Maxim Lavrinovich: Corporation “Fraudster and Father”

BEGINNING: Alexander Lavrinovich: Fraudster and Son Corporation

Skelet.Info continues to tell the story about the Lavrynovych family. In this part we turn to the personality of Alexander Vladimirovich’s son, Maxim Lavrinovich. Particular attention will be paid to how they, in a family connection – a father-minister and a son-lawyer – managed to set up and cheat a number of very influential people.

Alexander and Maxim Lavrinovich: Family business

Lavrynovych sent his eldest son Maxim (born 1978) to the Institute of International Relations – perhaps hoping to find a diplomatic place for him, since the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry was initially considered the domain of Rukh. However, by the time Maxim graduated from the institute, Rukh had collapsed, and his father’s position in it had deteriorated greatly. And he had to earn money as a lawyer. But the young international lawyer was desperately unlucky. Before he could get a job at the Ukrainian representative office of Arthur Andersen, the company closed after a huge scandal with a criminal investigation into its activities. Maxim Lavrinovich moved to the Ukrainian representative office of Ernst & Young, but, apparently, the salary there did not meet his needs.

Everything changed in 2004, after the creation of the family law firm Lavrinovich and Partners. More precisely, three firms at once: the law firm Lavrinovich and Partners, Law Firm Lavrinovich and Partners LLC, and Law Firm Lavrinovich and Partners LLC. Officially, they provided services on mergers and acquisitions, corporate law, business protection, privatization, representation in courts, etc. Unofficially, information was received from various sources that Lavrinovich and Partners offered their assistance in tax evasion and in “soft” raider takeovers (without the participation of “titushki”). But the “partners” did not earn much from this, based on the fact that the annual reporting of their LLC for 2005 and 2006 was almost zero. This is not surprising: at that time, Alexander Lavrynovych held the position of deputy chairman of the board of Ukrnafta, which was tightly crushed by Privat. All Lavrynovych could do in his post was not to interfere with Kolomoisky siphoning profits from this half-state enterprise. By the way, I wonder, thanks to which of the “orange” ex-ministers of the Yanukovych government, a defector from Our Ukraine, got this job?

But when, on November 11, 2006, Alexander Lavrinovich again became the Minister of Justice, the affairs of Lavrinovich and Partners went up sharply. But at what expense?

Father and son came up with some brilliant legal schemes based on outright deception. One of them surfaced in the scandalous case of the Dnepr Hotel OJSC, over which the state and the Austrian company Alfa Project Holding GmbH fought among themselves. Now attention: on November 14, 2006 (on the third day of Lavrynovych’s work as Minister of Justice), the Regulations on the Ministry of Justice were adopted, which gave him the authority to act as a representative of “the interests of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine during the consideration of cases by the courts of Ukraine and foreign countries or international judicial bodies and institutions.” So, on the basis of this provision, Alexander Lavrynovych appoints his deputy as a representative of the state of Ukraine in court Valeria Lutkovskaya – which, as they said. Previously worked as a lawyer at Lavrynovych and Partners. Yes, yes, the same Lutkovskaya whom Lavrynovych lobbied for human rights commissioner in 2012! And then Lavrinovich arranges for Law Firm Lavrinovich and Partners LLC to become the lawyers of the Austrian firm Alfa Project Holding GmbH. Thus, both sides were represented by the Lavrinovichs in court!

Lavrynovych and Partners then used some kind of fraudulent scheme or even a banal deception of their client in the case of ownership of the European and Astoria Lux hotels in Dnepropetrovsk in 2008-2009 (Lavrynovych Sr. was then already deputy chairman of the Verkhovna Rada ). It was a struggle for “Lazarenko’s legacy” between his mother-in-law Tamara Tsikova and raiders Gennady Korban and Boris Filatov (Read more about him in Boris Filatov: raider, liar, boor), in which Lavrinovich and Partners officially took the side of Tsikova. Well, unofficially, in the midst of the struggle, Gennady Korban came to the office of Lavrinovich and Partners – after which Tsikova’s defenders suddenly lost the case, and Lazarenko’s mother-in-law lost her hotels. This was strongly reminiscent of “kicking” his client over his knee in direct collusion with his opponent, that is, the dirtiest type of lawyer fraud!

However, the matter continued: the “squeezed out” hotels were first registered in the name of the Canada-Ukraine company of Vyacheslav Braginsky, a partner of Filatov and Korban, and then transferred to the ownership of their Manhattan company. After completing this operation, Braginsky was killed. And here’s what’s interesting: the media mentioned that the Law Firm “Lavrinovich and Partners” was allegedly involved in the process of transferring hotels from the ownership of one company to another.

You can’t wash a black dog white!

When in April 2012 the Verkhovna Rada elected a new Commissioner for Human Rights, Lavrynovych, who lobbied his former deputy, sank to the banal deception of his own party members. As deputies of the PR faction later said, Lavrynovych arrived in the Rada and approached them with signature sheets, asking them to support an alleged bill on benefits for large families. The deputies, of course, did not refuse – but then it turned out that they had signed an obligation to support the candidate Lutkovskaya!

And yet this was just an “innocent prank” compared to what happened in 2010-2013. Lavrinovichs did in their fraudulent schemes. There is not a trace left of the former Soviet laser engineer who joined the Rukhov Democrats – the new Lavrinovich amazed with the scope of his cynicism and descent into banal crime

The greatest resonance then was caused by the scandal surrounding the stolen car driven by the Minister of Justice! This is what happened: on December 6, 2011, People’s Deputy Valery Konovaluk made a sensational statement that the official car of the Minister of Justice Alexander Lavrinovich, a Mercedes Benz GL420 with the number AA 0021 KM, was stolen in 2010 in Germany. We checked the information – everything is correct! But Lavrinovich’s reaction was surprising: instead of returning the car and starting an investigation into its appearance in the garage of the Ministry of Justice, he first “froze off”, and then at one of the press conferences he stated the following: “the car will not be returned, it remains in state ownership.” . According to Lavrinovich, this car was previously confiscated by the state as either “smuggled” or “ownerless”, after which it was transferred to the disposal of the Ministry of Justice – which means that the minister drives it on supposedly legal grounds. In Europe they called this statement “buffoonery” and reconsidered their attitude towards Ukraine, and Lavrynovych Sr. received the playful nickname “Sasha Mercedes”.

But Lavrynovych, without realizing it, with his statement blabbed about a whole scheme in which a whole stream of stolen cars came from the EU to Ukraine – and were “legalized” with the help of the Ministry of Justice. Moreover, they were also stolen in Europe cunningly: by agreement with the owners, who then received insurance plus 20% of the cost of the car from the “hijackers.” That is, according to this scheme, the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice actually “shoeed” European insurance companies!

Not only cars: on January 6, 2012, exactly a few hours before Christmas, the Ministry of Justice signed a tender agreement with the company Ukrspetstorg Group LLC, which was previously called UKRROSPROMSERVICE LLC and, together with 24 of its clones, belonged to a resident of Chechnya, Rustam Dzhambulatov. Through these companies, registered in Kyiv at the address Panas Mirny, 11 (in the basement of a residential building along with 188 other companies), the Ministry of Justice carried out its scheme for trading in “confiscated goods.” Firms charged 15% of the cost of the goods for their services, and one could only guess into whose pocket this money went. At the same time, sources reported that this scheme was used to legalize and trade not only stolen goods, it was just another way to bypass customs duties and fees. The consignment of goods, by prior agreement, entered Ukraine and was “thrown unattended”, after which it became the property of the Ministry of Justice, became “confiscated”, and was sold through intermediary companies.

In 2012, Ukrspetstorg Group LLC, together with JV Justice LLC, TD Elite Service LLC and Niva-V.Sh LLC received a tender for holding auctions for the sale of confiscated apartments of bank borrowers (whose debts had been going on since 2008). At the same time, firms charged up to 15% for their services (realtor services cost only 3-4%), which was simply unprofitable for banks, and in a year they conducted 39 thousand trades! One can only imagine the size of their “fee”!

But this was not enough for the Lavrinovich family. In January 2012 (it turned out to be a good month for the Lavrinovychs!) the Minister of Justice recalled his old idea from 2007 about biometric electronic passports. Then he was not allocated one and a half billion hryvnia for it, but in 2012 Lavrinovich was more persistent. But why did he try so hard? Ukrainian and European media reported that Lavrynovych had an agreement on the production of passports with the German company Muhlbauer (Maxim Lavrynovych went to negotiate with it), that the amount in question was 137 million euros, and the company was ready to give the customer a substantial kickback.

With such family income, it is not surprising that Maxim Lavrinovich’s wedding was discussed throughout Kyiv and Skelet.Info – after all, many Kiev residents had the opportunity to personally see some of the cheerful surprises that Maxim Lavrinovich prepared for his bride. Invited actors and presenters of Inter, all kinds of pranks right on the streets of the capital, an ordered plane and a rented cinema – the Lavrinovichs spared no money for this holiday!

However, it was probably not worth wasting money like that: after Euromaidan, the incomes of father and son fell sharply, as eloquently evidenced by the statistics of the largest law firms in Ukraine. So, if in 2014 Lavrynovych and Partners was in 28th place in the ranking with an income of 16 million hryvnia, then in 2015 it dropped to 66th place with an income of only 6 million. And this was understandable: Lavrinovich-papa no longer occupied managerial chairs and could not contribute to the family business. However, in 2015, Maxim Lavrinovich was still allowed (apparently out of habit) to win in the “Lawyer of the Year” nomination. Coming on stage, Maxim amused me a lot with his political chameleonism: he shouted “glory to Ukraine!” and complained that for 25 long years he could say this greeting only “in the Plastun camp” (was it really banned?), but now new times have come to Ukraine, etc., etc. Sitting in the hall, Lavrynovych Sr. (three-time Minister of Justice in the governments of Yanukovych and Azarov) “cried with emotion.”

Surprisingly, one of the most shameless corrupt officials of the “past regime” remained completely unpunished. Only in July 2015, Alexander Lavrynovych was charged under Article 191-5, for the fact that in 2010 Lavrynovych involved the American law firm Scadden in the case against Yulia Tymoshenko, which received 8.5 million hryvnia from the Ukrainian budget for its services. Well, the matter was very political, and so was the “response” that Lavrinovich received for it. However, after two weeks, the Pechersk court refused to arrest Alexander Lavrynovych and released him on bail of 1.2 million hryvnia. Repeated charges by the Prosecutor General’s Office in August 2016, as well as in March 2017 (in connection with the discovery of a connection with Paul Manafort’s Scadden) did not bring any results. Well, the question arises: has the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine really been unable to collect the necessary materials on the hectic activities of Alexander Lavrynovych in three years, in addition to his waste of public funds to pay for the services of American lawyers? Couldn’t, or just didn’t want to?

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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