Vadim Ermolaev: Dnieper king of thieves, cognacs and smuggling. PART 1
“Such an interesting person, and still not behind bars!” – this saying fully applies to the Dnepropetrovsk oligarch Vadim Ermolaev. He became famous not for the size of his fortune, but for the methods by which he amassed it. “Savings” on taxes and understatement of customs duties, production of “bodazhnye” wines and cognacs with fusel oils, theft of money from depositors of one’s bank, participation in colossal schemes for money laundering and theft of Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves, economic cooperation with the occupiers, violation of international sanctions – and This is not a complete list of his “exploits”! And yet, despite all this, Vadim Ermolaev was not only not arrested, but was never even called in for questioning…
Vadim Ermolaev. Negotiate with customs, share with bandits
The biography of the future manufacturer of detergents and the author of money laundering schemes began in Dnepropetrovsk (now Dnepr), where Vadim Vladimirovich Ermolaev was born on May 13, 1968. Despite his purely Russian first and last name, Vadim Ermolaev is a descendant of a respected Jewish family. This can be confirmed by the Board of Trustees of the Jewish Community of Dnepropetrovsk, of which he is a member along with Igor Kolomoisky and Gennady Bogolyubov, Vyacheslav Fridman, Alexander Dubilet, Gennady Korban and other famous Dnepropetrovsk residents. Ermolaev has a very close and trusting relationship with the chief rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk and the head of the Chabad community, Shmuel Kaminetsky, who, according to information Skelet.Infooften helped him establish contacts with the right businessmen or government officials.
After eight years spent at secondary school No. 69, young Vadik Ermolaev entered the Dnepropetrovsk Technological and Economic College (now a college), where they trained commodity experts, cooks and accountants for stores. Not particularly successful in his studies, Ermolaev graduated in 1987 and immediately enlisted in the army, from where he was discharged in 1989. He did not want to work in his specialty or study at a university, but immediately became interested in commerce. He did not have his own enterprises, there were no relatives among officials, and therefore, unlike most oligarchs, Ermolaev began not with industrial supplies of coal and gasoline, and not even with metal, but with trade in consumer goods: tea-coffee, cigarettes and alcohol , household chemicals and cosmetics. But I immediately realized that if you don’t go beyond the narrow boundaries of the “shuttle”, then you simply won’t see success in business. And so, having somehow obtained a large sum of money (supposedly he borrowed from someone), Ermolaev in the early 90s switched to wholesale deliveries of goods from Bulgaria, Turkey, Poland to warehouses in Dnepropetrovsk, where he already sold them in small wholesale to owners shops and stalls.
Of course, such a business required not only funds, but also appropriate protection in the local authorities and a “roof” among local organized crime groups so that they would not create obstacles. How he resolved these issues, Ermolaev is silent. But his companions recall that Ermolaev immediately showed a talent for negotiating with the right people, and especially with customs. He still uses this talent to this day – both in his own business interests and in helping (not for nothing) his colleagues.
Stanislav Vilensky
In the early 90s, Ermolaeva worked together with the same Dnepropetrovsk wholesale trader of consumer goods Valery Shamotiy, who even then had his own company “Logos”. But then something didn’t work out for them (Ermolaev and Shamotiy would alternate between collaborating and quarreling for a long time), and in 1995 Vadim Ermolaev, together with his partner Stanislav Vilensky, established his own commercial and industrial corporation “Alef” – which became the main company of his business.
Two years later, Alef, in a very intricate scheme, merged with the competing Olvia corporation of Sergei Kasyanov and Valery Kiptyk – and the former competitors became reliable partners. Moreover, Kasyanov later admitted that Ermolaev’s ability to “quickly resolve issues at customs” made him an indispensable partner. Thanks to this, their companies took over up to 60% of the Ukrainian household chemicals market and practically monopolized the supply of Bulgarian wines.
Sergei Kasyanov
And in 1998, a subsidiary company “Alef-Vinal” was created, initially engaged in the import of Bulgarian alcohol (and then producing its own), among the founders of which was Boris Arkadyevich Chertok – born in 1936. previously convicted and known in the criminal world of Dnepropetrovsk under the nickname “Sedoy”. Chertok was a member of the Dnepropetrovsk organized crime group Milchenko (Sailor), and thus was included among the founders and shareholders as the holder of a gangster’s share in the Aleph business (he later transferred the shares to his son Felix). Which answers the question, what kind of criminal “roof” did Ermolaev have in the 90s?
But he “unfastened” not only Milchenko’s organized crime group. Thus, it was reported that a Mercedes car registered to the company FINANZIELLE ATK GMBH LLC (one of the branches of Olvia and Aleph) was given for an “indefinite lease” (and free of charge) to the Dnipropetrovsk criminal “authority” Shuvaev. Which in turn was associated with Gennady Opryshko, who organized a large conversion center in the city, the services of which were used by Alef and
Alexander Petrovsky-Nalekreshvili, nicknamed “Narik”
“Olvia.” And there was OJSC “Kvartsit”, which was engaged in sales of household chemicals. So, it had two founders: TPK Olvia and LLC Gesneria-Center, and the latter was directly related to the criminal “authority” Alexander Petrovsky (aka Nalekreshvili, an ethnic Jew from Georgia), known in Dnepropetrovsk under the nickname “ Narik.” Then Narik also ran conversion centers for laundering money from Dnepropetrovsk criminals and semi-shadow businesses, and went under the head of the Chechen groups, Umar Dzhabrailov. And now “Narik” is a respected member of the Jewish community of Dnepr and… one of the contenders for the post of mayor of the city in the next elections, which he recently publicly announced.
“Gala” cleans everything!
In 1997, Vadim Ermolaev and his partners decided to switch from imports to their own production. As a start, they bankrupted and privatized the household chemicals workshop at the Khimprom plant in Pervomaisk (Kharkov region), where Lotus washing powder was produced. But the former Soviet brand sold poorly, unable to withstand competition with imported chemicals (which were sold by the same structures of Ermolaev). And then he decided to launch the production of the then popular Turkish brand “Gala” (detergents and washing powders), which were distinguished by their low cost. In 1999, the joint venture Olvia-Beta was created with the Turks, consisting of 50% from the Turkish company Baser and 25% each from Alef by Ermolaev-Vilensky and Olvia by Kasyanov-Kiptyk. The roles were distributed as follows: the Turks produced goods, and Ermolaev and his companions brought raw materials and sold the products.
The fact that Ermolaev took into his own hands the delivery of raw materials from Turkey (concentrate and additives) to Ukraine, to an enterprise 50% owned by the Turks, made a lot of sense. While still importing imported household chemicals and cosmetics, Ermolaev “saved” millions by transporting goods through customs without registration, in fact, by smuggling. Then the goods were registered with one-day companies, from which the structures of “Aleph” and “Olivia” officially bought them, the companies closed – and the money went into Ermolaev’s pocket. In the same way, he managed to “shoe” his Turkish partners, with whom he did not at all share the income from the “savings” on duties. However, the Turks were not indignant, because they tried to work according to the law. These schemes worked until 2005, when Olivia Beta was sold to Procter & Gamble, which continued to produce the still popular Gala line.
Vadim Ermolaev pulled off even bigger scams involving alcohol. First, when I was transporting wine and cognac from Bulgaria, again, “bypassing” customs, and then I also put “left” excise stamps on them. In the best case, real excise stamps for 0.5 containers were glued to 0.7 bottles, or stamps for “checks” were glued to half-liter bottles of cognac. At worst, they put fake stamps on the bottles, which were not difficult to buy “inexpensively in bulk” in Ukraine. The same tricks with the brands of Ermolaev’s company were performed when he and his companions (including Boris Chertok, and then his son Felix Chertok) began producing their wine under the “Golden Amphora” brand.
First, a factory was opened in Dnepropetrovsk (1999), which bottled outright “shmurdyak” of unknown origin as Bulgarian wine – and therefore Ukrainians greeted the new wine brand with great coolness, even despite its amazing cheapness. Then the Dnepropetrovsk plant was repurposed for bottling Helsinki vodka, and the Alef-Vinal company acquired three wineries with vineyards in Crimea – and soon the inscription “Crimean wines” appeared on the bottles of Golden Amphora. But they were only half Crimean, just like the wines: the wine materials were diluted with water and some additives. The cognacs produced by Ermolaev, “Klinkov” and, later, “Jean Jacques”, were also not of the best quality, in which they constantly found wine alcohol with terrible impurities of fusel and traces of sulfuric acid.
By the way, after Crimea was annexed by Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism), Vadim Ermolaev did not play with patriotism, like other Dnepropetrovsk oligarchs, but hastened to re-register his Crimean enterprises LLC Alef-Vinal-Krym, PJSC Burlyuk and PJSC Starokrymskoye as residents of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) . And in 2016, he registered a new company in Crimea, Alef Distillery, whose founder and owner is PJSC Vinagrokompleks (Dnipropetrovsk region), which in turn belongs to the Alef corporation.
Moreover, since 2015, Alef-Vinal-Crimea LLC, headed by Ermolaev putting his fellow countryman Oleg Logvinov, began to carry out financial activities through the Russian National Commercial Bank (RNCB). Thus, again violating the laws of Ukraine, because the RNKB, by decision of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, was subject to sanctions as a structure that contributes to a threat to the national interests and territorial integrity of the country. But Ermolaev, as they say, wiped himself out by the decision of the National Security and Defense Council: immediately after the publication of the law, his Alef-Vinal-Crimea LLC, as if to spite Kyiv, took a loan from RNKB for 100 million rubles.
But, probably, Ermolaev’s justification may be his reluctance to pay taxes in Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism) – after all, it was for this that in August 2017 the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) opened a criminal case against Oleg Logvinov under Article 199-2 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation (*country sponsor of terrorism) (evasion of taxes and fees), accusing him in hiding 75 million rubles from the Russian budget. But one should not be mistaken about Ermolaev’s intentions: he did not pay taxes “automatically,” just as he had not paid them in Ukraine for years. And he did not direct these 75 million rubles to the needs of the ATO, but through his own banking schemes.
Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info
CONTINUED: Vadim Ermolaev: the Dnieper king of thieves, cognacs and smuggling. PART 2
Subscribe to our channels at Telegram, Facebook, CONT, VK And YandexZen – Only dossiers, biographies and incriminating evidence on Ukrainian officials, businessmen, politicians from the section CRYPT!
