Oleg Bakhmatyuk: billionaire from an egg. PART 1

The sharp increase in prices for chicken and eggs in 2017, which further lowered the standard of living of low-income Ukrainians, was artificially provoked – this was the conclusion of the investigation of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine. And behind this were agro-industrial monopolists, among whom Oleg Bakhmatyuk stands out. But why, after the publication of these findings, the AMCU did not impose any sanctions against the “chicken oligarch”, and then completely stopped remembering him in vain? Is it because the Committee is a structure controlled by Bankova – under whose roof Bakhmatyuk again found protection and patronage? How he found it there both under Yanukovych and under Yushchenko…

Oleg Bakhmatyuk. Young years, the first “divorce for money”

People who have encountered Oleg Bakhmatyuk, as they say, live, note one important feature of his character. When he walked towards his goal (and his goal is always profit), he simply did not notice the screams and indignations of those whom he crushes, throws, robs and literally drowns in the shit of his poultry farms. Only when these cries became so loud that they forced the authorities to respond, Bakhmatyuk opened his mouth and… complained about vile competitors and the pressure of the state apparatus on “freedom of business.” They say that this is what helped him become one of the richest people in Ukraine. Well, “chutzpah” is an invariable quality of many domestic oligarchs! However, our hero owed his start to his career as a “successful businessman” to a much greater extent to family ties.

Oleg Romanovich Bakhmatyuk was born on August 14, 1974 in Ivano-Frankovsk, into a family of simple Soviet engineers who worked at a foundry. But a simple life was unacceptable to him, especially since Oleg grew up during the era of the commercial boom of the late 80s and early 90s. What he did during these years remains his personal secret. Skelet.Info all that is known is that he did not join the army, following in the footsteps of his engineer parents, but in 1992 he ended up in Chernivtsi, where he enrolled in the Ukrainian Free Institute of Management and Business (now the Western Ukrainian University of Economics and Law), one of the first commercial universities of economics. He enrolled because Oleg Bakhmatyuk was never a student: he spent his time more usefully, doing business under the wing of his relative Valery Novikov, a well-known person in Ivano-Frankivsk.

Some even called Novikov a “criminal authority,” but this is not so. Born in 1956 in Budapest into a military family (or even KGB officers), Novikov from his youth had very wide connections and opportunities, which he realized in the late 80s, starting with the Vera and K joint venture. According to the “table of ranks” of that time, he was a “criminal businessman”, then a network businessman, engaged in the same business with local organized crime groups. By the way, “Uncle Valera” is still alive today, he long ago moved to Kyiv, and together with his fellow countryman Taras Vinogradnik (chairman of the regional judo federation, former adviser to the deputy minister of defense, former head of the regional “Samopomich”), he became a partner of Anatoly Matvienko (former first secretary of the Central Committee LKSMU). In particular, Olga Matvienko (wife of Anatoly Matvienko), Valery Novikov and Taras Vinogradnik jointly own the companies MAODOT-I and DOSELI LIMITED. Today, the family of Anatoly Matvienko (including his nephew Sergei Berezenko) is one of the shadow lobbyists and patrons of Bakhmatyuk.

Oleg Bakhmatyuk: billionaire from an egg. PART 1

In 1996, along with his first diploma, Oleg Bakhmatyuk got a job at the KGD company – where Valery Novikov assigned him. It belonged to Ivano-Frankovsk businessman Ostap Darmogray and was engaged in the sale of gas received from the Itera corporation. Since at that time not everyone could pay for gas with real money, Bakhmatyuk’s task was to implement the resulting barter and complex offset schemes. According to unofficial information, he was also the “supervisor” of Valery Novikov (and those who stood behind him) in this company. And the government “roof” for the company was provided by the governor of the Ivano-Frankivsk region, Mikhail Vyshivanyuk himself.

Taras Vineyard

Relations between Bakhmatyuk and Darmograi broke down after the 2002 local elections. Then Darmograi ran for mayor of Ivano-Frankivsk, and Bakhmatyuk for deputy of the city council. Their election campaign was marked by a violation recorded by the election commission: having registered an election fund of only 850 hryvnia, they spent tens of thousands on campaigning. At the same time, Bakhmatyuk received his mandate, but Darmograi lost the elections – after which they quarreled with a scandal. Sources Skelet.Info reported that, allegedly, Bakhmatyuk not only “swindled” his boss out of a significant part of their electoral “common fund”, but also ran his own business behind his back to the detriment of the KGD company. And this is quite likely, because already in 2002, Bakhmatyuk opened his own company, the Carpathian Financial Corporation, and found himself a new partner in the person of Igor Eremeev. Their relationship was so close that Bakhmatyuk was even called Eremeev’s manager.

Igor Eremeev

It was then that Oleg Bakhmatyuk pulled off his first major financial scam. As the media reported, thanks to his close acquaintance with the head of the Ivano-Frankivsk branch of Bank Aval, Maria Lobodina, he managed to take out several large loans, allegedly for the development of agricultural enterprises. Among them was the Avangard poultry farm purchased by Bakhmatyuk in 2003, from which his holding of the same name began, now striving for a monopoly on the production of chicken eggs. However, Bakhmatyuk understood the “development” of poultry farming in his own way: he used the loans taken to buy other poultry farms, without rushing to reconstruct them. “Aval,” which then belonged to the oligarch Alexander Derkach, who actively invested money in agribusiness (and organized raider takeovers of enterprises through credit debts), enthusiastically entered into the deal, not suspecting that Oleg Bakhmatyuk was a much more cunning dodger. As a result, he never repaid the loan, and Lobodina had to take the rap for everything. But then Bakhmatyuk added it to his own bank, Financial Initiative, opened in 2004 – when Bakhmatyuk and Eremeev literally raked in money not even with shovels, but with bulldozers.

How to rob a state

One of the first joint projects of Bakhmatyuk and Eremeev were schemes for fictitious export of gas condensate and the same fictitious transfers of FC Volyn football players, with the help of which they reimbursed themselves for fictitious VAT – robbing the state of tens of millions. Moreover, the sources Skelet.Info It was reported that it was Bakhmatyuk who was involved in these scams, since Eremeev had enough profit from his oil business.

VAT refunds went especially well when the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration was headed by Viktor Rakhmil. Bakhmatyuk did not remain in debt: after the “great purge” of 2005, he appointed Rakhmil as chairman of the board of OJSC Ivano-Frankovskgaz.

Victor Rakhmil

Previously, Bakhmatyuk brought Eremeev together with Governor Vyshivanyuk, and this trio had a wonderful idea of ​​using large budget funds through a program for gasification of settlements in Western Ukraine. Moreover, when, after the first Maidan, Vyshyvanyuk was removed from the governorship (he was then reappointed by Yanukovych in 2010), the agile Bakhmatyuk went with this idea to Naftogaz – where he was hired first as head of the department for expert assessment of investments and corporate financing, and then Deputy head of the corporation Alexey Ivchenko. The same one with whose eccentricities the first Ukrainian-Russian “gas war” began. However, behind these eccentricities there were gas schemes of specific individuals.

Alexey Ivchenko

In total, in addition to the money previously received for gasification from the regional budget, in 2005-2006 the state allocated 410 million hryvnia (more than $80 million) to the partners, which they partially used and partially simply stole. In particular, several gas pipelines to the villages were laid using money illegally collected from their residents, while government funds simply disappeared. An audit was initiated, the case almost reached the Prosecutor General’s Office, but it didn’t. This was facilitated by the political crisis of 2006-2007, during which Bakhmatyuk was fired from Naftogaz: everything was attributed to “revenge of the Donetsk people.” But during this time, directly abusing his official position, Oleg Bakhmatyuk also managed to privatize six Western Ukrainian regional gas companies, of which he became a co-owner! In particular, CJSC Investment Company Invest-resource owned: 14.31% of shares of Volyngaz; 15.008% shares of Zakarpatgaz; 10.602% shares of Lvovgaz; 13.1% shares of Chernigovgaz; 14.697% shares of Chernivtsigaz and 12.729% shares of Vinnitsagaz. In turn, 91.44% of the shares of Invest-Resource belonged to Carpathian Oil Company LLC, owned by Oleg Bakhmatyuk. Later, he sold shares of regional gas companies to Dmitry Firtash with great profit.

Sale of shares of regional gas companies to Firtash in 2007-2008. largely happened because Bakhmatyuk, who was fired from Naftogaz… fled to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), where he hid from Ukrainian justice for several months, and needed funds to pay off. But then he was even put on the wanted list, which Bakhmatyuk does not want to remember, and if they remind him, he immediately explains everything with “Donetsk raids.” Well, whatever the background of that case, it was initiated on the basis of the illegal alienation of a building in the center of Kyiv at the address Shchorsa Street (now Evgenia Konovalets) 7/9, which until 2004 was on the balance sheet of the State Administration of Railway Transport. But then the Federal State Institution transferred the building to the authorized capital of OJSC Ukrtransleasing, the head of the board of which decided to sell it to L.I.T.Group LLC at a symbolic price. A few days later, the building was transferred to the authorized capital of the company Modern Technologies and Investments LLC, whose founder was Lyubomir Shershun, the chief lawyer of Oleg Bakhmatyuk. These are the pies!

Very quickly, Bakhmatyuk opened the central office of the Finance and Credit bank in this building, as well as several of his companies, and luxury apartments for sale appeared in the building. Attempts to return the house to the state were made twice. First, in 2007, which forced the oligarch to flee the country – but after the “pro-Ukrainian government” returned to Kyiv, Bakhmatyuk also returned there, the case was closed, and the building is still in his ownership. Then there was a timid attempt by the Prosecutor General’s Office in 2012, but then Bakhmatyuk did not even lubricate his skis, but immediately hid behind the back of the leader of the “united opposition” Arseniy Yatsenyuk and again shouted loudly about “Donetsk raider attacks.” In addition, he found his way into the office of Viktor Yanukovych himself (where “Sasha the Dentist” and “Yura Enakievsky” were also sitting) and managed to negotiate a mutually beneficial truce with them. And, lo and behold, it was from that moment that Bakhmatyuk made a breakthrough in his agricultural and chicken business!

Moreover, for the period 2010-2014. The enterprises “Ivano-Frankivsk Meat Processing Plant”, “Ivano-Frankivsk Sausages”, “Imperovo Foods” and “Stanislav Trading Company” owned by Bakhmatyuk received a VAT refund from the state budget in the amount of about 8 billion hryvnia! Of course, this could not have happened without the direct support of Viktor Rakhmil, who again headed the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration, but such amounts were not distributed without the approval of Kyiv (the entire large VAT refund went through Yuriy Ivanyushchenko). At the same time, these enterprises exported products at inflated prices through offshore companies – which raised suspicions of fictitious exports. However, the case on this fact was opened only in February 2015 and… was quietly closed a few weeks later.

Pototsky Palace in Ivano-Frankivsk

By the way, in the period 2004-2005. Bakhmatyuk did not lose touch with old acquaintances. Through Taras Vinogradnik, he pushed the Ministry of Defense to purchase rich real estate: the former Pototsky palace in Ivano-Frankivsk, in which a military hospital operated for almost two centuries. Bakhmatyuk proposed an exchange: he builds 76 apartments for the military, and they give him the palace. And the exchange almost took place, if in the end the military had not been cheated out of the apartments – and then the Ministry of Defense sued Bakhmatyuk for years.

But he did get his palace, even though it had the status of an architectural monument – it was registered to the company Carpathian Oil Company LLC. The problem is that one and a half hectares of land under the palace remained the property of the Ivano-Frankivsk City Council, and this crossed out Bakhmatyuk’s plans to rebuild it into a hotel complex. But on the other hand, this even allowed him to ask for money for its repairs (from the city, region, Kyiv, even from Poland). Money was once allocated, but no repairs were made, and the building is still in a state of disrepair.

So it stood, cracking, for more than 10 years – and all this time the Ministry of Defense tried in vain to return it. But Bakhmatyuk and the Ivano-Frankivsk City Council have come up with a plan: the oligarch gives the palace to the city community, and it forms a concession for the use of both the palace and the land underneath it. The concession was to be shared by Carpathian Oil Company LLC and several local “city fathers” who wanted to participate in the project to build an elite hotel. And here is the news for November 2017: the transfer of the palace as a “gift to the people” took place! This means that the media will soon report about the concession.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

CONTINUED: Oleg Bakhmatyuk: billionaire from an egg. PART 2

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