The collapse of the business empire: the assets of the oligarch Yurushev will be squandered by hotelier daughters and son-in-law showman

Leonid Yurushev can be called a mastodon of Ukrainian business. The Donetsk resident started his way to big money with the Alik Greka group in the 90s, carefully rebuilt his business empire for decades, using both entrepreneurial skills and methods and connections in power. However, the career of the 77-year-old oligarch is coming to an end. In the future, his assets will end up in the hands of descendants who are more interested in Instagram blogging than doing business. ORD.

The dark past of a billionaire

When it comes to Ukrainian oligarchs, the name of Leonid Yurushev is extremely rare. Although the businessman has not left the ratings of the richest Ukrainians for the past 17 years, his person has always remained “in the shadows”, without the attention of the general public. Liquid mentions in the media are the efforts of Yurushev himself. Non-publicity of the billionaire borders on secrecy. So, in the public domain you can find only two photographs of Leonid Yurushev, which seem to be more than a dozen years old. Son-in-law of the oligarch showman and failed politician Alexander Skichko interview He told Commander-in-Chief that his father-in-law reacts negatively to any mention of his name in the media. At the same time, Elizaveta Yurusheva’s daughter interview for Liga.Business, she assured that her father had nothing to hide, and the hermit is his “psychotype”.

Does the billionaire from the 90s really have nothing to hide? The question is rhetorical. Let’s start with the fact that the data on his past is rather vague. It is known that Yurushev was born in 1946 in Donetsk. From the age of 14, he seemed to have worked at the Donetsk furniture factory, then he served in the Soviet army. There is no data in open sources about the education of the future oligarch. It is assumed that Yurushev could study in one of the mining technical schools. In 1988, he began to engage in cooperation, as soon as it was legalized in the USSR.

According to media reports, in the early 90s, a promising businessman was a member of the so-called “Enakievo” criminal group. He was in a close circle of “Alik Grek” – the famous Donetsk authority Akhat Bragin, the president of the Shakhtar football club. In his “brigade” he was responsible for foreign exchange transactions. Then, probably, he met Rinat Akhmetov and Viktor Yanukovych. After the assassination of Bragin in 1995, he was forced to flee to Austria. In 1996, he received a Greek passport (Yurushev is an ethnic Greek), according to unconfirmed reports, also Austrian citizenship.

He returned to Ukraine, according to one version, in the early 2000s, according to another – in 2005. In 1999 he headed the Audit Commission of Forum Bank, in 2001 he became the head of its Supervisory Board. In 2006, he became the direct owner of the financial institution and sold a 60% stake to the German Commerzbank AG the following year. In the 2000s, he also actively developed the machine-building business in partnership with the owner of the TAS group, Sergei Tigipko. In 2002-2003, businessmen privatized the Kremenchug Steel Plant, took control of the Kryukov Carriage Works and Dneprovagonmash in Dnipro. However, already in 2005 – 2006, a real war broke out between business partners for control of these assets – with raider seizures, as well as a massacre in the style of the 90s in Dnepropetrovsk on May 17, 2006, when two hundred guys with a stocky physique with bats arrived at a meeting shareholders of the Kremenchug plant, which was preparing to remove Yurushev’s management from office.

Then the owner of SCM Rinat Akhmetov stood up for his fellow countryman, who bought part of the shares of the Kremenchug plant. The conflict was resolved in 2008, when Yurushev and Akhmetov sold their stakes in the machine-building sector to Tigipko and Igor Kolomoisky.

From “throws” of investors to theft on cars: the formation of an oligarch

In partnership with Akhmetov, the Greek-Ukrainian businessman brought his real estate business to a new level. Back in 2001, Leonid Yurushev founded the construction company “Yaroslavov Val”, which in the “zero” was engaged in the “scam” investor familiar to Ukraine. In particular, in 2002 she won a tender for the construction of a grandiose water park on Lake Telbin in Kyiv. The shares of the Aquapark society were successfully sold, but the building never appeared.

In 2005, Yaroslavov Val commissioned the first stage of the Leonardo elite business center in Kyiv. Rinat Akhmetov co-financed this project. Not without the support of the “King of Donbass” in the late 2000s – early 2010s, Leonid Yurushev created a showcase for his business – he built a number of prestigious hotels in the center of the capital. These are five-star InterContinental Kyiv and Fairmont Grand Hotel Kyiv, four-star Holiday Inn, Riviera House and Alfavito. During the 2010 presidential and 2012 parliamentary elections, the InterContinental Hotel housed the campaign headquarters of Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions. Under the presidency of Yanukovych, Yurushev was close to the “family” – the oligarchic clan of the president-traitor.

In 2010, a former furniture factory worker entered the woodworking business, launching the first fibreboard plant in Ukraine, the Korosten MDF Plant, and in 2015, he founded the Ukrainian Holding Sawmill Company.

The period of 2014-2015, when the Cabinet was headed by Yatsenyuk, was very fruitful for the oligarch. In a difficult time after the escape of Yanukovych’s patron and the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Leonid Yurushev was able not only to maintain, but also to somewhat increase his fortune, hitting the top ten richest Ukrainians. The most high-profile corruption scandals, in which the entrepreneur is involved, are also associated with this period. In 2014, Maxim Blank, a former manager of Yurushev, became acting general director of Ukrzaliznytsia. By a strange coincidence, the oligarch’s Dneprovagonremstroy began to win tenders of the state carrier for the repair of passenger cars one after another. The amount of contracts amounted to half a billion hryvnia. This was not the only businessman’s “railway” scheme in operation at the time. According to the investigation by Sledstvie.info, at the same time, another Krivoy Rog firm of Yurushev sold gondola cars to Ukrzaliznytsia at a fourfold inflated price, thus “spraying” 5 billion hryvnias.

Also in 2014, according to investigation Radio Liberty, a company controlled by Yurushev, BF and GB travel retail, won a tender for duty-free trade at the Boryspil airport. Journalists explained such successes at competitions with connections between the businessman and the then Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The media openly called Yurushev a “sponsor” of the politician.

As of 2023, the business empire of Leonid Yurushev includes the elite hotels InterContinental Kyiv, Fairmont Grand Hotel Kyiv, Riviera House, Alfavito, the development company Yaroslavov Val, powerful timber industry enterprises Korostensky Zavod MDF” and “Ukrainian Holding Sawmill Company”, one of the largest in Ukraine Dniprovsky Car Repair Plant (JSC “Dneprovagonremstroy”), seafood trading companies (“Scandinavia”) and duty-free (“BF Group”). This is not an exhaustive list. All this diverse and large-scale business is still in the hands of an already middle-aged 77-year-old billionaire. We wish Leonid Yurushev health and strength. However, we must admit that the age of the oligarch is indeed respectable and it is time to seriously think about his replacement. Did the businessman manage to prepare it?

Leonid Yurushev places great hopes on his children – 40-year-old daughter Anastasia and 35-year-old Elizabeth. Prior to the full-scale Russian invasion, the sisters actively helped their father manage the business. Elizaveta, the manager of the Fairmont and Riviera hotels, has shares in the Ukrainian Holding Sawmill Company, Yaroslavov Val, and Unibudinvest Management. She is also a co-founder of the entertainment complex Cuba Camp on Trukhaniv Island in Kyiv. Anastasia is the CEO of InterContinental Kyiv, her husband Oleksandr Zholinsky is her deputy. The billionaire also attracted his wife, 72-year-old Natalya, who runs the Alfavito hotel and owns a franchise in Kyiv of the Canadian hotel chain FairmontHotels & Resorts.

Both daughters of the oligarch spent their childhood abroad, they received their secondary education at a school in Austria, where their father had to “lay low” for a while. The elder Anastasia received her higher education in England, where she studied to be a lawyer. While Elizaveta studied journalism at an Austrian university, she practiced on the German TV channel ATV, then in the editorial office of the Austrian magazine WOMEN. In the mid-2000s, the sisters returned to Ukraine. However, they did not begin to work in their specialty, settling with their father under a warm wing. True, Elizaveta Yurusheva tried to take independent steps in business: in 2006 she opened a network of Manhattan boutiques in Kyiv and Dnepropetrovsk. However, the case did not burn out, so I had to abandon independent swimming. In the end, the girl received a hotelier certificate from the Swiss Hospitality Management School in order to work for her father in the hotel business.

In an interview with the media, Elizabeth honestly admits that hotels are her “love”, but other areas of her father’s business are rather boring. “Production does not bring much pleasure,” the youngest daughter of the oligarch complained in a conversation with Liga.Business, talking about her father’s attempts to involve her and her sister Anastasia in the management of woodworking enterprises.

Unlike Leonid Yurushev, Elizabeth does not avoid publicity. On the contrary, he actively leads social networks (he has 46.8 thousand subscribers on Instagram), where he impresses with fashionable images and loves to share the details of his private life. News about this, in particular, about Elizabeth’s relationship with her husband Alexander Skichko, is regularly published by tabloids. Since the beginning of a full-scale war, the billionaire’s daughter has been abroad, now in Milan, Italy, where Yurusheva’s children went to school. The 35-year-old businesswoman also decided to sit down at her desk: Elizabeth said that she undertook to get an education as a fashion designer. As you can see, the daughter of an oligarch and the potential heir to his business empire is a creative person. However, in the areas of car building or timber processing, there is very little fashion and glamour. Here you need to deeply understand the specifics of production. This is not the same as running luxury hotels. In addition, as we said above, much in the business of Leonid Yurushev is tied to connections with officials and corruption schemes. The intricacies of this fashion will also have to be dealt with by socialites Anastasia and Elizabeth.

Perhaps their other halves, the sons-in-law of the oligarch Yurushev, will help them in this. Here, for example, Oleksandr Skichko is a whole former people’s deputy, also the ex-chairman of the Verkhovna Rada subcommittee on railway transport, the former head of the Cherkasy Regional State Administration. Although in the past he was a comedian-parodist, TV presenter, entertainer and author of the still unbroken Ukrainian record for the number of underwear worn at the same time (in 2012 he put on 69 pairs of underwear at once) – but in recent years he had to get his hand in management?

Alexander Skichko will bankrupt the oligarch Yurushev

Indeed, being in parliament, Alexander Skichko benefited his father-in-law and his business. Among other things, he successfully lobbied for the legalization of the gambling business, as a result of which the first casinos in Ukraine opened in Yurushev hotels. The chairmanship of Skichko in the railway subcommittee also fit the oligarch. Leonid Yurushev actively promoted his relative to the position of head of Ukrzaliznytsia (in 2014, he already succeeded with Maxim Blank). At the beginning of 2020 media called Skichko as an informal “looker” for the state carrier. The ex-showman at that time actively criticized the activities of the management of Ukrzaliznytsia, inspected electric trains and railway depots. However, he did not get the chair of the general director. In January 2021, the “servant of the people” headed the Cherkasy Regional State Administration. He stayed in office for a little over a year: a full-scale invasion of Russia began, and as a military governor, Skichko looked much funnier than as a civilian. Major General of the GUR MO Igor Taburets became the head of the region. In general, during his governorship, Skichko was most remembered for unfulfilled promises: there were 19 of them, according to the Word and Deed portal. According to this indicator, in 2021 Oleksandr Skichko was the leader among other leaders of Ukrainian regions.

Skichko became part of the Yurushev family in 2017 when he married Elizaveta. Before the legalization of relations, the couple met for at least several years, since their common daughter Natalya was born in 2015. Having already become Elizabeth’s legal husband, he raised her son Daniel from his first marriage to an Austrian citizen, David Konigshofer. On April 24 last year, the couple had a second common child – daughter Anna.

In 2020 and 2021, Alexander Skichko filed electronic declarations, where he also indicated his wife’s income. As for real estate, the daughter of the oligarch had an apartment in Kyiv with an area of ​​660 sq. m. and a house in the Obukhovsky district of the Kyiv region for 1240.5 squares. Her husband has two apartments in the capital, which he bought in June 2019, a month before the parliamentary elections, for 7.1 million hryvnias. In Cherkassy, ​​the former showman has a share of his parents’ apartment. Skichko listed two Rolex watches and one Bell & Ross among valuable movable property. He didn’t talk about his wife’s jewelry. From transport, the then people’s deputy had a 2017 BMW 730LD car, a trailer and a jet ski. All purchased in 2018. Skichk’s income in 2020 amounted to 941,000 hryvnia, of which 480,000 is the salary of the people’s deputy, and 490,000 is a gift from his wife. Yurusheva’s annual income instead reached 26 million hryvnia. The lion’s share of this amount, 22 million, was received by the billionaire’s daughter as dividends in the Unibudinvest Management company. Oleksandr Skichko’s accounts with FUIB, Privatbank and Raiffeisen Bank Aval have more than 705,000 hryvnias, 4,332 dollars, 886 euros. Elizaveta Yurusheva trusts Alfa Bank, owned by citizens of the Russian Federation, more. There, the daughter of Leonid Yurushev kept 527 thousand dollars. The spouses saved 2.25 million hryvnias, 934 thousand dollars, 190 thousand euros in cash.

Interestingly, at the beginning of 2022, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption revealed false data in the declaration of Oleksandr Skichko.

In particular, the then head of the Cherkasy Regional State Administration did not indicate the cost of his three precious watches. Skichko explained that he allegedly did not have documents confirming the cost. Also, the official “forgot” to indicate the data on the enterprises “Korostenskaya TES” and “Shield-Energy”, owned by his wife. In the end, NAPC detectives found no evidence of wrongdoing in Skochk’s actions.

A year earlier, in April 2021, the couple got into a “deception” scandal. Journalists of the Schemes program published a story about a magnificent celebration at the Fairmont Hotel of the birthday of Alla Baranovskaya, the wife of the odious “servant of the people” Nikolai Tishchenko. The loud feast with dozens of guests took place at a time when the most stringent quarantine restrictions were in effect in Kyiv – all catering establishments were closed. The party ended with fireworks from Trukhanovy Island opposite Fairmont. It is noteworthy that the Kyiv City Council banned the use of pyrotechnics in the city back in 2019, in connection with the war in the east. Both Skichko and Yurusheva appeared in the plot of the Schemes. Journalists filmed the couple leaving the party. The police then began criminal proceedings under Part 1 of Article 325 of the Criminal Code (violation of sanitary requirements). Elizaveta Yurusheva, as the manager of the hotel, was threatened with a fine of up to 51,000 hryvnias, up to six months of arrest, or up to three years of restriction of freedom. However, the case never made it to court.

One can imagine the reaction of Leonid Yurushev to the scandals that members of his family get into. The oligarch himself never allowed himself behavior that would draw unnecessary attention to his person and his deeds. Yurushev always came out dry from the water. Now, since the 90s, a businessman cannot but be worried about the infantilism of his relatives, who in the future will become the owners of his business. What will happen to the schemes that he carefully built, what is the fate of the factories, the ownership of which he fought in criminal showdowns? It is not difficult to predict that the heirs of the business empire will quickly get rid of these assets, with the possible exception of hotels. Does the 77-year-old businessman understand that his life’s work is doomed to failure, watching his daughters and sons-in-law? Most likely, yes, but it’s too late to do something.

Leonid Yurushev survived as a relic of the criminal-oligarchic era that continued in Ukraine in the 90s-2000s. And this era will finally recede into the past when people like Yurushev pass away. Perhaps this is for the best, because in Ukraine of the future, which our defenders are now fighting at the front, there will be no place for corruption schemes and semi-criminal methods from the 90s.

translation Skeleton.Info

DOSSIER: Leonid Yurushev. Secret “sponsor” of Arseniy Yatsenyuk

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