Roman Matsola: Putin (*criminal)’s favorite brewer, owner of the First Private Brewery. PART 1
With each new Ukrainian soldier killed in the Donbass, the question of the moral and criminal responsibility of those who finance his killers becomes more acute. And it has long been known that the most important sponsors of “terrorists and aggressors” are those who shout about them every day from high stands, and for some reason most of them are in the pro-presidential faction of the BPP. Meet another one of them – Roman Matsola, who, together with his brother Andrei Matsola, are known as the founders and co-owners of the First Private Brewery. And also with their business in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), from which they pay multi-billion-dollar taxes to the Russian treasury.
Doctor Alcohol
Matsola Roman Nikolaevich was born on August 11, 1974 in the village of Grushevo, Tyachiv district, Transcarpathian region. Soon their family moved to Lvov, and there, on August 4, 1977, his younger brother Andrei was born. Together with their father Nikolai Vasilyevich (born 1946) and mother Maria Mikhailovna (born 1952), they lived in a five-story building on Nekrasova Street. This house is strikingly different from typical Soviet buildings of that time; they say that it was built for the “boss,” doctors and trade workers. However, the brothers never openly revealed who their parents were and how their family lived. They only said about their mother that she “instilled a love for her native country from childhood.” But considering that until 1991 the brothers’ “home country” was the USSR, we can assume that this was said only for the sake of rhetoric.
But they made their grandfather Mikhail (on his mother’s side) a character in an advertisement for their beer, and also told reporters several stories about him. From which we can find out that their grandfather was either a great carpenter and wood expert (advertising video), or the organizer of an agricultural cooperative that was engaged in growing and selling apples (press interview). This is such a multi-machine grandfather!
In general, their family is the most “secret” in Ukrainian business. In the media archives, there is no mention of the Matsolas at all until the mid-2000s, when they entered the big market with their beer business, and Maria Matsola appeared in 2006 as an assistant (on a voluntary basis) to People’s Deputy Anatoly Rudnik – former Director of Ukrtransgaz. Today everyone has long forgotten about Rudnik, meanwhile in 2003 it became the main figure in the scandal around the leaking of confidential information from Lvovtransgaz to foreign companies. But, again, no detailed information about the connection between Maria Matsola and Anatoly Rudnik is available Skelet.Info not yet available.
What do the rumors circulating around them say? According to one version, the brothers’ mother was a simple doctor, and they themselves allegedly got involved with the Lviv semi-criminal business in the early 90s, “walked under the gang,” and they themselves were by no means “suckers”: they went in for sports since childhood, and Andrei I became seriously interested in boxing. However, the criminal version of the origin of the Matsol business is rather weak and has no evidence. Although Matsola Mama really has something to do with medicine, as evidenced by the registration data of the municipal enterprise “Family Practice Outpatient Clinic” (USREOU 33839427) in the village of Tarasovka, Tyachiv district, Transcarpathian region. The head of this enterprise since August 22, 2016 is Maria Mikhailovna Matsola, and among the employees of the institution there is also a certain Maria Ilyinichna Matsola – apparently a relative. This is surprising, because running a dispensary in a remote province, even in his native land, is a rather strange occupation for a person who is a co-owner of a huge transnational business! Unless Maria Mikhailovna decided to turn this communal outpatient clinic into a private clinic.
By the way, Maria Mikhailovna successfully combines the management of the “hospital” in her native Transcarpathia with another business: trade in tobacco products through Karpattorg LLC (EDRPOU 32218473), established by her together with her husband and sons. Moreover, as you know, the tobacco business in Transcarpathia is often associated with smuggling, “protected” by the local Tsimbora mafia. But the point is not only about smuggling, but also about the fact that the trade in tobacco and alcohol is ethically contrary to the moral code of the doctor – if, of course, the doctor has one. On the other hand, the better the price of cigarettes, vodka and beer, the longer the queue to see the doctor…
But according to another version, more realistic, the Matsol family beer business has grown about the same as the family vodka empire “Bayadera” Nechitailo-Ridzhok, who, by the way, are also generous sponsors of the Russian budget. According to her, Maria Matsola was by no means a simple doctor, and even in Soviet times she was involved in some business, and then in “cooperation”. One of her cooperatives was “Competitor”, opened by Maria Matsola in a share with a certain Ivan Ivanovich Ivasko (born 1946), and in the early 90s re-registered as LLC “Industrial and commercial company Competitor”. Which at that time no longer produced anything, but was only engaged in small-scale wholesale trade in alcohol, delivering it to shops and stalls. It was in this company that Roman Matsola began his career after graduating from school: instead of going to serve in the army, he got a job at Konkurent as a merchandiser.
It must be emphasized here: wholesale trade in alcohol in the 90s was one of the main “gangster topics”, especially in such a gangster city as Lviv. To successfully engage in this business, you had to have either great connections in power, or very close relationships with criminal structures – or better, both. Things didn’t go exactly like clockwork for Matsol in the 90s: after each bandit redistribution of the city, their cars were set on fire, and for a long time they could not turn around before buying their own enterprises. And yet they did not go bankrupt, and by the beginning of the new century they had amassed good capital.
The younger brother Andrei Matsola is considered an “academician” in the family: after all, he has three degrees! True, the “Lviv Financial and Credit College” mentioned in his biography, which he allegedly graduated from in 1996, does not exist in nature. In Lviv in Soviet times there was a financial and credit technical school, which was then renamed the Lviv Banking College, and then the Lviv Banking Institute – was Andrei Matsola really unable to remember the correct name of his native educational institution? He received his second education in absentia at the Ternopil Academy of National Economy (1996-2001), now renamed a university, and the third, also in absentia, at the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy of the Kyiv Patriarchate (2012). Hence the generous sponsorship of Andrei Matsola to the UOC-KP, rewarded with church orders from the hands of Patriarch Filaret.
Andrey Matsola
In 1997, their mother established Olmar LLC (USREOU 22411887), with a rather impressive authorized capital for those times (over 100 thousand dollars), which a year later became their main family enterprise. It was also the main place of work of Roman Matsola: in 1998 he became the director of the enterprise, then gave this place to his younger brother and from 1999 to 2012 he served as deputy director for commerce, in 2012-2014 he again headed Olmar ( apparently, when Andrei was listed as a student at the Theological Academy), and then, having become a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada, he resigned and pretended that he had only an indirect connection to the family business. In fact, this is not so, and Roman Matsola has always been and remains a full-fledged companion of his brother Andrei, mother Maria Mikhailovna and father Nikolai Vasilyevich.
Beer stories
Today the Matsola brothers tell tales that the Olmar company initially had only old Lada cars, in which they delivered beer to Lviv eateries. Usually such tales are told to journalists in order to hide their past and give themselves the image of simple hardworking businessmen who rose “with their own hands” from the very bottom, from scratch. In fact, this is a lie: those who delivered beer in Zhiguli cars in the 90s still deliver it, only in Gazelle cars. But the owner of a big business was the one who was able to invest “big money” in it with the support of the right people.
Olmar began as a regional distributor of Carlsberg beer from Baltic Beverages Holding AB, at that time represented in the country by the BBN-Ukraine group. In 1998, the group launched the production of beer at the Zaporozhye brewery No. 2 “Slavutich”, and became keenly interested in the Lviv brewery “Kolos”, the oldest brewery in Ukraine (since 1999 it has been called “Lviv Brewery”). Maria Matsola and her sons hoped to enter this big business, making big plans for the Lviv brewery. It’s clear that some small company delivering boxes of beer in a collapsing VAZ couldn’t even dream of something like this. Matsol had enough money and opportunities to become co-owners of the oldest Ukrainian brewery, but some force majeure happened that destroyed their plans and literally threw them aside. What exactly happened remains their family secret; all that is known is that during the negotiations on the distribution of shares with VNN-Ukraine, a scandal occurred that escalated into a serious conflict. According to rumors, Lviv organized crime groups were even somehow involved in this, that because of this they even killed some “authority”, but all the details of this story are carefully buried and forgotten.
As a result, in 1999, BBN-Ukraine finally acquired the Lviv brewery, which received the new name “Lviv Brewery” and became part of the newly created Carlsberg Ukraine company. The Matsols remained practically out of business for three years: at first, instead of a share, they were offered only to sell beer, and then they were “thrown away” with that (the circumstances of which are also hidden). Therefore, their subsequent relations with Carlsberg Ukraine were very strained.
In 2002, the Matsols, on the initiative of the brothers Roman and Andrey, finally opened their own beer production. They established LLC “First Private Brewery” (Ukrainian “Persha Privatna Brewery”, EDRPOU 31978272), bought an old Soviet kvass shop in Lviv on George Washington Street (until 1992 – Batalnaya Street), renamed it “Galician Brewery” and launched it produces Dobrodiy beer, while simultaneously continuing the production of Lviv kvass. And although they positioned their beer as “unique, brewed according to ancient recipes,” it was not in great demand, since it was an ordinary “swill” made on old “soviet” equipment. Moreover, there was no chance of selling such beer in the shadow of the mighty Carlsberg Ukraine. According to information Skelet.Info“Galician Brewer” worked on the verge of profitability, and survived only because the Matsol family also had another, profitable business – and therefore could afford this “beer experiment”.
The Matzols did not lose optimism: after spending a lot of money, they bought another plot of land on the same Washington street, and also purchased imported equipment. And in February 2004, instead of the “Galician Brewery”, the “First Private Brewery” brand entered the market, which made the Matsol brothers famous throughout Ukraine. But it also became the reason for the scandalous story about their financing of “terrorists” and the “Russian aggressor” for multibillion-dollar sums.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUED: Matsola Roman: Putin (*criminal)’s favorite brewer, owner of the First Private Brewery. PART 2
Subscribe to our channels at Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And YandexZen – Only dossiers, biographies and incriminating evidence on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!
