CONTINUED. BEGINNING: Oleg Tsarev: the hapless “Chairman of Novorossiya”. PART 1
Oleg Tsarev
The next stage of close cooperation between Tsarev and Krasnov was the creation of the public movement “Civil Force”. This was entirely a project of Zagid Krasnov, but it included their mutual acquaintances: Alexey Permyakov, Alexander Datsenko and Andrey Panchenko, who were co-founders of many of Tsarev’s companies. At the same time, it was reported that Permyakov was also a co-founder of Pioneer Plus LLC together with Alexander Lupandin, a member of Gabibulaev’s organized crime group, who became Krasnov’s trusted accountant. That is, this is another fact of long-standing and numerous ties between the Tsarev family and Gabibulaev-Krasnov.
Zagid Krasnov and Sergey Tsarev
At the same time, the work in the region was neglected along the PR line, Tsarev could not even organize a decent meeting of the city residents with Viktor Yanukovych – in fact, the regional organization of the Party of Regions began to degrade. Kiev immediately reacted to this: if in the 2006 elections Oleg Tsarev was given 35th place on the PR list, but a year later, in the early elections, only 114th. Therefore, already in 2007, Tsarev began to be pushed aside by the Vilkul family, who then controlled the regional council through Vilkul Sr. (Yuriy Grigoryevich) and were friends with Rinat Akhmetov himself. First, Vilkul Jr. (Alexander Yuryevich) took from Tsarev the leadership of the city, and then the regional election headquarters of the Party of Regions, and in March 2010, the leadership of the regional branch of the PR. And in April 2010, not without the participation of Vilkulov, the Dnepropetrovsk city council prematurely terminated the powers of its secretary, Alexander Timoshenko, and replaced him with Maksim Romanenko.
This was a complete collapse of Oleg Tsarev’s political ambitions in Dnepropetrovsk: he no longer had support among the regionalists there, since they all sided with the Vilkuls (especially when Oleksandr Vilkul became the head of the regional state administration). Interestingly, in the period 2008-2010, problems also arose for his partner Krasnov, who even declared his opposition to everyone: both the “orange” president in Kyiv and the “blue-white” government in the region. As a result, Zagiddin Gabibulaevich went under the thumb of Sergei Tigipko, heading his regional election headquarters in the 2010 presidential elections. Incidentally, the result Tigipko received in the Dnepropetrovsk region was the best in Ukraine. But Yanukovych won the elections, and Krasnov had difficulty finding a new patron: it was Viktor Medvedchuk, with whom he was introduced by their mutual friend Oleg Tsarev.
Oleg Tsarev. Clown of the “Russian World”
In 2010, Oleg Tsarev needed to re-earn his usefulness in the Party of Regions faction, otherwise it would have been his last term as a deputy. But how? He had lost all influence in Dnepropetrovsk, and his business was modest enough to be among the party’s main sponsors. His participation in the parliamentary brawls of 2010 did not make Tsarev an indispensable member of the faction – Nestor Shufrich was a better fist-pumper than him.
The only thing Tsarev could do was try to become a public politician who would raise the party’s popularity, since the Party of Regions has always lacked such politicians. According to some information Skeleton.Infohe was supported in this by Viktor Medvedchuk, who influenced the party’s policy through the Party of Regions dependent on him. However, Oleg Tsarev failed to cope with this task either: instead of a serious public politician, he turned into a political clown. What was his “adventure” in the Lviv restaurant “Kryivka”, where he wandered in (and why?) during the filming of the TV program “Without a Mandate”! Instead of maliciously joking in response something like “the MGB is working, pour one at a time!”, Tsarev made himself look like a confused fool.
In the same role, he continued to act as a defender of Russians and Russian-speakers, which only did them a disservice, and since 2011, as the chairman of the Anti-Fascist Forum of Ukraine, with his absurdity, he seemed to be playing along with the nationalists who snicker at him, and then with the “Maidanites.”
And there were only two reasons for this: the intellectual abilities of Oleg Tsarev himself and the peculiarities of his political promotion, carried out in the period 2010-2013. The fact is that his “anti-fascist” and other public activities of that time had some distinctive features. It was a carbon copy of the Kremlin’s “patriotic” propaganda, which was not very suitable not only for Ukrainian realities, but also for Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) itself – in Tsarev’s mouth it turned into God knows what “what”. Which confirmed the information from the sources Skeleton.Info that Putin (*criminal)’s godfather Medvedchuk, through whom Tsarev contacted his Russian “like-minded people,” tried to somehow get him involved in the case.
Oleg Tsarev: sometimes under the flags of the PRC, sometimes under the tricolors of Novorossiya
Of course, Tsarev did not say only nonsense, and not even everything that the SBU and the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office later accused him of was really such. For example, the idea of a federal structure for Ukraine, which simply infuriates nationalists, does not infringe on the integrity of the state at all and today has been declared a “crime” only by order from above (since 2014, neither laws nor logic work in Ukraine). But, let us repeat, in Tsarev’s mouth literally everything turned into a farce and a circus – so it’s good that he did not try to read the Gospel to people. On the other hand, with his subsequent transition to the separatist camp, Tsarev simply disgraced and compromised the idea of ”federalism”, as if deliberately demonstrating how its supporters turn into “separatists”.
At the same time, positioning himself as an admirer of the Soviet Union and a supporter of the pro-Russian vector, Oleg Tsarev still remained a typical Ukrainian MP – and sent his children to study in Great Britain. His son Maksim graduated from Chigwell School there, and then Durham University, and his eldest daughter Olga studied at the Scottish school Grodonstoun (and now the youngest), where tuition starts at 25,000 pounds sterling per year. And even more inappropriately, Oleg Tsarev looked under the red flags, being the owner of many LLCs and OJSCs.
Oleg Tsarev. To whom is war, and to whom…
The beginning of 2014 was very unpleasant for the Tsarev family – and not only because of Euromaidan. Then the media reported that their companies were seriously in debt to VTB Bank, which is the Ukrainian branch of the Russian bank of the same name. Moreover, this debt resembled an attempt to “scam them for money”, or rather for the loans they had received.
The dispute arose around the activities of Marinel Trading House LLC, whose founders included Oleg Tsarev and his wife Larisa, Vita Timoshenko (a relative of Oleksandr Timoshenko), Nina Bashnya (Tsarev’s partner from Krivoy Rog, possibly associated with Zagid Krasnov) and the offshore company High Tech Group Ltd. Marinel Trading House took out loans from VTB Bank under the guarantee of Dnepropetrovsk Paper Factory LLC and Asta Elite LLC (also owned by High Tech Group Ltd), but did not repay them and began bankruptcy proceedings. Moreover, the bankruptcy proceedings were launched at the request of Dzerzhinets Agrofirm LLC, which was headed by Nina Tsareva (mother). It turned out that the son’s company owed the mother’s company 42.65 million hryvnia. Other Tsarev firms went bankrupt in the same way: OOO “Proizvodstvennoe predpriyatie “Bumaga” and OOO “Dnepropetrovsk Computer Center”. This was an obvious scheme of deliberate, sham bankruptcy to avoid repayment of loans, and the case could have reached the prosecutor’s office if Euromaidan had not broken out a few days later. And the Tsarev family lost much more than they wanted to “pocket”.
In particular, some “activists” illegally occupied Tsarev’s house (registered to his son Maksim) on the bank of the Dnieper in the village of Starye Kodaki, and later unknown “migrants from the east” also illegally settled there. The Dnepropetrovsk paper mill went to Boris Filatov. Also, according to Tsarev, the unknown people who seized his bread factory and agricultural firm are also Filatov’s people. The latter responded to Tsarev’s accusations by saying that “he is not even an animal.”
Well, that was to be expected. Even before the second Maidan, Oleg Tsarev had made plenty of enemies both in his native Dnepropetrovsk and all over Ukraine, who enthusiastically took advantage of the opportunity to get even with him. And in the spring of 2014, he began giving them more and more reasons. In the end, Tsarev was soundly beaten up as he left the ICTV studio – and they say he got off easy! Of course, this incident was as barbaric as many other events that year that took place all over the country. And yet, Tsarev should have understood that after his visits to Slavyansk and fraternization with the “militia,” he simply should not have appeared in Kyiv. The fact that the era of civilized political discussions in Ukraine was over became clear back in December 2013.
His collapsed political career was in sharp contrast to the political path of his old patron and companion Zagid Krasnov. After all, he also collaborated with Medvedchuk, was even a member of his “Ukrainian Choice”, and during the Euromaidan, he did not talk like Tsarev, but offered his “titushki” to the Yanukovych regime. But already at the end of February 2014, Zagid managed to change his tune in a flash: he declared his support for the Euromaidan, put the symbols of the “Right Sector” on his “lads” – and became beyond any suspicion and questions. Krasnov calmly participated in the elections for the mayor of Dnipropetrovsk (taking third place), and in 2015 he was elected secretary of the city council. They say that his old “buddy” Nalekreshvili, who has long since become Petrovsky, and whose word can shut even the mouths of Filatov and Korban, helped him with this. But if Tsarev had been a little smarter, he too could have somehow gotten out of the situation – but instead he made it worse.
In general, it is difficult to understand why Oleg Tsarev got involved in this “Novorossiya” project (becoming its “chairman” in June 2014), which all his colleagues in the PR faction, and even Yanukovych’s comrades who fled the country, disowned? Especially since this project was stillborn from the very beginning and did not last long only in the imagination of the separatists – unlike the same “LNR” and “DNR”, which received real support from the Kremlin. It took Tsarev quite a long time to understand this truth: on the eve of 2015, he congratulated the residents of Donbass as the “head of Novorossiya”.
Nevertheless, for his “services” to Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), Oleg Tsarev received some “indulgences” from it. For example, his business in Crimea did not suffer at all: in 2014, he calmly and quickly re-registered his ZAO “Sanatorium im. S. M. Kirov” under the Russian registry. In addition to the fact that the sanatorium, converted into a hotel, brings him a good income, and his youngest daughter Katya is now registered there – which she writes about in her blog.
And that’s not all. In the fall of 2015, OOO Raduga (co-owners Oleg and Larisa Tsarev), registered on the annexed peninsula, signed an agreement with the Crimean Ministry of Economic Development on the “reconstruction and development” of the Ai Todor children’s sanatorium, located in the historic building of the former estate of Mikhail Romanov. In fact, this gives the expensive architectural monument to the Tsarevs, who will turn it into yet another commercial hotel.
In addition, in 2017, Oleg Tsarev announced that he was planning to build a network of poultry farms in Crimea – possibly intending to fill the niche left after the enterprises of the “egg magnate” Oleg Bakhmatyuk were “mothballed” on the peninsula in 2014, having been seized by unknown raiders. And what is interesting is that Tsarev claimed that a significant part of the costs of creating his chicken business would be covered by subsidies from the Russian budget. Well, as we can see, Oleg Tsarev is much better at doing business than at politics! And this should give pause to those people who still believe his tales about “Novorossiya”.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And Yandex Zen – Only dossiers, biographies and dirt on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!
