Tishchenko Nikolay: from Kolya Obolonsky to “servant of the people.” Part 2

BEGINNING: Nikolai Tishchenko: from Kolya Obolonsky to “servant of the people.” Part 1

You may ask, what does Andrey Ermak have to do with it? And despite the fact that he worked at Sanahunt, although he later hid this in his biography! He didn’t deny that he didn’t know Oksana Moroz-Hunt at all, but he justified that he had only provided her firm with any legal services for a few years. However in reviews former Sanahunt employees Skelet.Info finds evidence that Ermak was his vice-president, and his very close relationship with the hostess did not escape the eyes of observant servants.

“Vice President psychopath Ermak A.B. who manipulates everyone and doesn’t yell at you only in the first month of work, regardless of the department”, “For those who don’t know who Ermak is – this is Oksana Hunt’s lover, who services her for money”, “A frantic fellow of two meters “Ermak, just a monster,” is how former salon employees remembered him.

Note that these reviews refer to 2013-2014, but describe an even earlier period.

Now let’s put the puzzle together: Bedrikovsky, who personally worked with Savlokhov’s organized crime group, became friends with Nikolai Tishchenko back in the 90s, and may even have been his mysterious patron in the authorities. Bedrikovsky helped Oksana Moroz create Sanahunt, where Andrei Ermak later worked. Thus, it was “Sanahunt” that could bring Tishchenko and Ermak so close that they became bosom friends, and then godfathers.

However, Tishchenko told another version of the beginning of their friendship, dating back to the early 90s. It is quite entertaining, like all Tishchenko’s tales: according to him, as a student at KISI, he coached the institute’s judo team, and Andrei Ermak, as a lawyer at the Proxen company, provided “legal services to athletes.” Well, okay, you can believe that Nikolai Tishchenko, as a master of sports in judo, could be a coach of the student team of his institute. But why did this team need “legal services”? In addition, the company “Proxen”, created in 1990 by an associate professor at Kyiv University. Shevchenko Alexander Zadorozhny, specialized in international law. Details of her activities can be found in our material about Mikhail Okhendovsky, who worked at Proxen at that time and also studied at KIMO, like Ermak (but three years later). Lawyers and “legal assistants” recruited from students of this company dealt with paperwork for the export of metal, international patents, ownership and distribution rights for films and songs (something that Ermak himself would later try to do) and other serious financial topics. Why did they waste their time on incomprehensible “legal services” for the student team?

However, there is another “subversion” of the beginning of their friendship. In the 90s, “Proxen” provided legal services to companies controlled by Savlokhov’s organized crime group – and here already KISI judo student Nikolai Tishchenko and KIMO law student Andrei Ermak could well have crossed paths with each other more than once, met each other, “crush the bottle” in a cafe and lay the beginning of their great union. Well, in this case, we can assume that Ermak got into Sanahunt through the patronage of his friend Tishchenko – who asked his friends Bedrikovsky and Moroz for him.

Kolya the restaurateur

“The interior of the main hall is made in the style of rich French houses of the 17th century, there are portraits of the cardinal himself on the walls, walls on the tables, a decorative fireplace in the corner, loft elements are used in the interior, for example, brick inclusions on the walls,” so on one of Kyiv guide sites painted the Richelieu restaurant.

It was with him that Nikolai Tishchenko’s legal business began in the 2000s, so Richelieu became the main component of his image as a “famous restaurateur.” All these years, Tishchenko did not want money for self-PR and advertising of his favorite establishment, forming his new, public personality, burying Kolya Obolonsky’s criminal past. But at the same time, his natural inclination towards “show-off”, posing and pathos regularly played cruel jokes on him. Tishchenko doesn’t seem to notice that all this time he has been a naked king (more precisely, a naked restaurateur).

Take the same “Richelieu”, whose first owner, by the way, was not Tishchenko at all – and even now the official beneficiary is a certain Oleg Petrovich Shapenko. According to sources Skelet.InfoKolya Obolonsky provided “security” for this establishment, and after leaving Savlokhov’s organized crime group, he took it for himself “to feed.” But the most interesting thing is that this restaurant, declared by Tishchenko as elite and popular, is very difficult to find! Because it is “hidden” in the depths of the passage yard on Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya between houses 23b, 23c and 25. You can get there from Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya (near the metro station “Ploshchad Lva Tolstogo”) only through a small arch in building 23c, or from the street Shota Rustaveli through the passage between houses 24 and 26, which is closed by a guard’s booth with a barrier. It was in this nook, where in the 90s it was scary to walk in the evening, on the first floor of building 23v (former utility room of a grocery store), in 1998 the restaurant “Richelieu” opened, which was immediately loved by the “brothers”.

By the way, there, according to information Skelet.InfoAndrei Portnov also loved to conduct business meetings, because he knew that all negotiations were recorded and then had access to these recordings.

How to find the courtyard with Tishchenko’s restaurants: from the Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya side there is a small arch, from the Shota Rustaveli side there is a passage between the houses

Then Tishchenko added a large “veranda” to it, and his new restaurants opened next to it in the courtyard, standing almost right next to each other: “Safe” (the largest of the MAFs, built directly on the heating main collector“April” (closed in 2013), sushi bar “Pushisty” (closed in 2014). Tishchenko did not receive permission to build the yard; all his verandas and MAFs are completely illegal. So, after the terrible gas cylinder explosion in the April restaurant (February 2013), as a result of which 11 people were injured, the prosecutor’s office opened a criminal case on the fact of unauthorized seizure of a land plot. But Tishchenko, apparently, brought it to the right people, and the matter was hushed up. Then it was rumored that “April” was generally an illegal establishment, listed according to documents as a warehouse for glass containers, and that is why it was not possible to officially install a gas pipe to it and they had to use gas cylinders in the kitchen. Immediately after the incident, the restaurant was closed, and its premises were distributed between Safe and Richelieu. But this situation did not teach Tishchenko anything: the heavy lantern continued to hang on guy wires above his restaurants.

Here it is, Tishchenko’s “restaurant kingdom”!

Even from the outside it is clear that there is no smell of any elitism in Richelieu! And among its visitors who have at least a superficial understanding of architecture or have simply flipped through the 7th volume of its “General History”, the declared “style of the rich houses of France” evokes only condescending smiles. Because the interior of “Richelieu” is, in fact, a mixture of a clumsy imitation of an ancient semi-basement with peasant half-timbered timber, for some reason filled outside with countless tubs of “ficus” (Tishchenko has a special passion for them). And the rich French in the 17th century either built stone hotels (initially this was the name of the type of mansion), or decorated their homes with carved panels, wallpaper, tapestries and tapestries, which we do not see in Richelieu. By the way, tablecloths reminiscent of hospital sheets and cheap dishes in the style of the 90s (they skimped on branding) also do not correspond to the “style of rich French houses.” The only thing that is “elite” about this restaurant is its sky-high prices! We can say that “Richelieu” completely personifies its owner!

However, the Kiev elite who have taken a liking to it understands even less about interiors than about the “latest deliveries from Europe” offered at Sanahunt. There is even an opinion that such establishments were opened precisely with the aim of “cheating money” from narrow-minded Ukrainian “aristocrats”, who determine the “eliteness” of a product or service solely by its cost and intricate names. Like, since it’s expensive, it’s cool! A kind of classic Selyukovsky view of this very “elite”… Hence the corresponding visitors, such boorish “tramps” in slippers, turning out to be high-ranking officials Kyiv authorities and relatives of ministers. It seems that in this place they remember their childhood in the yard…

Nikolay Tishchenko, where did the money come from?

But there is another opinion that gangster and corruption money can be “laundered” through restaurants – that’s why, they say, simple borscht at Tishchenko’s costs 6 times more than at Puzata Khata! And for this purpose, a restaurant hidden from prying eyes in a remote courtyard, with huge price tags, is perfect. A number of sources Sklet.Info believes that in the “zero” this was the main function of Tishchenko’s restaurants, and even now they are involved in some corruption schemes. Perhaps that is why he owns them according to some intricate system. Moreover, telling journalists that he sold them after he became a people’s deputy… that he was only the owner of trademarks…

It is known that in addition to the listed restaurants, Nikolai Tishchenko is also a co-owner and manager of similar establishments “TurgeneF” (Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya 40), “Vulik” (Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya 44), “Olmeca Plage” (Brovarsky Prospekt 5m), “Three Forks” (Vladimirskaya 76) and the infamous “Velor” (Leo Tolstoy 43), which continued to work during quarantine.

“Velor” after protests by activists

Now these restaurants are united by the “Nasha Karta” network, the name of which Tishchenko at one time “played tricks” on the once thriving “Kozyrnaya Karta” network. Andrey Zadorozhny. Only Nasha Karta LLC (USREOU 39002141), the owner and director of which is the aforementioned Oleg Shapenko, has an authorized capital of only 1000 hryvnia (half the cost average check at Velur). Direct control over them is exercised through Svet LTD LLC (19034881), PKF Rimid (30723370), Druzhba Branch LLC (39159069) and Kepler 452 (40012708). Tishchenko owned them together with his brothers Alexander and Vitaly Sitakand then transferred his share to his wife Alla Baranovskaya.

If you look at Nikolai Tishchenko from the point of view that he imposes on Ukrainian society through the media, then he looks not just successful, but an abnormally successful restaurateur! For people who know the problems of fair dealing in the catering system, this raises certain questions. And Tishchenko himself said more than once that he did not spare investments in his restaurants – although he did not explain where he got them from. But if we look at the list of other companies that Tishchenko owned himself or through his friends and wives, we won’t find any particularly profitable ones either: mobile column No. 24, two car service stations. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the considerable sums that Tishchenko paid for his promotion in the media, especially in television shows: from participation in “Fort Boyard” to the role of host in the 8th and 9th seasons of “The Government Inspector”. By the way, it was the show “The Inspector General” that Tishchenko made his launching pad before the 2019 elections!

Perhaps the answer to this question will be provided by the scandalous scam of 2007, when Nikolai Tishchenko and Vladimir Sitak took out loans from Ukrsotsbank for 329 and 260 thousand dollars secured by real estate. Then Tishchenko refinanced his loan a couple more times, leaving the bank owing $1.6 million. But instead of paying off the debts, Tishchenko and Sitak came up with a fraudulent scheme for transferring collateral to dummies, after which they drowned the bank’s claims in legal disputes.

The question also arises about the fruitful cooperation of the above-mentioned PrJSC “House of Public Service “Obolon”” with the well-known company “Dragon Capital”, owned by the Czech-Ukrainian oligarch Tomas Fiala, now called one of Soros’ representatives in Ukraine. “Dragon Capital” acted as the developer, and “House of Public Services “Obolon” was the customer and owner of the site in the construction project “Obolon Residences” Of course, there is no evidence of Nikolai Tishchenko Sr.’s direct participation in this yet. But it is known that Nikolai Tishchenko Jr. has long been in the Kyiv construction scene in the role of “decider”: in particular, together with his godfather Ermak, he lobbies the interests of the scandalous developer Vadim Stolar.

And of course, everyone remembers the scandal surrounding the construction of the Podolsky-Voskresensky Bridge, when it turned outthat the contractors were the companies “Express-K” of Yulia Tishchenko (sister of our hero) and “Eco-bud-Trade” of her husband German Blinov.

Nikolay Tishchenko

“Triplets”

His first wife was Larisa Tishchenkovskaya (strange coincidence of surnames). According to Tishchenko, they loved each other from a young age – however, their son Danila was born only in 2005 (it was he who was baptized by Andrei Ermak). Then they broke up, and Tishchenko did not hide why: Larisa was his age, and he always liked only young people. Danila, it seems, stayed with his father, spending a lot of time with his son, but Larisa’s further fate is unknown.

Immediately after the divorce, Tishchenko acquired a new favorite: student Irina Zhuravskaya (born 1990), who was the niece of Vitaly Zhuravsky, who at that time held the position of deputy head of the Kyiv City State Administration. Not without his help, Irina won beauty contests one after another: “Miss Donbass” (2007, second place), “Miss Ukraine” (2008), and then “Miss World” (2008). In 2010, Tishchenko and Zhuravskaya got married (five thousand guests attended the wedding), and this marriage seemed very profitable – considering that Vitaly Zhuravsky then became an adviser to President Yanukovych. But, alas, this idyll lasted only six months! For some reason (according to Tishchenko, he had a strong quarrel with his father-in-law), Zhuravskaya left him and went to live in Moscow, where she started a new family.

Nikolay Tishchenko and Irina Zhuravskaya

He married for the third time only in 2016. His wife was Donetsk University student Alla Baranovskaya (born 1995), who since her first year spent more time not studying, but participating in competitions and working as a “secular journalist.” Thanks to the first, in 2013 she won a “beauty contest with a humanitarian bias” and got the opportunity to study at the St. Petersburg Humanitarian University of Trade Unions. And thanks to the second, I met Tishchenko when I interviewed him as the star of Ukrainian culinary shows. After the conflict began in the Donbass, Tishchenko invited Alla to his place in Kyiv, helped her enroll to finish her studies at the University. Shevchenko. Then he took her to Paris and made her a truly romantic proposal – and in 2016 they got married. In February 2017, their son David was born, and Tishchenko’s joy truly knew no bounds! And judging by the fact that in 2019 he transferred his shares in a number of companies to Alla, the marriage is not only happy, but also very strong.

Nikolay Tishchenko and Alla Branovskaya

Tishchenko – servant of the people

Being also a “TV star,” Nikolai Tishchenko knew Zelensky and the “kvartals” long before the 2019 elections, but not as closely as his godfather. Therefore, he came to “Ze!Team” as a close friend of Andrei Ermak, who convinced the leadership of the “Servant of the People” project that Tishchenko’s mass of useful contacts and his experience as a person who organizes negotiations and gatherings of the capital’s elite in his restaurants would be very useful in elections (and at the same time the incriminating evidence that he managed to accumulate by recording their conversations). The fact is that “Ze! Team” had a classic system of election headquarters for Ukraine: official and shadow. In Kyiv, the official election headquarters was headed by Alexander Tkachenko, while the shadow headquarters was taken over by Ermak and Tishchenko. Their task was to negotiate with the right people about financial, administrative and other support for Zelensky’s team, to organize indirect advertising and black PR for competitors. At the same time, Tishchenko himself managed to grab electoral district No. 219, where, with a turnout of only 50%, he managed to take first place with a result of 30.88%, beating such strong (in terms of money and opportunities) competitors as Alexander Tretyakov and Vahan Tovmasyan. Moreover, the latter could be a dummy technical figure, since he was a relative of Karen Tovmasyan, who was once part of Savlokhov’s organized crime group, like Tishchenko.

The success of the elections and nepotism with Ermak allowed Tishchenko to break into the leadership of Servant of the People: he became deputy head of the parliamentary faction, and in June 2020 he headed the Kyiv organization of the party, essentially uniting the shadow and official headquarters in his hands. Moreover, literally immediately after his appointment, Tishchenko almost got into a loud scandal with the distribution of apartments to the residents of the house that blew up in Poznyaki. By the way, on the first day of the tragedy Tishchenko brought several bags with… lemons. Well, at least it’s not spice bags! And then the victims were given the keys to apartments purchased at public expense in scandalous residential complex “Kryshtalevi Dzherela” with good benefits for its developer – and those who received kickbacks from him. And when questions later arose, including about the discrepancy between the apartments being distributed and those promised, Lesya Zaburannaya, who was responsible for this charity event, directly pointed to Nikolai Tishchenko.

But having soared too high, Tishchenko became careless. Because when Zelensky began to make plans to replace the capital’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko with someone from the “servant of the people”, first agreeing to Tishchenko’s candidacy (at the suggestion of Ermak and the support of Sergei Shefir), then Tishchenko and Ermak, contrary to all logic, actually collapsed and failed the fight “Ze! Teams” for Kyiv. Why? The media claimed that they preferred to negotiate with Vitali Klitschko and his friend Artur Palatny, as well as leading Kyiv developers and corrupt officials of the Kyiv City State Administration, to preserve the current government – not for free, of course. Geo Leros, who was already at odds with Tishchenko, informed the public that Tishchenko is being fooled by the presidentbut only imitating a confrontation with Klitschko.

After this, the president decided to replace the “servant of the people” candidate, and when Tishchenko began to whine that he had already spent a lot of money on his billboards, Zelensky sharply told him, “Who asked you? You are a star – well, go and be a star!”

After this scandal, Tishchenko almost fell into disgrace and was saved only by the constant intercession of Ermak, who has some kind of hypnotic influence on Zelensky. Tishchenko had to urgently rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the president in the most banal way – by licking “His Majesty” and defending Zelensky from attacks from internal opponents like Geo Leros, with whom Tishchenko already had personal scores to settle. Tishchenko has traditionally been overly zealous, which is why he periodically issued either sickeningly sweet praises to Zelensky or completely stupid statements that everything is fine in the country, there is no rise in prices and meat at the market can be found for 20 hryvnia.

The people at first angrily perceived this as a cynical mockery of the authorities. But when, a few weeks later, Elena Zelensky made a slip about mackerel at 8 hryvnia per kilo, the mood of Ukrainians changed: they decided that the “servants” in power simply did not understand what they were saying, and therefore it should be taken with humor. Although, of course, this is laughter through tears.

Meanwhile, Tishchenko continued to use all the opportunities given to him for his personal interests. When in March 2021 he was removed from the leadership of the Kyiv city organization “Servants of the People” (Tishchenko was replaced by Lesya Zaburannaya, who had sat him down), Ermak was able to get him an appointment as the head of the Transcarpathian regional party organization. Perhaps someone else would consider this a link, but not Tishchenko! He knows well that Transcarpathia is the main gateway for Ukrainian smuggling. Pretending to be a kind of “presidential auditor”Tishchenko arranged conflicts with the local authorities there out of the blue, setting himself the goal of either achieving their replacement or persuading them to an agreement. Perhaps he even saw himself loved in some leadership position! In any case, there is every reason to believe that Tishchenko is preparing in the most serious way for some kind of elections. After all, it is unlikely that he started this latest self-PR campaign in the media, which has been going on for several months and is costing him a tidy sum, just to “dust off and polish” his image, spoiled by the failure of the Kyiv company. No, something expensive and serious is at stake!

Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Info

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