Millionaire Rafael Goroyan: offshore, grain smuggling, beating women, fake service in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and fraud in obtaining Ukrainian citizenship

Rafael Goroyan, a resident of Nikolaev, is an outwardly respectable businessman, a millionaire from the Forbes list, who owns three dozen elevators. Its main business is transshipment of grain and selling it abroad.

As befits a millionaire of his level, he is a philanthropist and philanthropist, a sponsor of cultural events and churches. An ordinary, it would seem, representative of a large agricultural business.

However, this impression was spoiled by the National Security and Defense Council, when last year, in 2021, its company Prometey Swiss SA was included in the list of companies against which Ukraine imposes sanctions. It turned out that Prometey Swiss SA was involved in tax evasion and smuggling schemes, as a result of which the state lost hundreds of millions of dollars.

In itself, getting into the sanctions lists is an unpleasant thing. And it is clear that Goroyan was outraged, giving out a series of interviews in which he proved that he was a patriot and a law-abiding citizen of Ukraine, bringing millions of deductions to the state budget and ensuring almost the country’s food security.

But it would be better if he kept silent – all these interviews and accusations against the National Security and Defense Council had the opposite effect. If earlier only law enforcement agencies were interested in Goroyan, then after his loud statements in the press, representatives of another part of the press became interested in the person of the millionaire and the agrarian baron – investigators and just lovers of sensations. It is not worth condemning the latter – after all, the media live due to the fact that someone reads their materials. And the attention of the reader just attracts sensations.

Therefore, Rafael Vahagni Goroyan was somewhat stunned by the result. Suddenly, facts of his biography and business methods that were unpleasant for him began to emerge. The image of a patriot fell first. It turned out that the director of Prometey Swiss SA, which according to Goroyan “does business exclusively in Ukraine”, is a Russian citizen Vasily Soldatov, and the company itself is registered in Switzerland:

Then it turned out that the “patriot” had problems with Ukrainian citizenship – in 2008 they even opened a criminal case, and Goroyan’s passport was confiscated. At the same time, strange details of obtaining a passport by the Armenian “refugee” Goroyan, which he preferred not to remember, came out. The matter had already been forgotten, but he was reminded of all this in detail.

According to the decision of the Ship District Court of the city of Nikolaev, Rafael Goroyan and his sister Naira received Ukrainian citizenship through fraudulent actions.

As Naira stated in her explanations, at the age of 14, she suddenly, leaving her mother Vardush Wilhelmovna and her younger brother in the city of Yerevan, went to live in Ukraine. In the Nikolaev region, in the village of Limany, she allegedly lived during June 1989 – June 1990. Then, according to her statement, she also suddenly left again for Yerevan. There she married Mher Garutyunyan and in 2003 reappeared in Ukraine. And in 2007, Naira Goroyan applied to the Korabelny District Court with a request to establish the fact of her permanent residence in Ukraine. The court, on the basis of the testimony of Elena and Igor R., established this fact of residence. With the decision of the court, Naira Goroyan turned to the police and she was granted the citizenship of our country.

And literally the next day, on August 21, 2008, her brother Rafael Goroyan addressed the law enforcement agencies with a similar request for citizenship. He called the basis for granting Ukrainian citizenship the fact that his sister Naira had been permanently residing in Ukraine for a year. And he was also granted the citizenship of our country.

This combination of brother and sister would probably still be a secret with seven seals, if the fact that Goroyan allegedly served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and even has documentary evidence of this is a military ID series NO No. 5085080, which became public.

Indeed, the law enforcement agencies have the original military card with a photo of Goroyan, issued in his name. According to the entries in this military ID, Goroyan served in the Ukrainian army in 1996-1998. At that time, he was a citizen of Armenia, which was officially confirmed in a letter from the National Security Service of that country.

That is, it turns out that if the military ID is a genuine document, then a foreign citizen served in the Ukrainian army for two years. Which in itself is absurd.

Naturally, law enforcement agencies began to investigate these facts. It turned out that 14-year-old Naira Goroyan, at the time of her alleged residence in Ukraine, was quietly studying at the 187th Yerevan secondary school. It turned out that the R. spouses gave deliberately false testimony in court (probably not free of charge). It turned out that Rafael Goroyan had never served in the Ukrainian army, that the military ID, which he flaunted in front of others, was a fake.

The falsification with the receipt of untrue, knowingly false documents with the help of false, deliberately false documents was so obvious that the prosecutor’s office was forced to apply to the Ship Court of the city of Nikolaev with a statement to review the earlier decision to establish the fact of Naira Goroyan’s residence in Ukraine. The court found that the testimony of R.’s spouses was deliberately untrue. The earlier court decision that Naira Goroyan really lived in the Nikolaev region was canceled.

On August 19, 2008, the Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Nikolaev region decided to cancel the citizenship of Ukraine granted to Naira and Rafael Goroyan due to the fact that citizenship was obtained by fraud. The decision of the Ship district court of the city of Nikolaev of August 14, 2008 served as the basis for making such a decision. The court established the fact that Goroyan had committed a criminally punishable act, but released him from criminal liability due to the expiration of the statute of limitations.

However, later it turned out magically that Goroyan is still a citizen of Ukraine, and in 2013 he himself called the decisions of the Ship Court “a mistake of the prosecutor’s office.” The prosecutor’s office was modestly silent about this.

Another story came out that Goroyan also does not advertise – it turned out that his mother, Mirzoyan Vardush Vilhelmovna, an Armenian citizen, takes an active part in her son’s business and is a co-owner of the Ukrainian PJSC Pomoshchyansky Elevator and GRV-AGRO LTD, registered in London.

Is Rafael Goroyan loyal to Russia?

But that’s not all – the Armenian-Ukrainian-British businesswoman actively supports the Russian propagandist Solovyov and Lolita Milyavskaya, who rejoiced at the annexation of Crimea:

Support for the aggressor country is not limited to family ties.

The “valiant soldier” of the Ukrainian army, Goroyan, is closely associated with Konstantin Tistol, co-founder of the Nabat website, which in 2014 published calls from speakers of pro-Russian rallies in Nikolaev, advocating the separation of the Nikolaev region to create Novorossiya.

The site was registered at the same address as Goroyan’s Prometheus. The co-owner of Nabat was the top manager of the businessman Sergey Olkhovsky.

Behind the image of a “patriot” fell the bright image of a businessman leading a transparent and honest business. It turned out that the decision of the National Security and Defense Council regarding the smuggling of Prometey Swiss SA is the tip of the iceberg.

Because the basis for the creation of the Prometey grain holding was the creation of a wide network of LLCs with fictitious owners. Sergei Olkhovsky, one of the directors of Prometheus, an accomplice of Goroyan, found and selected for the scam the most unprepared and unprotected people from among the lonely old people. Then a group of black notaries entered their names in the founding documents, and the firms began to actively trade.

Through their accounts, millions of dollars in transactions for the purchase of grain, fertilizers and agricultural equipment were carried out with many violations, and the inspectors had to deal with unsuspecting fictitious owners.

The use of each such company allowed Goroyan and his syndicate to hide from the state from 5 to 20 million hryvnias, and there were about 100 companies: Did Rafael Goroyan and his syndicate steal tens of millions of hryvnias from the budget of Ukraine every year?

Registered companies Rafael Goroyan

If you look at the registration data of Goroyan’s companies that are part of the Prometheus group, you will find a strange pattern – LLCs with millions of turnovers have minimal authorized capital:

And through a chain of nominees and firms, they are registered offshore. How it works, we will show on the example of Prometheus Silos LLC. Its founder is Zernotorg Company LLC:

Its founder is the company “Granush Limited”, registered in Cyprus:

And then – everyone, they arrived:

Offshore for that and offshore to cut the ends. And such a story – with the vast majority of the sixty firms of Goroyan:

So the story of an honest businessman who fills the budget of Ukraine fades, just like the story of a patriot.

But that’s not all. A very vile story, which the media savored with particular pleasure, became public. It is not surprising – the story itself is ugly and rather nasty, but it gives it a special flavor that the main character in it is not some habalka from the market, but a millionaire from the Forbes list.

Goroyan was recalled how he ordered his subordinates to complain about videos posted on YouTube in which he beats a woman. And he did not just oblige, but issued an order with his own signature. This “document” states that “heads of all departments, directors of elevators and farms are required to instruct subordinate employees to file complaints about videos that damage the company’s reputation.”

We are talking about a video ten years ago, which are posted on the YouTube platform with the title “Rafael Goroyan beat a woman.” The first video shows a conflict during which an unknown man and woman “exchange pleasantries” in raised tones, and after a verbal skirmish develops into a fight.

In the second video, the same woman is standing in blood-stained clothes, crying and refusing to comment, answering only the question of who did it – “Rafael Goroyan.” At this point, the second video ends.

Each employee had to provide screenshots of their complaints, which should be at least three from each employee (from different IP addresses and Google accounts). Control over the implementation of the order was entrusted to the company’s PR manager. For non-compliance with the requirements of the employees of the companies, Goroyan was fined.

Why Rafael Vahagni Goroyan took care of these stories ten years after their release is unknown.

But on the other hand, this story – both the plots themselves and the organization of complaints – characterize him much brighter and better than all the stories with the theft of millions, a fake passport, the same “service in the army”, support for separatists and offshore companies. All this can be understood. But how to understand the beating of a woman fit to be a mother to this “philanthropist of the Nikolaev churches”? Let her be wrong a hundred times?