START: Alexey Leonov. Who does the misplaced restaurateur work for? PART 1
Alexey Leonov
Speaking of Leonov the restaurateur, as he calls himself in his biography. In fact, “Pizza&Grill” is not a “large restaurant chain” Skelet.Info I managed to “Google” only six eateries (although he claims ten), located in small shops or renting a corner in a shopping center. By visitor reviewsin these “beer and grill” only the prices are restaurant! The only restaurant at that time, “Slow Piggy” in the village of Kotovskogo, was also not in my mind. But the most interesting thing is this: on the Internet “Pizza&Grill” is mentioned as a franchise owned by 7 Continents LLC (36481233) by Svetlana Pulova and Sergei Bezverkhniy. They also owned a chain of supposed “fast food restaurants” under the “HappyBurger” banner. Not only are these just stalls with burgers and hot dogs, but the name itself turned out to be stolen – which is why they there were problems with McDonald’s itself. There are such “restaurants” and “restaurateurs” in Odessa!
“Fast food restaurant” in Odessa
In March 2020, Sergei Bezverkhniy, who headed 7 Continents for many years, was replaced as director by Alexander Nensberg, who is also the founder of Megaline Capital Group LLC (38572882) and Megaline Global Ukraine (37476088). But, let us emphasize that “7 Continents” owns the “Pizza & Grill” franchise, but the “restaurants” themselves were registered to Grilion LLC (37761061). In this company, which is owned by Lyudmila Starovoitova and Olga Romanovskaya, Alexey Leonov, before his election as a people’s deputy, worked as a commercial director and had a modest share of 7%. Somehow it’s very little to be called a “restaurateur”…
It turns out that “Pizza & Grill” and “HappyBurger” were created not by Leonov, but by Pulov and Starovoitov. Leonov’s role there is completely unclear; nothing was heard about him at all when the first of these establishments opened. But stories about the “restaurateur”, who in his youth carried bags of cement, and then created a chain of restaurants from scratch without any investments, appeared only in 2017, when special PR videos were shot.
Apparently this is what happened. In 2014, Alexei Leonov, who was completely unknown to anyone, was taken out of some “stash” and began to be trained to become a deputy. In accordance with the political fashion of that time, they first began to mold him into a “patriot” – for which they were sent to the Lugansk region to Kurilo (almost like a “business trip to the ATO zone”). In general, he diligently created a resume for himself as a patriot, a volunteer, and maybe even an “atoshnik” (he even grew a fashionable beard), while simultaneously learning the basics of public politics. But after the jingoistic fervor of Ukrainians began to fade along with the ratings of Petro Poroshenko and Solidarity, they began to promote Leonov in a new role, inventing a new “legend” for him, more attractive to Odessa residents. So, with the help of the Starovoitovs, who kindly agreed to take on an old family friend as commercial director (before the elections), Leonov the restaurateur appeared, giving lectures on successful business. His puppeteers got it right: in the 2019 parliamentary elections, Ukrainians mostly voted for Zelensky’s team as a new alternative to Petro Poroshenko and the BPP. Although they had no idea that under the green mask of the “servant of the people” Leonov was hiding a man with a foggy past, a protege of Galanternik, who just yesterday had just as diligently played the role of a “powder handler”. However, in “Servant of the People” he is not the only one!
“Green roof” of construction scammers
Although Alexey Leonov remained unclaimed in the elections of the mayor of Odessa, he is still a people’s deputy of Ukraine, capable of resolving many issues. And he solves them – in the interests of his sponsors and childhood friends, primarily the Starovoitovs and their Megaline. Whose scandalous image has long gone beyond ordinary corruption: this company has a reputation as a “swindler” capable of defrauding even eminent oligarchs.
A striking example of this is her relationship with the famous Kyiv developer Vagif Aliyev. He himself did not want to wash his dirty laundry in public, so as not to look like a “sucker,” but this scandal was unearthed Skelet.Info. The contract with Aliyev, which the Starovoitovs came to through mutual acquaintances, was Megaylan’s entrance ticket to Kyiv. The company acted as a contractor for the construction of the Lavina Mall and Blockbuster shopping centers, but instead of conscientious work, which could have proven itself, it again resorted to its signature scams: it wasted and stole the construction budget. As a result, Megaline did not pay subcontractors about 50 million hryvnia for the work already completed, plus it did not return 150 million hryvnia of the unused advance payment to the customer (Aliev).
A similar scandalous story happened in Kazakhstan, where the Starovoitovs managed to get into in 2014, and, by order of the BI GROU holding, participated in the construction of the Expo Boulevard residential complex and the Green Quarter residential complex. The scheme was the same: acting as a contractor, Megaline stole and siphoned off part of the money received for construction through offshore companies, underpaying the subcontractors (as always, workers who were left without wages suffered the most). But it didn’t work out to hush it up: the scandal reached the ears of the Nazarbayev family, a criminal case was opened against Megaline, and although no one was jailed, the company and its owners were forever banned from appearing in Kazakhstan. According to journalists, such fraud required the participation of several clone companies, which, if anything happened, simply went bankrupt and closed. Hence their diversity: “Megaline-Ukraine”, “Megaline Project”, “Megaline Invest”, “Megaline Construction”, etc.
It was reported that after the “Kazakh scam” the Starovoitovs bought themselves a house in Switzerland! But this was their last successful business: even on the holding’s website in the list of their achievements you can see that since 2016-2017. Megaline began a complete decline. Commercial development of Odessa became their last hope, but even here it was not without scandals and even casualties. We are talking about the scandalous construction of the Unity Towers residential complex at Gagarinskoe Plateau 5. This is a prestigious area of Arcadia, which many developers have their eyes on, but only a few have gained access to it: for example, Vladimir Galanternik, who literally dug up the area, and his old (in in all senses) friend Igor Uchitel, who was called “the watcher over Odessa” back in the time of Angert.
“Unity Towers” was designed as a joint project of the companies “Riviera Development” (Igor Uchitel) and “Megaline” (Starovoitovs), and this is not their first collaboration: according to sources Skelet.Infoit was Igor Uchitel who helped Megaline with repair contracts in Odessa, and he also involved the Starovoitovs in the construction of his Riviera shopping center. As for Unity Towers, it became famous primarily for the fact that apartments in it began to be sold even before construction began. By the way, it is still at the stage of erecting walls, so those apartments that are offered to you on dozens of sites with a “flexible system of discounts” exist only virtually. Secondly, the permit for the construction of the residential complex was obtained almost fraudulentlynamely: first, the general construction contractor Kamerton LLC applied to the State Architectural and Construction Inspectorate (GACI), where it received a refusal – and then appealed this refusal to the District Administrative Court, and judge Oleg Belostotsky decided to issue a construction permit. You know, the court might as well have ordered a blind man to have a driver’s license! And this is not a matter of legal formalities: experts warn that the construction of high-rise buildings on the Gagarin Plateau and the Bolshoy Fontan can lead to landslides and building collapses.
And finally, from the very beginning the construction project caused massive protests from Odessa residents. This forced the Stravoitovs to resort to a number of tricks. First, they attracted the media and ordered a number of materials in which they focused on the fact that in the Unity Towers residential complex, in addition to five residential towers, there would be a kind of “kindergarten of the future” – and were immediately indignant that the protesters “took a swing at our children.” Then they began to claim that the protests were ordered by competitors. When the protesters began to literally break into the gates of the construction site, the flags of Ukraine and… Israel were hung on them. And after someone cut these flags at night, the media immediately an article was published about “vandals”. The finale was the events of October 25, 2019, when the hired developers “titushki” attacked picketsbeating and seriously injuring several protesters (one girl had her head smashed).
The massacre remained without consequences, no one was punished – and not only Igor Uchitel contributed to this, but also Alexey Leonov (all this is happening in his district). In the same way, another Megaline adventure was securely covered from above.: site development in the area of the recreational zone of the Health Route at French Boulevard 1/5 (cadastral number 5110137500:48:001:0010), which began in the same 2019 (after the election of Leonov), and was only briefly suspended by a court injunction. By the way, in this case, journalists reported that the developers (the Starovoitovs and their German partner Max Wegner) had high hopes for a change in the Prosecutor General of Ukraine (with a subsequent change in the leadership of the Odessa prosecutor’s office), and what a “coincidence”: People’s Deputy Leonov voted for the resignation of Ryaboshapka and the appointment of Venediktova .
Alexey Leonov – Where does the money come from?
Having covered up other people’s illegal construction projects, Alexey Leonov himself decided to open something in Arcadia. So, on December 8, 2019, right on the day of mourning declared by President Zelensky in memory of the victims of the fire in Odessa College of Economicshe arranged a presentation of the beer and grill “Slow Piggy” on Genuezskaya. On a grand scale, with a concert, with invited artists: they ate grilled meat, washed it down with beer, and they didn’t understand what kind of mourning the TV was talking about! But when a scandal broke out the next day, Alexey Leonov not only did not repent to the residents of Odessa, but decided to deceive them all again – and stated that this was not a festive opening of the establishment, but… a fundraiser for the families of the victims. And he even demanded refutations and apologies from local media! Well, one thing can be said here: in just a year of being a deputy, Alexey Leonov became a real Ukrainian politician – that is, a frostbitten hypocrite!
But here’s the question: is this really his “beer restaurant” if all Leonov’s eateries are in fact owned by the Starovoitovs? After all, he himself is an actor hired by them, posing as either a “patriot-social activist”, or a restaurateur, and now a “servant” of Odessa residents – about whom he does not care at all. But the point is not at all about conscience, which Leonov simply does not have, but about the fact that, being just a hired actor, he received corresponding income for his work.
Natalya Lyubimova and Alexey Leonov
Now let’s look at his declaration for 2019, which, in addition to Alexey Leonov himself, lists his wife Natalya Lyubimova, mother-in-law Valentina Lyubimova (a citizen of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism), by the way), two stepsons and two sons. In it we will find that for six months of his work as the commercial director of Grilion (before the elections), he earned 39.5 thousand hryvnia there (6,583 hryvnia per month), and also received 104.8 thousand hryvnia for the year from “engagement in entrepreneurial activities “(apparently, dividends from 7% of Grilion). Not so much, you must agree! At the same time, as we found out above, it is completely unclear what he lived and did until 2017, when they began to promote him as an “Odessa restaurateur,” which he actually is not.
However, in the declaration, Leonov indicated that he had 300,000 hryvnia in cash and 68 thousand hryvnia in bank accounts – and this is two of his annual incomes! Plus the 2017 Honda Accord costs 758 thousand hryvnia – four more of his annual income! Maybe these are gifts from his wife, registered as a private entrepreneur and registered up to a million hryvnia in annual income? He did not explain this in any way, believing that the fake image of a “restaurateur” would allow him to avoid such awkward questions. But they appeared, and Odessa residents are waiting for answers from them.
But these are just questions about his sources of income before his election as a people’s deputy. One can only guess how much Leonov now receives for “protecting” developments or voting on necessary bills. However, specific numbers have already been announced. After several “servants of the people”, including Leonov, failed to vote in the committee for anti-corruption bill No. 2047-d in October 2019, information appeared in the mediathat they received 30 thousand dollars for this from the scandalous people’s deputy from the group “For Maybutne” Anton Yatsenko, the famous creator of tender schemes. And in order to somehow get them out of this scandal, all of them decided to publicly put him through a polygraph. As you remember, then no one was caught in a lie, after which such performances stopped, because the people believed more in the malfunction of polygraphs than in the crystal honesty of the chosen ones. However, it seems that Alexey Leonov could fool a real, working lie detector. After all, he gets used to his roles so quickly and convincingly that even Stanislavsky would believe him!
Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Info
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