CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Andrey Stavnitser: The Stolen Port, or Secrets of a “Successful Startup”. PART 1
Stavnitser Andrey: The Stolen Port, or Secrets of a “Successful Startup”. PART 2
As is known, Stavnitser Andrey Alekseevich is a major himself: he inherited all the capital, together with a share in Transinvestservis and the position of its director, from his father, Alexey Mikhailovich Stavnitser (1942-2011), who created their family business. Therefore, let’s start this story from the very beginning. Back in the 60s, while studying at the Agricultural Institute, Alexey Stavnitser became interested in mountaineering – which determined his future life. In the mountaineering club, he met his future wife Alla Grebennikova. After the wedding, she kept her last name, and their eldest son Yegor (born in 1972) was also recorded as Grebennikov. Their second son, Andrei, was born on June 19, 1982 in Kabardino-Balkaria, where his father was then working as the head of the training department at a mountaineering tourist base, and he received his last name Stavnitser.
Alla Grebennikova with her sons Egor (left) and Andrey (right), 1990s
In 1989, when the Caucasus became unsettled, Alexey Stavnitser and his family returned to Odessa and went into business. At first, he worked in the cooperative “Promalp”, which built training stands for mountaineering clubs (there are not mountains everywhere). With the beginning of the 90s, his mountaineering became a thing of the past, and Alexey Stavnitser took up more profitable business, opening the cooperative “Everest” – which quickly grew into a company selling everything from carbonated drinks and household appliances to metal and cement. It’s funny that in the biography of his son Yegor Grebennikov, who helped his father open stores at the time, “Everest” is now also called a startup. A trend!
Alexey Stavnitser, 90s
The most mysterious thing in this story is Alexey Stavnitser’s connections at that time. He had quite a wide range of them: not only throughout the former Soviet Union (as a former mountaineering instructor), but also in Europe, in particular in Austria. By the way, his son Andrey Stavnitser is the honorary consul of Austria in Odessa – so these connections are still maintained. But no specifics, no names have been revealed yet, and we will now try to find out for ourselves.
So, the beginning of the 90s. Alexey Stavnitser needed to solve the issues of minimizing taxes and duties, and he wanted this to happen not only with the help of schemes and kickbacks, but also legally – therefore, together with other Odessa businessmen, he actively advocated the idea of granting the region the status of “porto franco” (free port). By the way, later under Poroshenko this idea was declared separatist and “promoted by pro-Kremlin forces.” Well, then, on the contrary, it caught fire precisely those forces that later called themselves “pro-Ukrainian”, and at the head of this movement stood Eduard Gurvits – with whom Alexey Stavnitser immediately became close. In 1991, they together supported presidential candidate Vyacheslav Chornovil in Odessa (in fact, they financed and led his election headquarters), which then gave Gurvits the opportunity to turn to “Rukh” for political support, and then to other right-wing and pro-Western political forces. That is why there were always “pro-Ukrainians” clustered around Gurvits, including Korchinsky’s “Brotherhood”. But for Gurvits, “Ukrainianism” was just a dress code that allowed him to get the necessary political “roof”. At the same time, he also used the bandit “roof” (first Karabas, then Stoyanov), and even invited Chechens-Dudaevites to Odessa.
Having become the head of the Oktiabrsky district of Odessa in 1990, Gurvits immediately began a large-scale division of Odessa. A year later, with the help of his connections in Rukh, he managed to push his man Pavel Kudyukin (who later headed the ill-fated Blasko concern) into the chair of the head of the Black Sea Shipping Company, which became the beginning of the plunder of the Ukrainian merchant fleet and Odessa ports. And so, in the course of this division, Gurvits and Stavnitser turned their attention to the state enterprise (SE) Liman. This was a phosphorite transshipment terminal located on the edge of the Yuzhny port, and it was completely new: its first stage was built in 1989 (imported equipment from the Krypp company), and the second did not have time to go into operation due to the collapse of the USSR. Which is what allowed Alexey Stavnitser to find a reason to “privatize” it – like, let’s finish building it with the help of investors and divide the shares!
True, it somehow turned out that the process of pocketing “Liman” took place not with the help of Gurvits, but with the help of his sworn enemy Ruslan Bodelan, who headed the regional executive committee at the time.
But even after being elected mayor of Odessa in 1994, Gurvits did not interfere with this process – although he did not receive his share. It went to such a legend of Odessa corruption as Oleg Kutateladzewho worked at the Odessa City Council at the time. As reported by the media, he is a relative of the Georgian thief in law Sergei Kutateladze (Baiko), which allowed him, being an official, to have the widest connections in the criminal-shadow world of Odessa. And back in the 90s, Kutateladze was connected with the Austrian company Nordex, whose representative office in Ukraine was headed by Vadim Rabinovich, and through it he had access to the “diaspora” settled in Austria. And it seems that here we find the answer to the above question regarding the origin of the Stavnitsers’ Austrian connections.
Oleg Kutateladze
It was the then unnamed “Austrian businessmen”, through a certain member of the Austrian parliament, who actively lobbied not only for the completion of the second stage of the GM “Liman”, but also for the creation of new terminals there. Then an unknown Austrian company “Austria International Consulting GmbH” (apparently a dummy) created a joint venture “Transivestservice” (TIS) with the GP “Liman”. At the same time, the authorized capital of this joint venture was only 31 million dollars, of which 16 (more than 50%) belonged to the Austrians as “investors”. That is, the share of the GP “Liman”, represented by all its property, was estimated at only 15.02 million – although literally the day before it was estimated at 109.61 million! This brazen scam allowed them to immediately take control of the Liman terminal. However, the head of the latter, Khomchenko, did not object – after all, in the TIS joint venture he got the position of executive director and a solid tip.
Alexey Stavnitser, “noughties”
However, the Austrian company was in no hurry to invest in the completion of the terminal, and it became obvious that it was all just a scam to get their hands on state property. And then another investor appeared – the well-known Norwegian company “Norsk Hydro”, which has been operating since 1905. It not only invested its 15.2 million dollars in TIS, but also completed the terminal – which was completely ready for operation in 1997. And here a typical “rip-off” for Ukraine occurred: immediately after the completion of construction, the naive Norwegians, who were going to participate in the management of the terminal, were simply thrown out of business! At the same time, instead of the Austrians, the company “Fedcominvest”, registered in Monaco and owned by Alexey Fedorychev, entered it and bought out their share. At that time, Fedorychev himself was accused by the police of Monaco and France of laundering money from Russian and international criminal groups (for example, the Lyubertsy organized crime group), arms and drug trafficking – so he assigned Alexey Stavnitser, who headed TIS, to deal with the Norwegians. As a result, Fedorychev bought out the share of Norsk Hydro, becoming the main owner of Transivestservis, then together with Stavnitser and Kutateladze they divided the state share in TIS (former State Enterprise Liman) between themselves. That is how this “most successful startup” was created!
Andrey Stavnitser. Scams on the Pier
Currently, Alexey Fedorychev remains the main owner of Transinvestservis. He directly owns 45.47% of the enterprise, and he holds another 4% through his company Fedcominvest. The 35.3% package of shares, which was registered several years ago to the venture investment fund Nobilis (EDRPOU 38901630), is in question, since the information about its owners is hidden – it is managed by Yegor Grebennikov, Andrey Stavnitser’s older brother. According to sources Skeleton.Infothe fund is owned by the same Fedorychev, but he does not shine because he had problems with both the Antimonopoly Committee and law enforcement agencies. And on June 20, 2029, AON was even included in the sanctions list of the National Security and Defense Council – however, on May 14, 2020, Volodymyr Zelensky excluded Fedorychev from this blacklist by his decree No. 184/2020. In fact, sanctions cannot be applied to the owner of his “assistant in Odessa” and the owner of an enterprise that paid several million to the presidential fund!
Stavnitser Andrey: The Stolen Port, or Secrets of a “Successful Startup”. PART 2
As for Andrey Stavnitser, his brother Yegor Grebennikov and their partner Oleg Kutateladze, together they directly control only 15% of TIS. However, now TIS is a holding consisting of several enterprises: TIS-Ruda, TIS-Ugol, TIS-Container and others, in each of which the owners’ shares are different, plus in some of them firms from different countries participate. However, most of these firms are also connected with Fedorychev or the Stavnitser brothers. But they have additional income: during the expansion of new TIS terminals, they privatized the land plots under it (previously these were vacant lots), and now they rent them out to their own holding!
Not everything was in order with the 132-hectare land plot owned by TIS itself. In 2016, People’s Deputy Vitaliy Kupriy handed it over to law enforcement agencies documentsindicating that TIS is using this land with forged documents! The fact is that the act for the use of land was issued on March 13, 2001 to the LLC with foreign investments TIS, however, at that time the company was still a joint venture, and was re-registered as an LLC only in 2002.
Kupriy also said that in 2007, during a corrupt conspiracy between Ukrzaliznytsia officials and the management of the company for the development of the Chornomorskaya-TIS station, an agreement was reached under which the railway stopped charging the required fee for services for the supply and removal of carriages. As a result, the domestic budget lost about 60 million hryvnias in a year, and more than half a billion over 10 years – which went into the pockets of Fedorychev and Stavnitser!
It is also necessary to mention another “side job” of the TIS co-owners, which was reported by the media at the time. It was about the same Kutateladze, who has surprisingly continued to hold on to his share all these years. Of course, he is a real hotshot in the world of Odessa corruption, but still, his role in TIS is often unclear: if the Stavnitsy are Fedorychev’s managers, then who is Kutateladze? And here is the answer to this question: Kutateladze is the “overseer” of several influential people involved in smuggling in TIS! Moreover, not only Chinese consumer goods, where the only issue is non-payment of customs duties, but also such cargo, the very presence of which is carefully hidden: weapons and drugs. Journalists hinted that in piles of scrap metal, ore and coal one can smuggle at least a missile launcher, at least a ton of cocaine: only 1-2 border guards, who are easy to buy, monitor the loading and unloading.
Stavnitser Andrey: The Stolen Port, or Secrets of a “Successful Startup”. PART 2
The widely advertised by Andrey Stavnitser “arrival of a major international investor”, as he called the company “DP World” from Dubai (where his son David lived and studied at the time), also turned out to be a scam. In the fall of 2016, representatives of “P&O Maritime” (the company has belonged to “DP World” since 2006) approached the Minister of Infrastructure Volodymyr Omelyan and the director of the Odessa port Igor Tkachuk with a business proposal to buy twelve tugboats belonging to the port. Buy for only 50 million dollars, paying only half at once, and the rest in installments over 10 years. In addition to foreigners, the “P&O Maritime” delegation included Andrey Stavnitser and his director of TIS development Philipp Grushko (see the list of persons), who lobbied for the interests of the Arab company. Moreover, it was later reported that it was Stavnitser who initiated this whole venture!
Although Omelyan was not against this deal, it fell through due to the stubbornness of the Odessa port management, and then the public joined the scandal, shaking its financial calculations: according to them, the state could lose up to 4 billion hryvnia! To make it more convincing, they even raised the port trade union, which came out to protest.
However, Andrey Stavnitser did not calm down and cooked up another tugboat deal, this time in the port of Yuzhny. There, his company “SD Capital” acted as the organizer of the purchase of the same “P&O Maritime” tugboat company. «LB Shipping»and the latter was renamed P&O Maritime Ukraine. What is Stavnitser’s interest? That he (as well as Yegor Grebennikov and Oleg Kutateladze) have a share in this company and actually manage it, as well as the TIS terminals. And that now only they control all the tugboats in the port of Yuzhny – which means that this opens the way for them to seize the entire port (let us recall that TIS occupies only part of the port). At the same time, they will hide behind the participation of the Dubai company DP World in TIS, which, first of all, gives them a reliable political shield against the Ukrainian law enforcement agencies. And the next time NABU or the SBU come with searches to the TIS offices, Stavnitser will scream to the whole world that stupid Ukrainian investigators are scaring away international investors.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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