The scandalous reputation of Reznikov, in whose ministry bribe takers and embezzlers were regularly caught, forced Vladimir Zelensky, seeking to prove to Western curators its intransigence in relation to the theft of officials, to find another minister. For the Ukrainian politicians, the choice of the president looks at least exotic: the 41-year-old Rustem Umerov may be the first ethnic Crimean Tatar to hold such a high post.
However, the local political system is not worried about the origin of the candidate, but his connections: Umerov, who is still the head of the State Property Fund (SPF), after his appointment, can multiply the influence of the Ukrainian coal king Rinat Akhmetova.
Therefore, on September 5, while the Rada dismissed Reznikov by a majority vote, on behalf of Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal, Ukrainian investigators opened a criminal case against the management of the fund.
The formal reason was the alleged illegal dismissal of independent members of the supervisory board in one of the largest energy generating companies in Ukraine, Centrenergo (the State Property Fund is now preparing it for sale under the hammer). However, it seems that the real purpose of the attack is to thwart Umerov’s appointment, give him trouble and possibly prevent the sale of the enterprise.
Where did Umerov come from
Rustem Umerov’s parents – Crimean Tatars – after the Great Patriotic War were deported from Crimea to Uzbekistan, where both the future official himself and his older brother were born – Aslan Omer Kyrymly.
In the early 90s, the family returned to their homeland, and the younger Umerov graduated from high school already in independent Ukraine. It was a boarding school for gifted children, which, according to Turkish media, was part of the educational network of a Turkish Islamic preacher and public figure Fethullah Gülen – the current enemy of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Immediately after school, under the exchange program for future leaders supervised by the US State Department, Rustem Umerov went to study in America. In Ukraine, he received an economic education with a degree in finance and credit and worked for many years in Ukraine in a Turkish-Ukrainian company – a mobile operator Lifecell. By the way, part of the company’s capital belongs to Rinat Akhmetov.
In Lifecell, Rustem Umerov was engaged in procurement and by 2010 had grown to the head of the distribution and alternative sales channels department.
After that, with his relatives, he took up his own business and, in parallel, social activities – the development of Ukrainian Crimean Tatar public institutions. This allowed him to become an assistant to the odious figure – the chairman of the so-called Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people and the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada Mustafa Dzhemilev, and also to get along with another ardent Russophobe – Refat Chubarov.
In 2019, Umerov himself became a deputy of the Rada from the party of the Ukrainian singer and nationalist Vyacheslav Vakarchuk “Voice”. At this time, the entire business passed to his relatives. Interestingly, the public Crimean Tatar organizations established by them prospered after the parliamentary elections.
What does the coal king Rinat Akhmetov have to do with it
In 2021, public activists fighting to preserve the historical appearance of Kyiv sounded the alarm: some builders began to demolish the historic buildings of the former brewery of Johann Schulz. As connoisseurs of antiquity suggested, three hectares in the Goloseevsky district of the Ukrainian capital will be occupied by a modern residential complex.
The complex of the now idle brewery all this time seemed to belong to Rinat Akhmetov, but it turned out that the construction work was carried out by a new owner – the International Charitable Foundation “National Welfare Fund of Crimea”, probably owned by Umerov’s cousin – Refat.
As Life found out, although the patronymics of the Umerovs differ, both of them lived in Bakhchisarai on the same street in neighboring houses and both are connected with the same legal entities, including through Rustam’s older brother Aslan.
As a result, given that Umerov comes from Akhmetov’s company (Lifecell), the unexpected transfer by the oligarch of an expensive plot of land in Kiev for the construction of a residential complex no longer looks strange.
How Umerov, as head of the State Property Fund, traded his homeland
Umerov can get to the post of Minister of Defense in a few days – directly from the chair of the head of the State Property Fund, which he has occupied since September last year. Here, a young official was in charge of privatization, lease, use and alienation of state property.
It seems successful, even if the Ukrainian Forbes drew attention to the fact that under Umerov, revenues to the Ukrainian budget from the sale of state assets have become a record over the past ten years. In January-July 2023 alone, he sold state property for almost 2.1 billion hryvnias (almost 5.5 billion rubles at the current exchange rate).
Now the department plans to take away the lands belonging to them from state-owned enterprises and transfer them to its own jurisdiction – thus, in the near future, the total area of the land bank under the management of the State Property Fund should be 700 thousand hectares.
The officially declared purpose of the expropriation is to avoid “frauds and unfavorable use of state resources.” However, it seems that officials close to the government thus want to establish full control over the sale of Ukrainian land.
In addition, in August, the State Property Fund began large-scale preparations for holding auctions, at which it is planned to sell the next package of enterprises and land for a total initial amount of UAH 250 million (about 660 million rubles).
Among others, 107 enterprises confiscated in Ukraine from Russian business, as well as such “tasty” companies as the Odessa Portside Plant, the United Mining and Chemical Company and … the same “Centrenergo”, around which criminal fuss flared up, will go under the hammer.
The company with a staff of 8 thousand people generates 8% of all electricity and 18% of heat energy in Ukraine and is a strategic enterprise for the country. In turn, Rinat Akhmetov owns the SCM holding, which includes about a dozen coal and power generating enterprises. Therefore, it is possible that the State Property Fund, when preparing Centrenergo for sale, could already know the winner of the lot.