Trukhanov Gennady: governor of the Odessa mafia. Part 2

BEGINNING: : Gennady Trukhanov: governor of the Odessa mafia. Part 1

Children of Leonid

The success of Minin’s Odessa organized crime group also largely depended on the patronage of high-ranking officials in Kyiv who participated in the semi-legal export of weapons. The schemes worked as follows: the seller of the contents of Ukrainian military warehouses was the scandalous Ukrspetsexport, which worked in close connection with intermediaries – who were often international arms dealers like Minin, who had access to potential buyers. In many ways, it was with their “help” that Ukraine in the 90s was one of the leaders in global arms exports – but the budget received little from this – most of the money went into the pockets of the international mafia and Ukrainian corrupt officials.

However, with the beginning of the 21st century, the Mininskys began to have problems. For example, from the side of the new Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko, who has long been scammed by the “Rukhovites” from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Katerina Chumachenko – who have not forgotten how the Minina organized crime group stole the Odessa Oil Refinery from their Chechen friends and squeezed them out of the mayor’s chair Eduard Gurvits. Then, by the way, the Odessa confrontation between Bodelan and Gurvits acquired a bright political camouflage: the first began to be considered a “Kuchmist” and a corrupt official, and the second – a democrat and a patriot, but these were only labels for a “lokhtorat”. And in 2001, already in Italy, the police arrested Leonid Minin and Alexander Zhukov. And if Zhukov was released a few months later (and he settled in the UK), and then the charges against him were completely dropped, then Minin’s fate has since been shrouded in darkness: the media no longer reported any news about him. After that Alexander Angertand previously the “general director” of Minin’s Odessa organized crime group, becomes the most important thing in it (although it is possible that he received some instructions from Minin). But Angert, in 2001, first fled to Israel, then moved for permanent residence to the UK, only occasionally visiting Odessa to monitor “affairs,” still retaining the title of “supervisor” of this region. But “watching” from whom? Perhaps from the international mafia, one of the leaders of which was the now “buried” Minin, which always gave Angert special weight and respect in Odessa, even among the “crowned thieves”. However, anonymous sources Skelet.Info claim that Odessa thieves respect the international mafia solely for cocaine, which since the 90s has been transiting through the ports of Odessa and Ilyichevsk along the well-trodden paths of Minin. And this “topic” is so closed and dangerous that none of the local law enforcement officers, who receive a good “salary” for their “blindness” from crime, risk prying into it – and only sometimes they make demonstrative arrests of small quantities of drugs for the appearance of their work.

But who was left in the shop then? Many arrows pointed precisely at Gennady Trukhanov – he was the most prominent figure among the Mininites who fled to Italy and then returned to Ukraine. Some journalists even called him the main custodian of Angert’s business in Odessa, which was argued both by the fact that Gennady Trukhanov had an equity stake in a number of companies and his direct professional responsibilities as the “chief of security.” However, this is not entirely true: Trukhanov was not doing this alone; moreover, in the Minin-Angert “family” he specialized not so much in business as in “fighting”.

First of all, it is worth noting two “people without faces” very close to Trukhanov: Andrei Andreevich Ivancho and Vladimir Ilyich Galanternik. “Without faces” because for some unknown reason they carefully hide them, literally destroying all their photos on the Internet. Galanternik, who in 2006 was elected deputy of the Odessa Regional Council on the Our Ukraine list, made a special effort: they erased both the photo archives of the regional council and all materials of the election campaign. Moreover, there is an opinion that Galanternik even started falsifying his “face”. There is only one old photograph circulating on the Internet (from 1990) which supposedly depicts young Volodya Galanternik (he was born on December 19, 1969), but there is no evidence of this, but the young man in the photo looks very much like Valentin Prodaevicha person very close to Galanternik and Trukhanov, the former head of the Economic Court of the Odessa Region. Of course, their similarity is only an assumption, but there is numerous evidence of the long-term corrupt collaboration of Valentin Prodaevich and his businessman brother Sergei with the Minin-Angert organized crime group. For example, it was Valentin Prodaevich who helped Galanternik literally rob the property of the Black Sea Shipping Company.

The only available public data about Vladimir Galanternik is a mention of him on the “All Ukraine” website, where he, along with his father Ilya Vladimirovich Galanternik, are recorded as registered in an old apartment building on Pirogovskaya Street (Odessa). Very modestly for a man who today is the owner of Odessa Arcadia, through the company Fresh Export Ltd., owns a fat piece of Privoz, and in 2014-15. was called the main financier of Gennady Trukhanov’s election campaign! Moreover, some sources Skelet.Info they state that in recent years it was Galanternik who headed the Odessa “family” of Angert, who had been absent for many years, being his “supervisor” in Odessa. More precisely, “the beholder of the beholder.” In this case, it is possible that Galanternik will lead the former Minin-Angert organized crime group in the event of the latter’s death (Angert has cancer).

But why Galanternik? In the early 90s, he was known as a “mid-range bandit”: Galanternik “squeezed” several stores, including electrical goods, from entrepreneurs to feed him (for which he received the nickname Light Bulb), and did not participate in the big Minin-Angert schemes. And suddenly – a meteoric rise, because he, in fact, bypassed all the key figures of the “family”, including Trukhanov, standing at Angert’s right hand.

But it is difficult to find out details about the shadow life of a man who hid even his face from people! However, Galanternik’s participation in the 2006 elections on the list of the Odessa branch of Our Ukraine, which was formed under the supervision of Eduard Gurvits, leads to an interesting thought: did the people of Angert and Gurvits, who were fiercely at odds in the 90s, then make peace and go into common business?

Trukhanov’s old comrade in the Minin-Argenta organized crime group, Andrei Ivancho (born 1965, previously lived on Shvygina Street), also carefully hides his appearance from the press. Andrei Ivancho was included in the “Minin list” of the Italian police, which indicated that he had the nickname “Andryukha”. Ivancho worked with Trukhanov immediately upon his arrival in Odessa, and he became a co-founder of his agency “Capital” – created, we recall, with the help of Angert. But was Ivancho an old acquaintance of Trukhanov or was he assigned to him by Angert? Skelet.Info unknown. But it is well known that Ivancho is Trukhanov’s business partner in a number of companies, including offshore Macon Assets Limited and Corderoy Trading Limited.

The third co-owner of Corderoy Trading Limited is Yuri Borisovich Schumacher (born 1973), another member of the Minin-Argenta “family”. This can be easily guessed from his biography: from 1995 to 2005 he worked at the Marine Transport Bank of Alexander Zhukov, reaching the post of deputy chairman

board on financial issues and investments, and in 2005-2014 he was the general director of the Rost Investment Group, another brainchild of Zhukov. Considering the attention Zhukov paid to his projects, we can say that Yuri Schumacher is a manager personally nurtured by him, one might say a successor, privy to many of the dark affairs of the “family.” But even without his past in the Sea Bank, the figure of Schumacher is still odious. After all, the Rost group, which is engaged in various areas of business (from construction to gas trading), is associated with many corruption scandals in the city and regional authorities of Odessa – including with the direct participation of its current mayor Gennady Trukhanov.

Gennady Trukhanov. Multi-passport mayor

Among the numerous scandals surrounding Gennady Trukhanov, the above-mentioned story with his passports also stands out. According to media reports, he has at least four of them: Ukrainian, two Russian and Greek. For the first time, information about this was published in the spring of 2014 by Trukhanov’s opponent Vladimir Ariev – just on the eve of the elections of the mayor of Odessa. Despite the rather shocking incriminating evidence, Trukhanov won those elections.

So, on April 15, 2003, Gennady Trukhanov received passport series 4604 No. 163476 from the migration department of the city of Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region. It is curious that the reason for obtaining the passport was “obtaining Russian citizenship,” but the details of his previous identity card were missing. Then, on March 24, 2011, in the same migration department of Sergiev Posad, another passport of a Russian citizen, series 4611 No. 294782, was issued in the name of Trukhanov, due to the loss of the previously issued document. By the way, the same documents also indicated Trukhanov’s residence near Moscow – in the same patriarchal Sergiev Posad, in an old wooden house. Moreover, it is this registration of Trukhanov that is indicated in the registration documents of his offshore companies “Macon Assets Limited” and “Corderoy Trading Limited”!

However, on March 18, 2002, Gennady Trukhanov was issued a Russian passport series 8201 No. 62151 in the city of Buinaksk (Dagestan), where he also registered at the address Gazimagomed Street 33-35. There are also relevant documents about this.

To be the owner of two Russian passports at once, both genuine and officially issued – how is this possible? Probably only if you work for the Russian special services, who supply you with the necessary number of any documents! At least there is no other explanation for this. And only Trukhanov’s Greek passport in the name of Gennadias Uzopoulous, which became known from the reports of the Italian police in the late 90s, fits well with his criminal and corrupt past as Minin’s bodyguard. However, one did not interfere with the other, and the agent of the Russian special services Trukhanov could well work for the international mafioso – just like the police “mole” Angert and the retired “GB agent” Borovik.

Speaking of Boroviks. As noted above, the lively “pro-European” Sasha Borovik, who was accepted into Mikheil Saakashvili’s team in 2015, was nominated by him in the local elections of the same year as a counterweight to Trukhanov. And he built his election campaign on regular “attacks” on Trukhanov, constantly repeating as a mantra “Trukhanov is a bandit, he is paid by London bandits.”

At first glance, it looked like an expose, a stripping of the veil from Minin’s former henchmen, a desire to move their “family” in Odessa. However, this could also be a subtle game. Let us remind you once again that Alexander Borovik’s father himself has worked diligently for this “family” since the late 90s. By the way, contrary to someone’s widespread ignorance, the second directorate “K” of the KGB of the USSR, in which Colonel Valery Vasilyevich Borovik had previously made his career, was not engaged in corruption, but in counterintelligence – that is, it caught spies and imprisoned dissidents. And given that he worked in Lvov, his “cliente” were national patriots and their connections with the Ukrainian diaspora: Borovik knew something about them that they did not suspect about themselves! And now let’s stretch the threads of connections from them to the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the early 90s, which became the “patrimony of Rukh.” The Ministry of Foreign Affairs then took under its wing the Chechens, who extended their hands to the Odessa oil refinery, for which the Minin-Angert-Zhukov organized crime group fought. And here the hiring of Valery Borovik, who has folders of incriminating evidence on many Kyiv “Rukhovites”, to work at Sintez Oil did not look strange at all: the “Mininists” took on a non-operetta “KGB man” who wears red shorts with a hammer and sickle under his trousers , but an extremely useful person! So, did his only son really go against his father’s employers, in fact against his own father?

There is an opinion that Alexander Borovik habitually broke the comedy, once again playing the role assigned to him. And it consisted precisely in singing a duet with Mikheil Saakashvili, who declared war on Trukhanov and the entire “family” of Angert.

Actually, Borovik Jr. did not expose anyone, he only eloquently repeated what Saakashvili had already said earlier – but nothing more (although his father probably habitually collected a huge dossier on the Mininskys). And in a short time he achieved his main goal: he became the only alternative to Trukhanov in the 2015 elections, as well as deputy governor of Saakashvili. Now let’s try to tear the veil off Borovik himself: what if he is also a protege of the “family”, but only played the role of its enemy? The scheme is ideal: no matter who wins the elections, his own person will be at the head of the city. Moreover, Trukhanov does not cope well with his duties as mayor, and is too odious a figure with a rich past. He definitely needs an understudy, but Angert’s “family” does not have such candidates; they nominated Trukhanov only because of his more or less fame as a “philanthropist of sports.” But now they have in reserve the “talker” Borovik, who has gained the trust of Mikheil Saakashvili.

Actually, this story could be continued by listing the numerous corruption scandals that regularly flare up around Trukhanov the mayor, who not only distributes Odessa real estate to the “family” (the same Galanternik) and cuts the Odessa budget with the help of the Rost group, but is himself owner and co-owners of many companies. However, these scandals are already published by all media, and are no longer as impressive as the mafia past of Gennady Trukhanov and his companions, which they are all trying to erase.

Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info

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