Rodin Yuri: the great schemer from Pivdenny Bank. PART 2

BEGINNING: Yuri Rodin: the great schemer from Pivdenny Bank. PART 1

Here is another example of theft. On January 13, 2016, 37-year-old head of branch #15-29 of Pivdenny Bank Nadezhda Grinyuk suddenly died in Odessa. The diagnosis was allegedly from the effects of the flu, because at that time another epidemic broke out in the city. But it was somehow strange that a young and not at all weak-health woman was sent to the grave by a simple flu, and she was buried immediately the next day. Even stranger was the fact that on January 20, the bank’s security department itself took a statement and prepared documents to the prosecutor’s office, accusing the deceased of large-scale theft. Or rather, writing off to her a shortage of 2.7 million euros, 1 million hryvnia and 3.5 million dollars in deposits of individuals. Or, to be more precise, in two dozen deposits that suddenly disappeared somewhere. People came at the beginning of the year for interest – and did not find their deposits!

Moreover, according to data Skeleton.Infosimilar cases of theft of depositors’ money happened in other branches of Pivdenny. But the list of depositor-victims of department No. 15-29 was even published: this is I.N. Specter, F.G. Kudsiye, E.M. Kudsiye, G.V. Gravtsov, E.V. Kulazhenko, N.V. Lebedeva, I.Yu. Fialko, V.I. Fialko, Yu.N. Makarov, I.A. Mironova, T.V. Chimchuk, N.V. Lototskaya, M.F. Lototsky, S.M. Lototsky, T.S. Kotova, A.A. Sapsovich, A.A. Sapsovich (daughter), N.M. Anufrieva, G.M. Kudrya, A.P. Panayotova, V.M. Vasilchenko. The names of ordinary Ukrainians seem to mean nothing to us… But a seditious thought creeps in: are there any Chabad parishioners among them? Unlikely.

The scandal with the raider takeover of the Kharkov shopping center “Ukraine” (former department store “Ukraine” on Saltovka), in which the owners of “Pivdenny” participated and Yuriy Rodin was directly exposed, was quite loud. The essence of it was as follows: the building of the shopping center was owned by OOO “Invest-Proekt”, which in turn was owned by two firms that jointly carried out management. The co-owners of one of them were Yuriy Rodin, Mark Becker, Lyubov Becker, Levon Vanetsyants and several other small beneficiaries. The co-owners of the other were Tatyana Sidorova, Irina Pilipenko and Olga Shirinkina (representing the interests of Gennady Soroka, whom we mentioned in the previous part). And so in November 2009, the first firm began to squeeze out the second, using several court decisions for this (Yuriy Rodin always knew how to find a common language with accommodating judges).

And then on January 18, 2010, the Rodina members physically seized the shopping center building, using the notorious Dnipropetrovsk raider Konstantin Parshin and his armed guards from the private security company Griffin. Today, Parshin is known as a “volunteer, ATO hero and patriot,” one of the founders of the PATRIOT military training center – and he is traditionally surrounded by strong and armed guys who now call themselves “defenders of Ukraine.” But in 2010, Parshin’s reputation was specific and semi-criminal (he was even called the leader of an organized crime group), Privat often used his services in corporate raids (and other dealings), and Yuri Rodin also turned to him more than once. At that time, the media even published a printout of his phone number conversation of Yuri Rodin with the director of Leasing-Consult LLC Roman Kirnos, where “Kostya” Parshin was mentioned. The manner of speech of the “famous banker” was quite impressive with “petty crime”!

By the way, after the story with the shopping center “Ukraine”, billboards with anti-advertisement of the bank “Pivdenny” appeared in several cities of Ukraine. The bank’s logo and the inscription: “An impeccable reputation is the first necessity for a crook” were very eloquent! However, the customer of this anti-advertisement remained unknown to the public.

With the help of “Parshin’s guys” in 2009, Rodin and “Pivdenny” essentially pocketed the Tavria cognac factory. At that time, a conflict arose between the main shareholder Valery Shamotiy (68% of shares) and the director of the factory Alexander Sidorenko (27% of shares). The parties actively fought each other, and then “Griffin” and Parshin arrived at the enterprise (as a result, 39 people were injured), and after a long standoff, the shares of Shamotiy and Sidorenko (95% in total) were sold to the Pivdenny bank. True, “sold” is a big word, because part of them were given away for debts, and they didn’t take much for the rest, looking askance at Parshin’s thugs.

Pivdenny is also involved in the high-profile scandal surrounding the SkyMall shopping center. Let us recall that this shopping center was built by the Arricano company of Estonian businessman Hillar Teder and his partners Andrei Adamovsky and Alexander Granovsky (Stockman company). But then the partners began to violate the terms of the agreement, Adamovsky refused to sell the controlling stake to Teder, began to withdraw SkyMall assets and hide them in the Pivdenny bank. In fact, the expression “withdraw assets” hides a scam in which both Pivdenny and Adamovsky participated, because these were pre-agreed loan and collateral schemes. Yuri Rodin could not have failed to know that SkyMall was a controversial object around which litigation was beginning, but he made a deal with Adamovsky. And by the way, this was not their only joint scam.

2012: Almost an Apocalypse

The consequences of old scams came back to haunt them from time to time. In 2011, Pivdenny, as they say, was “really attacked.” So much so that the head of its board, Vadim Morokhovsky, left the bank, taking his deputy wife with him and selling his block of shares – and opened his own bank, Vostok. Nobody talked about the real reasons for the departure of the top manager of Pivdenny, who had raised the bank to its current level. Morokhovsky himself tried to present it as the result of his quarrel with Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Morokhovsky headed the Odessa “Front of Change”) because the latter ordered to support Eduard Gurvits in the Odessa mayoral elections, with whom Morokhovsky was not on good terms. But was it worth leaving his bank because of this?

But shortly before Morokhovsky left, Pivdenny became the center of an international criminal scandal. Alexander Licht, a citizen of Germany and director of the German company GIS, decided to demand an old debt from the bank. Namely: in 2007-2008, Licht organized a scheme by which he attracted money from German businessmen to Pivdenny through his structures at good interest rates.

However, after the crisis, Licht received neither the interest nor the deposits themselves. On September 14, 2011, Licht arrived at the main office of Pivdenny for a final insistent conversation. And on the way back, an assassination attempt was made on him: his car was stopped and shot at with machine guns, although Licht himself was not touched. After this, Licht left Ukraine forever, finally demanding that its law enforcement agencies initiate a case against Yuriy Rodin, Mark Becker and Vadim Morokhovsky. The case was indeed opened, but in 2012 it was effectively closed, recognizing Licht himself as a fraudster. They say he staged an assassination attempt in order to put pressure on respected financiers!

Obviously, the true reasons for the breakup of the Rodin-Becker-Morokhovsky triumvirate were simply not disclosed. But the media then claimed that Yuriy Ivanyushchenko had laid his heavy hand on Pivdenny. He was also accused of continuing the attacks on Rodin-Becker’s capital: in early 2012, a new scandal erupted around Stalkanat-Silur. The company was searched, a criminal case was opened against the former director of the rope plant Shemyakin, and the legality of the acquisition of the rope plant by Stalkanat in 2001 was called into question.

The Rodina name hardly ever came up in this scandal, and by that time he had re-registered his share of the rope factory shares to an offshore company. But the investigation had questions for Nemirovsky, who by that time was already a co-owner of Stalkanat-Silur, but he had fled to Israel in advance, where he spent several months settling things. Nemirovsky would sometimes claim that this was political persecution by the “regime” (he headed the Odessa organization of the “Front of Change” after Morokhovsky), and sometimes he would claim that Yuriy Ivanyushchenko wanted to seize his factory. Then Nemirovsky himself admitted to journalists that he had conducted a “covert campaign,” solving this problem with very influential people, and not only in Ukraine itself. And he finally decided: by the summer of 2012, he was back in Odessa, and all the attacks on Stalkanat-Silur had ceased…

It is worth mentioning that Nemirovsky’s political career flared up brightly and quickly died out in the spring of 2014. In March, he was appointed chairman of the Odessa Regional State Administration, and on May 6, he was dismissed amid a scandal. The fact is that, although Nemirovsky’s role in the tragic events of May 2, 2014 remains unclear (and who would have found out?), he immediately publicly (on Facebook) approved of the actions of the “ultras”, calling the victims “terrorists”. And when he later came to the funeral of the victims of the tragedy, the crowd booed and chased the governor away. The next day, Turchynov fired Nemirovsky, apparently in order to somehow reduce the passions in the city.

Rodina’s scams and Ivanyushchenko’s schemes

How exactly did Nemirovsky settle his problems with Stalkanat-Silur in the spring of 2012? The answer to this question would help to unravel another: why did Pivdenny Bank participate in Yuriy Ivanyushchenko’s fraudulent schemes? After all, if Yura Yenakievsky really wanted to “squeeze out” the bank itself first, and then the Odessa Rope Plant, then he was trying to take them away from Rodin and Bekker. What then forced them to participate in his scams? Obviously, only some kind of agreement was reached. Skeleton.Info suggests the following: Ivanyushchenko agreed not to touch the plant, but in exchange Rodin and Becker were supposed to help him get the stolen money out of Ukraine.

There is a little backstory to this story: in 2002, the new rabbi of the Riga synagogue, Arie Bekker, bought himself Latvian citizenship (received for “special merits”), and a year later he bought 90% of the shares of the Latvian bank “Regionala Investiciju Banka”. Yes, our Latvian rabbi-banker was that very son of Mark Bekker! At the same time, Arie-Dmitry claimed that he bought the bank with his father’s money, modestly keeping silent about the fact that he was also a co-owner of “Pivdenny”. In 2006, Becker Jr. sold 49% of shares in Regionala Investiciju Banka Pivdenny Bank. Then there were some more manipulations with the shares, after which the shareholders of the Latvian bank, in addition to Pivdenny, became Mark Becker (13.33%), Tamara Rodina (6.01%), Levon Vanetsyants (4.49%), Yuri Rodin (2.29%), Alla Vanetsyants (1.03%). Let us recall that all of them are among the shareholders of Pivdenny, through which they also owned Regionala Investiciju Banka. Such is the intricate scheme, which later became even more complicated when the Rodin and Becker families began to transfer their shares to offshore accounts. And finally, Yuri Rodin became the head of the supervisory board of the acquired bank, and Mark Becker became his deputy.

Why the Rodins and Beckers needed a bank in Latvia became known only in the last few years, when Regionala Investiciju Banka was involved in a number of corruption scandals and criminal cases. The most high-profile case was the theft of the so-called “Kyoto money” that Ukraine received under Yankovic when it sold its industrial emissions quotas under the Kyoto Protocol. And not just any case, but criminal case No. 32013110090000107, the main defendants of which were the State Enterprise “GosEkoInvest”, LLC “Karpatybudinvest” and the “New Technologies” fund. The latter two are directly connected with Yuriy Ivanyushchenko and his “gray accountant” Ivan Avramov, who is considered Ivanyushchenko’s “overseer” in Odessa, and the person who plays the role of a link between Ivanyushchenko and the owners of “Pivdenne”. In particular, the founders of New Technologies are the British companies Industry East Europe Investments Ltd and Production Investment Managenent Ltd, which are owned by the British companies Palace Ltd (Ivan Avramov) and Rollexa Ltd (Irina Ivanyushchenko and Diana Ivanyushchenko, wife and daughter).

So, according to Ivanyushchenko’s scheme, in 2012-2014, Karpatybudinvest LLC and a number of other Ivanyushchenko-Avramov firms executed fake contracts with the State Enterprise GosEkoInvest, embezzling “Kyoto money” and transferring it to the accounts of the New Technologies fund. From there, the money went through the founding firms Industry East Europe Investments Ltd and Production Investment Managenent Ltd to their special accounts in Regionala Investiciju Banka, owned by Yuriy Rodin and Mark Becker. And from there, the money was sent wherever Ivanyushchenko wanted, to any corner of the world. Something even returned back to Ukraine and settled in a special account in Pivdenny Bank.

But the fruitful cooperation between Rodin and Ivanyushchenko was not limited to this! A little later, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened criminal case No. 42014000000000029 on the fact of the creation of a criminal organization, headed by Yanukovych’s inner circle.

According to the materials of this case, the criminal activity of this organization consisted of causing colossal economic damage to the state, which was carried out with the involvement of banks: Real, Brokbiznesbank, Pivdenny and Regionala Investiciju Banka, through which the stolen money was transferred abroad.

Do you think these schemes were destroyed in February 2014? No way, they were used further – which led to the thought that they had not been used in the same way before Ivanyushchenko? In 2016, the Prosecutor General’s Office opened criminal case No. 42016101060000118 on the fact of “money laundering” through Premium Bank and their subsequent transfer abroad. According to the case materials, 58 client firms of Premium Bank (many of them are dummy one-day companies) transferred 76.1 million dollars and 3.3 million euros (a total of 1.7 billion hryvnia) abroad in 2015. Most of this money went to Regionala Investiciji Banka, to the accounts of Voliara Trade LLP (23.148 million dollars), Orianta Trade LLP (8.285 million dollars), Goliw Trading LLP (4.9 million dollars and 1.38 million euros), as well as Malios Trade Inc., Tasmer Business Inc., Buildport Industries LP, Winglex inter LP and Nobile Business LLP. After these machinations, Premium Bank went bust, leaving its depositors high and dry.

Let’s move on: Yuri Rodin’s Latvian bank appears in criminal case No. 42017000000001052 about fraudulent schemes for exporting huge quantities of grain from Ukraine, in which customs officers and officials of the State Fiscal Service took part. They again transferred the proceeds to accounts in the “Regionala investiciji banka”. And in criminal case No. 52015000000000009opened by NABU against Nikolai Martynenko, kickbacks from the Czech company Skoda JS (6.4 million euros) were transferred to accounts in this bank for the fact that Martynenko helped it obtain a contract to supply equipment for Energoatom.

As we can see, “Regionala investiciji banka” was very popular with all sorts of scammers, who for many years were withdrawing stolen depositors’ money, “sawed-off” budget funds, “kickbacks” and bribes from Ukraine. Moreover, the Latvian financial regulator FCMC established that “Regionala investiciji banka”, as well as the Latvian subsidiary of “Privatbank”, used schemes to circumvent international sanctions imposed on North Korea! True, they got off with only relatively small fines for this. Why do these centers of international corruption continue to operate?

Yuri Rodin. Not just a bank

Currently, the Rodin and Becker families continue to be the main owners of Pivdenny (see extract), despite the fact that foreigners have become its beneficiaries. But they formally said goodbye to their rope production in 2016, when the last 49.9% of shares of Stalkanat-Sidlur PJSC, registered to the offshore Bomberio Holdings Limited, were sold to Vladimir Nemirovsky, who concentrated 100% in his hands.

But it would seem that there is no point in owning a company, half of which is located in Khartsyzsk, which was captured by separatists, and which has not worked for a long time. It did not work mainly because it could not: Kyiv forbade paying taxes to the separatists (“financing terrorists”), export of products was impossible, and suppliers of raw materials remained behind the front line. And on November 28, 2016, Khartsyzsk “Silur” was officially stopped, all its documents and seals were declared invalid. Rumors began to circulate that hungry separatists were dismantling it for scrap and exporting it to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). But in April 2017, the sign at “Silur” was changed (to the state enterprise “Silur”), and the satisfied face of Alexander Zakharchenko appeared in the workshops, announcing the launch of the enterprise. The Yuzovsky Metallurgical Plant provided it with raw materials, but who was engaged in the sale of the products remained behind the scenes. And this is a very interesting question, since “state enterprises of the DPR” are often such only formally.

Let’s recall the Ukrainian state enterprises and collective JSCs of the late 90s and early 2000s, before their privatization: they were covered with private firms, worked through private banks, and CJSCs and LLCs were created on their territory. The “state enterprises” in ORDLO are in approximately the same situation, where the plants in their legal status seem to have been thrown back 15-20 years.

Yes, they work – but for whom? Often for their former owners, through new structures. Therefore, the question of whose pocket Silur’s profits are going into today remains open. According to unconfirmed information Skeleton.Infothese could be firms associated with Rodin-Becker or Ivanyushchenko-Avramov, or maybe with both at once – after all, they already have a lot of experience in joint business! And isn’t it the exposure of these secret schemes that Yuri Rodin fears when he reacts so sharply to his partnership with “Yura Yenakievskiy”?

Another scandal was the case of corrupt tenders of the Ministry of Defense and the Trade Commodity company. On October 23, 2017, as part of the investigation into this case, the company’s accounts in the Pivdenny bank were frozen (143 million hryvnia). It would seem that the bank was not involved in these scams, but Trade Commodity was directly connected to Andrey Adamovsky, whom Yuri Rodin helped in the SkyMall shopping center scam. And was it really true that this time Adamovsky simply kept the money he “earned” in Rodin’s bank? Some journalists dug deeper and saw a hint of a rather cunning credit scheme in which Pivdenny was a kind of gasket between Adamovsky and Trade Commodity. It is known that the company took loans from the bank (more than 300 million in 2016), then paid for them with profits, but where did it transfer the loan funds? Alas, detailed investigations of these schemes got stuck in the swamp of Ukrainian corruption – just like the above-mentioned criminal proceedings. After all, Adamovsky’s partners are not only the Hasidim from Pivdenny, but also Alexander Granovsky, who is close to the presidential “family”.

Therefore, it is not surprising that instead of the arrested and scandalous Trade Commodity, a new company appeared in 2017 – Gaztrade, which immediately began winning tenders of the Ministry of Defense. It is also associated with Adamovsky, and it also conducts its financial transactions through the Pivdenny bank.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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