Pavel Fuks: Ukrainian-Russian billionaire, or nomadic swindler from Kharkov? PART 1
In the midst of the “hybrid war with the Russian aggressor,” which President Poroshenko and then Zelensky regularly broadcast to the whole world, Moscow businessman Pavel Fuks appeared in Ukraine and began buying up its assets. At the same time, he is equally successful in “stirring things up” both with former “Donetsk” and with people from the circle of the current Ukrainian president. In addition, Pavel Fuks calls himself an old friend of the Kharkov mayor Kernes, although they are connected by much more than he admits to journalists. But who really is this man, whom many mistakenly perceive as a successful oligarch-developer, and why did he appear in Ukraine?
Gepa and his team
The childhood and youth of Pavel Fuks is a continuous dark spot in his biography, which has become more or less open only since the 90s, when he moved to Moscow. What did he do before that? According to Fuchs himself, he started his first business in a Soviet school: he resold imported cigarettes to his classmates for 50 kopecks apiece, which he allegedly bought for 3 rubles a pack from the doorman at Intourist. And also, Fuks assures, it was then that he began his long-term friendship with Gennady Kernes and Mikhail Dobkin.
Well, let’s look at the facts and available sources. So, Pavel Yakovlevich Fuks was born on October 26, 1971 in Kharkov, in the family of Yakov Lazarevich and Bella Iosifovna. In the 80s they had a private house on the outskirts of Kharkov (Deputatskaya Street, right next to Logachevka) and an apartment on Saltovka, in a multi-storey building No. 11 on Korchagintsev Street. The latter is located just a few hundred meters from house No. 2-a on Eideman Street, where he lived with his parents at that time Mikhail Dobkin. And although there was a two-year difference between the boys, they could easily go to the same school and even be friends.
They could, if not for one “but”: in this triangle the problematic angle was Gennady Kerneswho then lived in New Houses (Newton, 129). It would have been problematic for Fuchs to be friends with both Dobkin and Kernes at the same time, because then these two existed in parallel universes. And it wasn’t a matter of age at all (Kernes is 10 years older than Dobkin and 12 older than Fuchs). It’s just that Misha Dobkin was an easygoing teenager, helping his father first in the store and then in the cooperative, and Gennady Kernes was then his opposite – the street “swindler” Gepa, who with his gang either twirled thimbles or waited for unlucky suckers near the auto shop. As they say, the prince and the pauper! Therefore, a logical conclusion arises that Pavlik Fuchs was then “hanging out” with someone alone. According to one version (and different stories are told about Fuchs’s early years), Pavlik first became friends with Dobkin, and only then through him “reached out” to Gepa. Which I followed, captivated by the dashing romance of the “cool guys.”
And now everything comes together. After all, Fuchs lies greatly about his extremely profitable speculation in cigarettes (he claimed that he sold two packs a day). Of course, the Kharkov boys of the mid-80s had a huge interest in imported cigarettes, but only “special” ones could be sold for fifty dollars apiece – and they were bought only to try or “show off”, so Fuchs did not have a brisk trade among his poor classmates would. And one more detail: the doormen of Intourist then immediately turned away teenagers asking to sell cigarettes and chewing gum; only their own people could buy them there – very good friends and regular small-scale wholesale buyers, that is, black marketeers. The black marketeers “gave” part of the goods to street thugs like Gepa and his team, which included high school teenagers. And an important final touch – Pavlik Fuchs was seriously involved in boxing in his youth. Thus, the following picture arises: high school student Pavel Fuks was hanging out with Gepa’s gop company, from here some imported goods (cigarettes, chewing gum) appeared on his hands. In addition, Gepa’s boys were not in poverty at all, since they regularly “made a penny” in a variety of ways. But Pavel Fuks wisely keeps silent about the details of their activities, so as not to compromise either himself or his friend Kernes. At the same time, he once wanted to publicly boast that, while still a high school student, he lived not only on his parents’ lunch rubles, but also knew how to earn money himself. And then he brought to light the most harmless episode from his youth, remembering how he once sold a pack of menthol cigarettes to his classmates – turning it into a whole story about a well-run business of a young businessman.
Well, if the most harmless activity of Pavel Fuks in his youth was speculating on cigarettes among minors, then one can only guess about Gepa’s assignments…
Gennady Kernes and Pavel Fuks
Pavel Fuks and Moscow City
The parents of Mikhail Dobkin protected their son from the corrupting influence of Gepa for a long time, and they could also tell the parents of Pavel Fuks what kind of bad company their son got involved with. Who knows how this family drama would have ended if Gepa had not been behind bars in 1989-90 on charges of a number of crimes. The future mayor of Kharkov spent two years first in the famous 15th hospital for a psychiatric examination, and then in a pre-trial detention center – and came out right at the beginning of the criminal redistribution of Kharkov, which pretty much wiped out the ranks of the “lads”. Gepa’s company temporarily fell apart, which had a positive effect on Pavel Fuks’ future: his parents enrolled him in the Kharkov Civil Engineering Institute (KHISI, now the University of Construction and Architecture) at the Faculty of Economics. In 1992, during his studies, Pavel Fuks received his first official job: the position of adviser to the general director of the Intrada Trading House joint venture, which at that time was undergoing transformation (the former Soviet-American joint venture was divided between Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) and Ukraine). There is information that Fuchs was placed there too by his parents, who were directly involved in this enterprise. Whether he was engaged in some kind of commerce there or was simply listed as receiving a salary remains unknown – but Fuchs proudly included Intrada (a company that trades in everything) in his biography.
And in 1995, a new high-profile entry appeared in Fuchs’ biography: advisor to the chairman of the board of Prominvestbank. But whether we were talking about the Ukrainian “Prominvestbank” – one of the largest in the country, or about its Moscow namesake – a very average financial institution at that time, was never specified. Well, there is no need to clarify, this is precisely the Russian “Prominvest”, because Pavel Fuks just then fled to Moscow – that’s what they called his sudden departure from Kharkov, about the reasons for which almost nothing is known. However, according to unconfirmed information, almost rumors received Skelet.InfoFuchs fled from Ukraine after he “swindled” either someone’s company or a budget organization. And allegedly Gennady Kernes was involved in this incident, who helped his old friend get away with it, and even recommended him to his friends in Moscow.
Sergei Batozsky with his father
According to information from another source Skelet.Infothe departure of Pavel Fuks to Moscow with his subsequent “employment” in the capital was organized by Sergei Batozsky (nickname Baton). This man, although he was the son of the respected Soviet freestyle wrestling coach Stanislav Batozsky, from his youth followed the criminal path of the “swindler”, was an old “sidekick” of Gepa and, accordingly, could have known Fuchs since the 80s. In the 90s, Baton was already a major crime boss and business partner of Kernes, and even the police disagreed about which of the two was his henchman. Baton had too extensive connections, who was doing business not only in Kharkov, but also in Moscow: with the leader of the Orekhovskaya group Silverst, with the leaders of the Kemerovo brothers Kuznetsov, with Chechen organized crime groups, with the “authorities” Malya, General and Alik Moskovsky. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Baton was involved in various activities in Moscow: from wholesale trade to drug trafficking (cocaine). In Moscow, he was killed in 2001 after a conflict with the Luzhniki gang.
However, sources clarify, in Moscow Pavel Fuks went into business under the leadership of Yuri Dement, another mutual acquaintance and business partner of Botozsky and Kernes. The same Dement, whose murder in Kharkov in 2016 became a resonant criminal event, and has still not been solved. After that tragedy, one of the journalists gloomily remarked: they say, Kernes’s old friends are dying one after another, and Fuchs needs to be more careful.
Then, in the 90s, Dement placed Fuchs in a completely legal business, albeit under the roof of an organized crime group, in gangster firms. And Fuchs really sold everything in a row, which sold well – here he tells journalists the truth, although he keeps silent that he was not at all a lone businessman who came to Moscow to try his luck. Things went especially well for Fuchs in the late 90s, when Batozsky himself fled to Moscow from the Kharkov police. Immediately after Batozsky moved, the Foreign Economic Corporation CJSC was established in Moscow, which was engaged in the wholesale trade of cars and motorcycles, and in 1999 Pavel Fuks became its vice president. At the same time, Pavel Fuks graduated in absentia from the Faculty of World Economics of the Russian Economic Academy. Plekhanov (although evil tongues said that the diploma was given to him by the “brothers”).
The murder of Sergei Batozsky happened just when he began to master the construction business in Moscow, and attracted Pavel Fuks to him – after all, he was the only one of the people entrusted to Baton who understood construction (after all, he graduated from KhSI, albeit from the Faculty of Economics). After the murder of the authority, serious changes took place in his orphaned entourage; with the money of the organized crime group, it was decided to create several companies, including Tekhinvest LLC – one of the founders of which was Pavel Fuks. In fact, he became the manager of the organized crime group’s money invested in the construction business.
But the criminal “roof” alone was not enough for the development of the construction business in Moscow, because all permits and contracts were issued by the Moscow mayor’s office. And here, since the 90s, Baton’s organized crime group has had its eye on the rapidly developing Ingeocom corporation, owned by Mikhail Rudyak. The key to Rudyak’s success was his personal acquaintance with Yuri Luzhkov, who in 1997 gave him Manezhnaya Square for reconstruction. And even then Rudyak had a companion, Alexander Shishkin, a future State Duma deputy from United Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), in the 90s he was known as a criminal businessman who managed the Kemerovo money.
Mikhail Rudyak
By 2000, Rudyak had a dozen and a half subsidiaries (for each major construction project), but then an accident happened to him: he fell from a snowmobile and received a head injury. While he was in the hospital, his business went haywire as a result of an attempt to “squeeze” him out by some influential people, but in 2002, Ingeocom began to grow again – because people from Batozsky’s former organized crime group extended their hand to him. Considering the close ties of the late Baton with the Kemerovo team, this should not be surprising. And the most prominent figure from the Batozskys, practically their representative, was Pavel Fuks, who became the chairman of the board of directors of Ingeocom-Invest, another specially created subsidiary of Ingeocom. But this collective portrait will be incomplete without another active participant in those events – the scandalous Kazakh businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov, who in the spring of 2003, President Nazarbayev pardoned him from yet another prison term. Ablyazov immediately appeared in Moscow, where he joined Rudyak and Fuchs, creating and then heading the Eurasia Investment and Industrial Group. They all decided to participate in the most ambitious construction project in the Russian capital: the construction of the Moscow City complex.
Mukhtar Ablyazov
Participation in the project of representatives of two organized crime groups and a world-famous swindler from Kazakhstan simply could not end without scandals and funerals, especially after in 2005-2006. Ingeocom’s projects brought in about a billion dollars, immediately raising its founder to the list of the richest people in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). And it so happened that he was the first to be buried: in May 2007, while flying on an airplane, Mikhail Rudyak suddenly became ill and died suddenly. The official cause of death was listed as cerebral hemorrhage due to an old head injury he suffered seven years ago. However, his death was strange and caused misunderstandings about polygamy. It was not only suspicious that before his death, Mikhail Rudyak completely strained his relationship with his wife, who demanded divorce and division of property (the businessman loved to have affairs with famous actresses, and died in the arms of Evgenia Kryukova). A few months before Rudyak’s death, his partners reorganized their companies. And, in particular, Pavel Fuks united the companies (both completely controlled by himself and in shares with Rudyak) participating in the Moscow City projects into the MosCity Group (MCG) holding. And after Rudyak’s death, it was not difficult for Fuchs to snatch the deceased’s share from his heirs (wife, son and daughter), who could have little objection to partners with such a criminal past behind them. This made Pavel Fuks the main owner of the MCG – but it was only the beginning of a big scam!
Big scams: the ghost of Yeltsin and the shadow of Putin (*criminal)
Behind the walls of the Moscow City glass skyscrapers, which were supposed to become a symbol of the new Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) of the 21st century, lie the criminal secrets of their creators and owners. From the very beginning, companies and firms that belonged to people with criminal records or were created on the “common funds” of organized crime groups took part in the project. So “Techinvest” Pavel Fuks and “Eurasia” Mukhtar Ablyazov had quite “worthy” business partners there!
Among them, it is worth noting the Guta group, which included Guta Bank (now VTB-24), Guta Insurance, Guta Development and other divisions. From the very beginning, Guta owned 38% of the shares of OJSC City, a company created for the commercial management of Moscow City. And the creators and owners of “Gut” were a trio of very remarkable personalities! The first is Yuri Gushchin (born 1944), who constantly declared himself to be a former Soviet “guild worker” who allegedly served time for the underground production of sweets, and then became a successful businessman in the new free Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). In fact, citizen Gushchin was convicted in the USSR four times: for theft of state property, for burglary and twice for fraud, spending a total of 22 years behind bars! His companion Yuri Khlebnikov was convicted of fraud twice (in 1973 and 1980), and the second time they were together in the same case related to large-scale theft of public funds in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). According to the information available to law enforcement agencies, one of the party officials of the region was involved in that theft: the third secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee, Yuri Petrov, who was a confidant of the first secretary of the regional committee, Boris Yeltsin. The party apparatchik, of course, escaped justice. But when Gushchin and Khlebnikov were released, and Yuri Petrov became the head of President Yeltsin’s Administration in 1991, the trio created Guta. Moreover, since 1993, Petrov headed the State Investment Corporation (called “Yeltsin’s cash desk”), managing enormous finances.
After the death of Mikhail Rudyak and the reformatting of the companies participating in the Moscow-City project, Guta sold its stake in OJSC City to the structures of Oleg Deripaska and Valentin Yumashev. Since Deripaska is Yumashev’s son-in-law, their business is often intertwined. And here’s what’s interesting: Pavel Fuks always claimed that his partner in the Imperia Tower project (one of the Moscow City towers, which was built by his MosCity Group) was Deripaska. However, informed sources Skelet.Info They found out that in fact Fuchs’ partner was the company Valtania Holdings, which belonged to Yumashev. Why did Pavel Fuks not want to make public his business relations with the son-in-law of the first president of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) (Yumashev is married to Yeltsin’s daughter Tatyana Dyachenko), what is the reason for such secrecy?
Valentin Yumashev and Tatyana Dyachenko
Meanwhile, the “Imperia Tower” project, which “prominent developer” Pavel Fukus is still so proud of, successfully launched in 2004 not only thanks to the participation of Yeltsin’s “family” in it. In the same year, another remarkable event occurred: the Russian VTB Bank bought an 85% stake in Guta Bank, which was on the verge of collapse due to an intricate tangle of “problem loans” and debts to its own companies (the Guta group), as well as partner companies, among which were the companies of Pavel Fuks. These debts reached one hundred million dollars and were the result of ordinary banking scams – like those that were carried out en masse by Ukrainian banks in 2008 and 2014. But they did not touch the partners of the Yeltsin “family”, although VTB “shook out” part of the stolen money from them, and then renamed the purchased “Guta Bank” to “VTB-24”. And at the same time, VTB opened a credit line of 4.5 billion rubles on the most favorable terms for the builders of Imperia Tower (Pavel Fuchs and Valtania Holdings). In fact, this marked the end of the era of big financial scams in the history of Moscow City (2001-2004) and the beginning of big construction – since VTB no longer allowed its money to be simply swindled through fraudulent schemes.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUED: Pavel Fuks: Ukrainian-Russian billionaire, or nomadic swindler from Kharkov? PART 2
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