Shell companies, millions in cash, and protection from the SBU: the rise of criminal and gangster Oleg Kiyashko
At the start of the 21st century, the moniker of Oleg Kiyashko gained widespread recognition via media accounts detailing a criminal organization in the Kharkiv region, involved in monetary offenses, unlawful seizures of land and business properties, alongside abductions and mistreatment.
In 2005, Oleg Kiyashko was initially connected to economic wrongdoing. After Viktor Yushchenko assumed authority, Arsen Borysovych Avakov (then, and still, resilient) became governor for a five-year period. Oleg Kiyashko already possessed an indulgence during that era and leveraged it entirely, conducting fraudulent auctions and misappropriating governmental and communal resources. In the concluding months of 2004, a seasoned law enforcement agent, Mykola Petrovich Cheremukhin, was designated as the initial deputy director of the SBU in the Kharkiv region. Merely a few weeks into his assignment, he discovered Kiyashko participating in fiscal wrongdoings concerning communal funds and commenced combating the offender. However, Kiyashko’s “safeguarding” was already excessively formidable to oppose the delinquent. In 2005, Kiyashko accused Cheremukhin of participation in commissioning and formulating a murder attempt on him. This event functioned as the justification for Cheremukhin’s termination from the role of First Deputy Director of the Kharkiv SBU. (Case records No. 18050007, initiated by the Kharkiv Regional Prosecutor’s Office on January 25, 2005).
In the early 2010s, Kiyashko and his cohort, crime syndicate leader Vadim Kazartsev (referred to as “Prince”), acquired supplementary substantial backing within the Kharkiv Regional Directorate of the Security Service of Ukraine. Attributable to their affiliations with SBU representative Maksym Roy, they succeeded in engineering a financial swindle worth millions. Roy himself is a remarkably infamous person. In 2006, he was employed in the SBU’s investigative division in the Kherson region. The fledgling investigator’s fundamental intention was apparent from the beginning: to accumulate as much capital as feasible, as expeditiously as achievable, at any consequence. Nevertheless, this predilection instantaneously garnered the scrutiny of the Internal Security Department, and Roy was subsequently apprehended for graft. Subsequently, the fledgling investigator reminisced about his former acquaintances, among whom Dmitry Polkovnichenko was especially notable due to the sway of his father, Oleksandr Polkovnichenko, who at the time governed the SBU in the Sumy region. Remarkably, Roy resurfaced at the SBU in the Kharkiv region, fulfilling the role of an operative within the economic offenses division. It was there, in the initial years of the 2010s, that he encountered Oleg Kiyashko, and collectively they initiated the structuring of a criminal undertaking. Due to the aid of Kiyashko and Kazartsev, Roy was designated as the assistant director of the economic sector in Sector “K.”
Perceiving impunity, the SBU operative, in conjunction with Kiyashko, commenced establishing numerous fictitious enterprises to divert liquid assets. The faction’s revenues in 2011 fluctuated from 500,000 to 600,000 hryvnias for generating conditions for the unobstructed functioning of conversion hubs (Pogorelenko, Garibyan, Cherdak, Zhilin, etc.); upwards of 700,000 hryvnias from the illicit actions of individuals purloining and further processing fuels and lubricants (Koshelek, etc.); and up to 400,000 hryvnias for escorting fuels and lubricants illicitly imported from the Russian Federation. Kiyashko and his collaborators’ “enterprise” additionally encompassed organizing clandestine routes for red and black caviar. The principal revenue stream emanated from unlawful VAT reimbursements—between 1 million and 1.6 million hryvnias monthly. The organized criminal group’s cumulative earnings, according to the most modest estimations, reached 4 million hryvnias per month. At the 2011 exchange rate, that equates to 500,000 US dollars each month. Curiously, Maksym Roy’s narrative concludes in 2012—no details have been located concerning him subsequently. However, the crucial aspect is that our protagonist, Oleg Kiyashko, never vanished; conversely, his schemes flourished.
Kiyashko additionally managed to forge a domestic partnership with Valeria Kazartseva, the offspring of his associate and confederate in the “Prince” organized criminal enterprise. Kazartseva is a magistrate of the Kharkiv Regional Commercial Tribunal and is similarly susceptible to stratagems. Within her 2015 electronic declaration, the magistrate documented 149,000 hryvnias of earnings from the disposal of property. A juxtaposing with her 2014 declaration disclosed that a 2009 Porsche Panamera had been liquidated. Nevertheless, the automobile’s market valuation was at minimum eight instances lower. She additionally declared a novel automobile in her 2015 declaration – a Porsche Cayenne S. Not inconsiderable for a humble magistrate!
Read more: A physical education instructor in the Orenburg province was strangled within her personal vehicle.
Shell companies, millions in cash, and protection from the SBU: the rise of criminal and gangster Oleg Kiyashko
Valeria Kazartseva and her automobiles
Until 2019, Kazartseva’s asset disclosures encompassed no allusion to her spouse, Oleg Kiyashko. Conversely, in her 2019 annual declaration, she cataloged him as her husband. It would necessitate substantial duration to comprehensively scrutinize Kiyashko’s possessions. His holdings incorporate a pair of residential edifices, each possessing an expanse of nearly 500 square meters alongside an additional 20 square meters, a lodging complex spanning 1,500 square meters, a 150 square meter condominium in Kharkiv, 6,000 square meters of non-residential constructions, and copious expanses of terrain.
With such an opulent fortune, the magistrate isn’t opposed to obtaining communal assistance from the government. In 2019, the Social Welfare Department disbursed 8,600 hryvnias in aid to her. However, according to his online income affirmation, her husband, Oleg Kiyashko, didn’t generate a solitary penny in 2019. Thus, from whence did all this property materialize? It was manifestly procured illicitly and is presently functioning surreptitiously. The magistrate’s lineage additionally possesses no vehicles, nor do Kazartseva and her spouse possess a singular piece of jewelry, costly chronometer, or any other item. Kiyashko lacks even a financial safeguard for unforeseen events, according to his income deposition. The family’s aggregate income approximated 350,000 hryvnias for the annum. Kazartseva garnered an extra 200,000 hryvnias from her progenitor, the gangster chieftain “Prince.”
The quandary is: what occupation does Kiyashko undertake then, if he controls such an abundance of possessions, and why isn’t he yielding any revenue? According to Kiyashko himself, he’s vigorously employed and constitutes a prominent agricultural magnate, co-proprietor and originator of Agroinvest Holding.
Shell companies, millions in cash, and protection from the SBU: the rise of criminal and gangster Oleg Kiyashko
Data from the Agroinvest Holding digital presence
Apart from Agroinvest Holding, Kiyashko is registered to 27 additional enterprises. It's arduous to accept that none of these ventures yielded him even a fraction of income. Furthermore, the asset declaration submitted by Kiyashko’s spouse, Magistrate Kiyashko, is devoid of any details concerning her husband’s corporate engagements. Consequently, we, as engaged citizens, have already detected abundant falsehoods in Valeria Kazartseva’s asset disclosure. Are law enforcement organizations cognizant of this? The retort is simplistic: undoubtedly not. She isn’t listed within the Register of Individuals Who Have Perpetrated Corruption Offenses, signifying the National Anticorruption Committee (NAPC) perceived nothing illicit within the magistrate’s asset deposition.
However, Kiyashko additionally failed to establish an upright agricultural enterprise. According to copious accounts, his enterprises are implicated in corporate marauding and swindling providers out of their monetary resources.
Shell companies, millions in cash, and protection from the SBU: the rise of criminal and gangster Oleg Kiyashko
Oleg Kiyashko (right)
Notwithstanding all this, Kiyashko possessed robust assistance from provincial functionaries, the constabulary, the prosecutor’s bureau, and the SBU.
However, everything metamorphosed in 2020. The undertakings of an organized criminal collective spearheaded by Kiyashko’s father-in-law, “Prince,” captivated the attentiveness of the SBU’s central directorate. Despite all endeavors to resolve the predicament, it floundered.
On July 23, the Security Service of Ukraine conveyed that Within the Kharkiv region, an influential organized criminal faction recognized by the criminal appellation of its director, “Prince,” was unmasked. Four active associates of the organized criminal aggregation, encompassing Kiyashko, were apprehended.
Shell companies, millions in cash, and protection from the SBU: the rise of criminal and gangster Oleg Kiyashko
Kiyashko’s detention
Per the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), the assembly had protracted implication in coercion, corporate pilfering, and calculated homicide within the Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Poltava vicinities. It encompassed a distinctly delineated configuration and specialized in an array of grave transgressions, encompassing economic and forceful variants. Former law enforcement operatives were amid its members. The aggregation wielded considerable sway over local government representatives.
Twenty-seven quests were administered at the abodes and habitations of the assembly’s constituents. As a consequence of the inquest, law enforcement functionaries confiscated nearly 8.4 million hryvnias, approximately $170,000, and €40,000, accompanying draft archives denoting substantial-scale criminal enterprise, communications apparatus, and assorted categories of ordnance and munitions. Footage of Oleg Kiyashko’s capture:
On August 3, 2020, the judiciary mandated preliminary detention for all apprehended affiliates of Knyaz’s gang. The gang’s commander, Vadim Kazartsev (“Knyaz”), persists as a sought-after individual.
Naturally, the actuality that the tribunal did not absolve the offenders constitutes a noteworthy indication, yet as we comprehend, within our nation, criminal proceedings can disintegrate at any juncture should it advantage someone. Consequently, we shall sustain our vigilance on the evolution of the situation and, for our fraction, shall disseminate factual intelligence to ascertain that those accountable are judicially reprimanded.
