Vyacheslav Chukhno
Suren Sardaryan, of course, was not the head of this mafia. Just an ordinary member, and one who became a former member early on – due to dismissal. But he used connections with former colleagues and the patronage of high-ranking corrupt officials, which became the key to the success of his business. Otherwise, Sardaryan would hardly have managed to sell “illegal” gasoline of terrible quality, or even sell gasoline at all, and then capture the passenger transportation markets with his fleet of old minibuses.
“Vesta” rose on the network of the same name gas stations (now it belongs to Vesta Service LLC, registered to Suren Sardaryan’s brother), which initially took fuel from the Odessa Oil Refinery. In the 90s, before the plant went to the Russian company LUKOIL, there was a real war for it, control over it was wrested from each other by the city and regional authorities of Odessa, the local bureaucratic mafia, the law enforcement mafia, Odessa and Kyiv organized crime groups, ethnic organized crime groups, emissaries of Ichkeria (Dudaevites), the international mafia. Control meant the implementation of all sorts of machinations and schemes. There were big schemes for big people, when they turned over large batches of oil in the hundreds of thousands of tons, and smaller schemes for people of lower rank, like Sardaryan. He received fuel from the refinery “at big discounts” and also traded in gasoline and diesel of unknown origin, registered as produced at the Odessa refinery. Where Vesta got the fuel from later remained its company secret, but its quality remained one of the worst in all of Ukraine. According to motorists, it was “shit with additives.”
According to sources Skeleton.Info the following people helped Sardaryan develop his successful business selling “diluted donkey urine”: the then director of Vesta, Alexander Grinnikov (a former employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), the head of Vesta’s security service, Mikhail Krestinin (a retired lieutenant colonel of the SBU), a former employee of the OBKhSS and OBNON Pochetov (he supervised the Odessa Oil Refinery, and after retiring, he became Sardaryan’s partner and received ownership of several gas stations), and the former head of security at the oil refinery, Avenosov (he helped steal fuel).
Sardaryan’s patrons deserve special attention. First of all, this is a native of Odessa, former prosecutor and judge Yuriy Karmazin. Ukrainians know him as a people’s deputy of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 6th convocations, an ardent fighter against corruption, a principled “orange” politician – he constantly spoke out against Kuchma, and then Yanukovych, as “bandit regimes”. But behind this screen a major corrupt official was hiding one of the fathers of the Odessa law enforcement mafia, who simply fought with his competitors – such as, for example, Sergei Kivalov.
Yuri Karmazin
Karmazin and Sardaryan had known each other since the 80s, but they became close with Eduard Gurvits in the mid-90s. Let us recall that at that time, dizzying criminal dramas were taking place behind the scenes in Odessa. During the struggle for the mayor’s seat in Odessa in 1994, Gurvits won, who greedily grabbed any support: local “Rukh members”, high-ranking corrupt officials in Kyiv, and Odessa organized crime groups. On the part of the bandits, Gurvits’ sponsors were two gangs competing with each other: the Minin-Zhukov organized crime group, whose members included criminal “authority” Alexander Angert and future Odessa mayor Gennady Trukhanov, and the organized crime group of Georgy Stoyanov, who was close to the then criminal king of Odessa, Viktor Kulivar (nicknamed Karabas). Having been elected mayor, Gurvits “ditched” Angert – and they remained enemies forever. But Gurvits held on to Stoyanov, especially after Kulivar was killed in 1997 and Angert’s organized crime group began to gradually take over Odessa.
Georgy Stoyanov
In order to protect himself from Angert, Gurvits used Stoyanov against him – although this seemed insufficient to him, and he called upon the Chechen organized crime groups (as well as Dudayev’s emissaries) and the local law enforcement mafia as allies. The “cops” (as well as prosecutors and SBU officers), current and former, had their own interests in this: they did not specifically support one side or the other, but helped both with benefit to themselves. It was during these intrigues that Suren Sardaryan entered Gurvits’s circle of close acquaintances and also became Stoyanov’s “buddy”. Sources Skeleton.Info It was reported that thanks to his friendship with Stoyanov, Sardaryan was able to solve many problems related to shadow schemes and the criminal world – in those cases when his “cops” companions and patrons in Kyiv could not help him.
Alexander Kosyanenko
Another figure in this corruption bouquet was the then head of the SBU of the Odessa region (1994-96) Oleksandr Kosyanenko, who was called Stoyanov’s “KGB” curator. Over the course of two years, he put down very strong roots in Odessa, becoming close to many important people – and Suren Sardaryan was among his clients. Then Kosyanenko headed the SBU in Crimea and the Dnipropetrovsk region, received the rank of lieutenant general, became a people’s deputy of the 4th convocation – and another high-ranking patron of Sardaryan. The media reported that when Kosyanenko transferred to Crimea, he immediately helped open the KV Vesta-Service gas station there (EDRPOU 30670921), helping to obtain land and permission from local authorities – which means that he was directly interested in the development of Sardaryan’s business. In turn, his son Oleg Kosyanenko a well-known corrupt Odessa prosecutor (and Kivalov’s son-in-law) also had mutually beneficial cooperation with Sardaryan.
Moreover, according to sources Skelet.Info, it was Kosyanenko who helped Sardaryan to develop his business in Krivoy Rog, where he subsequently became close to its mayor Yuriy Vilkul. Some confirmation of this may be the scandalous tender https://prozorro.gov.ua/tender/UA-2018-12-05-004764-c, held at the end of 2018 by the municipal enterprise “Institute for the Development of the City of Krivoy Rog” (EDRPOU 37665263). The head of this enterprise is a certain Konstantin Kosyanenko (according to rumors, a relative of General Kosyanenko), and the winner of the tender for almost 7 million hryvnias was the firm “Vesta Media Corporation” (41925740), not long before this registered in Kyiv for a certain Vitaly Yenin. And this is actually the only major tender won by the firm during its existence…
Also among Suren Sardaryan’s patrons and companions was named the former deputy head of the Organized Crime Control Department in Odessa Oblast Boris Indychenko Odessa prosecutors Valeriy Ishchenko and Nikolay Mayorov, former head of the OBNON Lieutenant Colonel Kimeridze. His partner in the law firm “Kartuzov and Partners” Oleg Dzhumberovich Kutateladze, a very well-known person in Odessa, has a very scandalous reputation.
Oleg Kutateladze
It was written that the Georgian “thief in law” Sergei Kutateladze (nickname Baiko) is his close relative. In the 90s, he was associated with the firm “Nordex”, created in Austria by the emigrant Grigory Luchansky, whose representative office in Ukraine was headed by Vadim Rabinovichand in Odessa, its interests were represented by Oleg Kutateladze. Nordex was then involved in oil schemes, and Oleg Kutateladze showed great interest in the Odessa Oil Refinery, which he tried to get to through Gurvits. In the course of which Kutateladze became close to Sardaryan and even received a share in Vesta. Various things were written about their relationship later, and it was even claimed that Oleg Kutateladze allegedly took Vesta away from Sardaryan and they became enemies. However, the facts say otherwise: Sardaryan and Kutateladze are still partners (at least one company each), and the gas stations are registered to Vesta Service, which is owned exclusively by the Sardaryan family.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUATION: Suren Sardaryan: the insatiable Odessa “swindler”. PART 2
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