Pinzenik Victor: obstetrician of the Ukrainian oligarchy. PART 2

CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Viktor Pinzenyk: obstetrician of the Ukrainian oligarchy. PART 1

A year before his first departure from the Cabinet of Ministers, Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Pynzenyk, together with Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, carried out a historic monetary reform, launching the hryvnia into circulation. It would seem that this is an undoubted “victory”, a reason to wear an embroidered shirt and sing the anthem in chorus, but… Skelet.Info it is known that behind the scenes of this reform lay a grandiose currency scam, conceived and organized by Pavel Lazarenko with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Pinzenyk and the head of the National Bank Yushchenko. Namely: before the reform, a massive purchase of Karbovan residents was carried out, both cash (through banks and money changers) and non-cash (on a cyclopean scale). They were bought for dollars at the rate of 200-250 thousand karbovanets per “buck” (the purchase rate for non-cash ones was not announced), throughout Ukraine and even in Moscow. it was obvious that this was some kind of corporate conspiracy on a very large scale, at the level of the government, bankers and oligarchs. Then, when the hryvnia was introduced on September 2, 1996, the government and the National Bank set its official exchange rate of 1.76 per dollar. After which the purchased karbovanets were exchanged for hryvnia, and the hryvnia for dollars, at a preferential official rate (of course, not for everyone). Thus, this operation brought the money changers 25% of net income! The exact size of that scam is still unknown today, but they say at least hundreds of millions! And it wasn’t only Pavel Lazarenko who received kickbacks from this!

About the Blazer Brothers

Mikhail Blazer was born in 1951 in Kharkov, where he graduated from KhIRE and received a good specialty in digital electronics and quantum physics. However, he did not want to work in his specialty in the USSR, and after several years of ordeal, in 1978 he took advantage of the repatriation program and went first to Israel and then to the USA (that is why Jews were no longer accepted into “defense” universities). But even there, having turned into Michael Blazer, he did not get hired at IBM, but was engaged in trading, and then became interested in the “investment business” and even opened a small bank. Where the Soviet emigrant actually got his money from, he never admitted, but he denied his connections with the “Russian mafia” – claiming that among the companies that invested in him were even Salomon Brothers, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan. It’s hard to say whether this is true or not, because anyone can take out a loan to develop a business from Morgan’s bank – and then claim that JP Morgan invested in it. Moreover, he created his business empire later, and not in America, but in Ukraine – where he returned in the early 90s to “make money.”

In 1994, Mikhail Bleyzer, together with his brother Lev, as well as his wife’s relative, Kharkov resident Valery Dema, created the American-Ukrainian joint venture SigmaBleyzer, with offices in Houston and Kharkov, as well as its subsidiaries JSC Sigma Fund and CJSC Vostochno-Fond Ukrainian Fund Center”. And they began to buy the most interesting, in their opinion, Ukrainian assets. So, according to information from numerous sources Skelet.Infoin 1995-2001, Viktor Pinzenik helped them in this. Among the enterprises that they managed to privatize then with the support of Viktor Mikhailovich were:

• 1995 – OJSC “Zhytomyr Creamery”
• 1996 – Kharkov Quarry Management OJSC, Rogan Meat Processing Plant OJSC, Kharkov Bearing Plant OJSC, Melitopol Tractor Hydraulic Units Plant OJSC, Sevastopol Marine Plant OJSC, Berdyansk Reapers OJSC.
• 1997 – Monomakh OJSC, shares of Ukrnaft OJSC
• 1999 – OJSC “Donetsk Meat Processing Plant”

As we can see, the Blazers’ privatization was most productive when Viktor Pinzenyk sat in the government and could directly influence the processes. Subsequently, SigmaBleyzer was mainly engaged in the promotion and sale of purchased assets, the size of which in 2015 was estimated at $1.1 billion. Among them: Volya-Cable, the COSMO retail chain, and the AgroGeneration agricultural holding.

But in 2007, Pynzenyk returned to the second Tymoshenko government, and things started to improve again for the Blazers. At the insistence of Pinzenyk, Tymoshenko included Mikhail Bleyzer in the Council of Investors under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Within a few months, SigmaBleyzer took advantage of the new opportunity that the 2008 crisis opened up for it. After all, according to Mikhail Bleyzer himself, “…for us, the crisis has only a positive effect. We are buyers, not sellers. The situation today is bad for the seller, but favorable for the buyer. And the longer the crisis lasts, the better for the buyer.” Well, then the crisis in Ukraine lasted more than a year, and Viktor Pinzenyk was in no hurry to restore the economy.

Victor Pinzenik. Fees of the Minister of Finance

Viktor Mikhailovich himself had affairs in the period 2005-2009. went well too. According to his income statements, where he hardly included all his fees, then not only his ministerial salary increased every year, but also the income from interest and the sale of securities. 2005 – 48 thousand hryvnia, 2006 – almost 100 thousand hryvnia, 2007 – more than 300 thousand hryvnia. At the same time, of course, he bought them too, only for amounts that were several times smaller. It seemed that the Minister of Finance was successfully playing on some kind of stock exchange: he was buying profitable assets at a low price, and then selling them at many times higher prices. True, in any Western country such a minister would immediately be kicked out of retirement with a scandal for such games, because this is called the use of official information and official position for personal gain. So much for the principles of the “free market” that the monetarist Pinzenik has been fooling Ukrainians with for years!

However, then information appeared that Pinzenyk did not play on any stock exchange, especially since the nearest normal stock exchange, where Ukrainian securities are constantly sold, is located in London. And that the matter was supposedly completely different: the Minister of Finance received “offerings” and “kickbacks” in greyhound puppies, or rather in securities that were sold to him individually, at a very, very preferential price, several times lower than the exchange price. Everything seemed to be legal: the minister was driving home from work, first looked at the grocery store for bread, then went to see a friend and bought a block of shares from him at a profit. What, isn’t it possible?! It’s only complete idiots who bring boxes of cash dollars into government offices. Well, then the minister also completely legally sold his securities – at the market price, which is also not prohibited.

But the juiciest fees, according to sources Skelet.InfoVictor Pinzenik received in the period 2005-2009. from the turnover of bonds.

The scheme worked as follows: when bonds issued or guaranteed by the state reached maturity, some artificially created problems always arose for their holders. And then some intermediaries appeared, buying up these bonds slightly below their redemption price. Many sold their bonds, rejoicing that they got back almost all the money invested in them – and the intermediary then repaid them, in agreement with the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank, receiving a good interest on this. And, of course, “introducing kickbacks.”

It was also reported that in the Pinzenik ministry in 2005-2006 and 2007-2009. VAT refund schemes also flourished. This was done by two of Pinzenik’s trusted assistants: Denis Fudashkin (Deputy Minister of Finance) and Sergei Chekashin (Director of the Department of Tax and Customs Policy). These two also worked according to the “shadow customs” schemes, brutally breaking the schemes of the “priests” and building their own. But if the dashing lover of sports cars Chekashin developed in 2012, then Fudashkin still has a lot to tell Ukrainian investigators – if, of course, they are interested in it.

The “funny thing” was that in order to receive real dividends, it was necessary to exchange this certificate for shares of enterprises, and to do this before the end of 1998 – but people were not told about this. As a result, the creators of “Galician Investments” sorted out the stakes of shares of privatized enterprises among themselves, and the population was left with 215,632 IC certificates, for which over several years they paid a total of as much as… 7 hryvnia for each certificate. That is, people received even less for their “vouchers” invested in IR than if they had sold them to buyers at the market. So what? No one has ever answered for this scam…

It’s probably not in vain that today Viktor Pinzenik looks at his old business partner Andrei Sadovoy with such hope as a backup option. Still, Samopomich is one of the most likely candidates for the new party of power (after elections or re-elections), which means that Pynzenyk expects to once again sit in the chair of a reformer of the Ukrainian economy.

Sergey Varis, Skelet.Info

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