns more, Kolya or his employers. Apparently, they are satisfied with the situation when Kolya turns such tricks under their noses. Although, of course, it is difficult to imagine how you can allow millions of dollars to be stolen. Perhaps the reason for such seemingly indifferent shareholders is also the fact that for several years there have been attempts between them to divide the business. Players of the Ukrainian energy market have been talking about this for a long time. During this period, the holding has slightly decreased in scale – Odessaoblenergo and Kievoblenergo were sold, Kirovogradoblenergo is next in line. All these assets were acquired by DTEK Group. However, a situation may turn out to be very entertaining when Kolya, during the period of clarifying the relationship of shareholders among themselves, will, at their expense, personally “weigh” in monetary terms more than their entire business. However, there is some positive in this – our Ukrainian “Orthodox” hero is a coward for the money of our enemies – the Russians. This fact, of course, adds patriotism and positive to this whole story. As they say, “the toad fucked the viper.”

It is worth explaining the reason for mentioning the epithet “Orthodox” to our hero. Kolya, having moved to Kiev, suddenly became a very active parishioner of the Russian Orthodox Church, and was so imbued with love for the Lord that he even built a church in honor of his beloved on his beloved Osokorki, exactly between his pizzeria and the football stadium. Icons, foundations and individual elements were brought from St. Athos, which our Kolya is very proud of. According to the estimates of the builders who built the church, the construction cost 3-4 million dollars. Next to the church, Kolya built monastic cells, and also arranged his family … tomb in the basement of the church!

Lavrenko Nikolai Nikolaevich

Servant of God Lavrenko Nikolai Nikolaevich, probably, is preparing to be canonized after his departure to another world, and, possibly, even during his lifetime. After all, so many “light things” are done by his hands, while he heads such a rich Russian business holding. Remember Leonid Yakovishin, the Chernihiv agrarian who built a personal mausoleum in the style of Napoleon a year ago? Not him alone. Kiev has its own “saint” Kolya, who atones for his sins in his personal church and is preparing to find rest in a holy place.

We hope that this series of publications will be of interest to our reader. We will try to get as much insider information as possible. Interesting stories about top managers of other Ukrainian business groups are waiting for us soon. Wait, all the most interesting things are ahead.