Vitaly Belyakov
While Zelensky’s team promises to mercilessly fight corruption, the new president’s sponsors and associates are already placing their “watchers” everywhere. One of the largest redistributions began in the energy sector, where the interests of the largest oligarchs and “families” are concentrated. In particular, a number of Ukrainian media reports that Donetsk businessman Vitaly Belyakov, who is already taking control of the still state-owned Centrenergo, has been appointed as the new curator of coal schemes.
Belyakov replaced the former “coal watcher” – the scandalous Vitaly Kropachev, a semi-criminal businessman from Torez, creator of the notorious Shakhtersk and Tornado battalions, who entered the inner circle of President Poroshenko in 2016 and became one of Igor Kononenko’s confidants. By approval of “Economic Truth”former assistant of Alexander Yanukovych (Sasha the Dentist), Belyakov now works for Igor Kolomoisky and his partners: Pavel Fuks and Vitaly Khomutynnik. However, they themselves declare that they do not know any Belyaev. Kropachev, on the contrary, assures that Vitaly Belyakov continues to work for Alexander Yanukovych. Who to believe? Let’s try to figure it out ourselves!
Closed scams
Vitaly Belyakov is not just a non-public person, he is also a liar, sometimes providing false information about himself even in documents. For example, during registration of LLC “DRFC” Belyakov indicated his address as Shkolny Boulevard 16-42, although in fact, according to Skelet.Infothe Zenyukov family lives in this apartment, whose connection with Belyakov has not yet been traced. Belyakov himself, together with his wife Victoria Kushch, was registered in the neighboring house No. 14, in an inexpressive Soviet panel nine-story building, where in 1991 their daughter Maria was born (all data from open registration databases). Why did he enter false information into the statement? However, in some places Belyakov’s true biography has been preserved: for example, in documents on the composition of the supervisory board of the Rossiya Central Joint Stock Company, where he was chairman.
According to them, Vitaly Olegovich Belyakov was born on December 18, 1965 in Donetsk, where he grew up and graduated from the metallurgical department of the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute (now the Donetsk National Technical University, divided in two). But, having received his diploma at the very end of the 80s, Belyakov did not work in his specialty. His career began with the position of a VOKhR shooter at the Makeyevka radio components plant “Skif” – there was once a Soviet enterprise that produced “third class” tape recorders. But in the early 90s, the Skif plant began to rapidly collapse and was stolen by its own management. And there was something to steal there, because such enterprises had their own reserves of raw materials, that is, warehouses filled with non-ferrous metals – and this is not counting expensive machine tools. But his guard Belyakov, on the contrary, was rapidly rising in the ranks. Soon he became the commander of the VOKhR, and when “Skif” was privatized, he became the head of the enterprise’s security, and took a direct part in the removal of everything valuable from the territory of the stopped plant. In January 1996, Skif JSC went bankrupt, its plundered workshops were taken over by LLCs, which rented out part of the premises, and they no longer needed security.
Vitaly Belyakov’s next place of work was Ukrpromvneshresursy CJSC, then controlled by the Povny brothers. The first of them, Stanislav Povny, is a well-known official in Donetsk – he worked in the Petrovsky district administration of the city, which he then headed in 2010. By the way, his deputy (as well as a partner in a number of companies) was Akhmetov’s “six” Dmitry Trapeznikov, the future “chairman of the Council of Ministers of the DPR”, who briefly headed the separatist republic after the murder of Zakharchenko. His brother Valery Povny is the founder and co-owner of one and a half dozen enterprises and LLCs.
Stanislav Povny
CJSC “Ukrpromvneshresursy” was created to “cut” budget funding for “innovation projects”: during this scam, the State Innovation Fund of Ukraine then distributed 700 million hryvnia in loans (more than 400 million dollars at the then exchange rate), of which 93% were never returned.
The founders of Ukrpromvneshresursy included JSC UPEC, which was created at the same time (Kharkov oligarch Anatoly Girshfeld) and the Donetsk Commodity, Raw Materials and Fuel Exchange “YUG”. The loudest scandal associated with Ukrpromvneshresursy CJSC is a loan in the amount of 2.5 million hryvnia ($1.34 million at the then exchange rate), received by the company from the State Oil Fund in 1997. Loan for 4 years at zero interest rate! In return, Ukrpromvneshresursy was supposed to develop an innovative project “Creation of a technological complex for eliminating the discharge of sludge water” for the Dzerzhinskaya enrichment plant. But a year later, at the height of the financial crisis, when the hryvnia began to fall, on the basis of the CJSC, the Povny brothers created Ukrpromvneshresursy LLC, which declared itself the legal successor of the CJSC. And although the brothers could have repaid the loan to the state in cheaper hryvnias (and would have been left with a big profit), they preferred to simply steal all the money: the CJSC, and then Ukrpromvneshresursy LLC, went bankrupt and closed. It is interesting that during their bankruptcy they offered the state to take certain “technologies” as payment for the loan, which they valued at a million hryvnia. However, as it turned out, there were only registration acts of these “technologies” – the technologies themselves did not exist in nature.
Thus, “Ukrpromvneshresursy” was a dummy enterprise, described in “The Golden Calf”: a room with two barrels of water and a boy with a bucket. Perhaps this same boy was Vitaly Belyakov, who held the position of engineer in the logistics department at the CJSC and then at Ukrpromvneshresursy LLC.
Vitaly Belyakov’s next place of work was Soyuz-M LLC, where he was deputy director from October 2000 to April 2002. This enterprise was founded and owned by another brothers: Igor and Eduard Bondarenko. The latter is now known as the general director of Donbasenergo – Eduard Bondarenko has held this position since 2012 and has a reputation as a trusted manager of Alexander Yanukovych, who previously owned Donbasenergo. In 2018, Sasha Stomatolog sold his stake in Donbasenergo to Maxim Efimov, but Eduard Bondarenko continued to manage the company. Why? According to sources Skelet.InfoBondarenko is a key figure in Donbasenergo, and he remains Yanukovych Jr.’s man, while the change in share ownership may be purely formal – because Maxim Efimov may only be an intermediate link in the chain of some big scam. Which? If the “Yankovic family” managed to come to an agreement with the Poroshenko “family”, then why shouldn’t they try to come to an agreement with the “green authorities”? And now Vitaly Belyakov, who has been associated with Bondarenko since the beginning of the 2000s and is also one of Alexander Yanukovych’s main managers, has entered the game.
Eduard Bondarenko
After a short work as deputy director of Croc LLC (2002-2003), Vitaly Belyakov “drew” somewhere for three whole years – there is a complete gap in his biography. However, a number of media reports that during this period Belyakov was a partner of Igor and Eduard Bondarenko in PTF Ugoltrans LLC (the company was liquidated back in 2013).
But in 2006, Belyakov materialized as the technical director of the Cross private enterprise, which was owned by the scandalous Vsevolod Bukhtiarov. Belyakov’s connections with Bukhtiarov are quite extensive. Previously, they, together with Maxim Eckert (called Belyakov’s nephew), owned Svarozhich LLC, which supplied coal to the Donbasenergo station. Then Bukhtiarov and Belyakov became co-owners of Makeevskaya Concentrating Plant LLC (USREOU 34604742). In 2007-2009, Belyakov was also the financial director of Makeevskaya, and then transferred his stake to his wife Victoria Kushch, who became Bukhtiarov’s official partner.
And then 2009 came – a very significant year in the career of Vitaly Belyakov. Because it was then that he got a job as head of the internal audit department of the Association of Financial, Industrial and Trade Enterprises “Donbass Settlement and Financial Center”. In 1999-2001 its president was Eduard Prutnik, an official and businessman from Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle, then it came under the control of Alexander Yurchenko, another person close to the Yanukovych family. It is therefore not surprising that the Association was used for large-scale coal schemes.
In 2010, more than half of the Association’s authorized capital was transferred to Donbass Settlement and Financial Center LLC (DSFC), the founders of which were Vitaly Belyakov and a Virginia offshore company SARONE HOLDINGS LIMITEDcontrolled by Alexander Yanukovych. In turn, this offshore company was registered to another, Cypriot “Blodwyn enterprises limited” (registered to a certain Zoe Gregoriou). In addition to DRFC LLC, the other co-owners of the Association then became SPS-Group LLC Alexander Yurchenko, as well as Mikhail Dovbnev (his company Vesprom registered Alexander Yanukovych’s yacht Centurion).
What happened next? And then Alexander Yanukovych’s plan to seize that part of the coal industry that had not yet been “taken over” began to be put into action. In 2010-2011 The association (in fact, LLC DRFC, which owns it) received contracts from the state for the supply of coal worth over a billion hryvnia. Thus, all the money received for coal remained in the hands of Alexander Yanukovych’s people, which caused financial problems for state-owned enterprises directly involved in coal mining. Then DRFC LLC began buying up state-owned central enrichment factories (CPF), which became the most important parts of the Donetsk coal schemes: these were the Komsomolskaya, Uzlovskaya, Rossiya, Krasnaya Zvezda and Ukraine factories.
Central coal mines work in conjunction with state mines (central mines serve several at once, but are not part of the same production holdings). No one is interested in the privatization of the mines themselves, because maintaining a mine requires a lot of money and responsibility, often even subsidies. Therefore, almost all the mines are left at the mercy of the state, but some of them are leased by the closed joint-stock companies and LLCs created under them, which do not fulfill the maintenance conditions, hence the regular accidents. They rent mostly partially: for example, Alexander Yanukovych’s trick was a separate lease of coal seams (for years, with ownership rights to the extracted coal) and mine equipment (for a short period), while miners were generally signed up for short-term “part-time” contracts, remaining employees of state mines ( and all their social services were paid for by the state). And only a few of the newest and “fattest” ones were bought out by private structures, mainly by Akhmetov. Out of hundreds of state mines, only 4 (!) provide a profit to the treasury, the rest turn out to be unprofitable – despite the fact that they bring billions of hryvnias to the corrupt officials who parasitize on them.
The coal extracted from them is transported to already privatized central processing plants, through which it is sold to consumers. The miners are paid pennies for it, and the factory owners already impose an impressive “added value” on it, so that the resulting “black gold” becomes more expensive at times. They also accept coal from the so-called. “kopanok”, whose owners (Akhmetov, Yanukovych) and “supervisors” (Kropachev, Efimov) were also interested in the privatization of enrichment factories. Next, at the central processing unit, the coal is brought to the required concentration. Ideally, it should be cleaned of rock impurities, but in reality, everything can be completely the opposite. If this is coal for Donetsk coke plants, then it will be cleaned in the most conscientious manner. If this is fuel for thermal power plants, especially state-owned ones, then they can also add shale and clay from waste heaps. This is how fuel was sent to the thermal power plants of the state-owned Centerenergo and Donbasenergo, in which the percentage of coal was only 45%, together with 80%, but it cost the same as “Rotterdam”.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
CONTINUED: Vitaly Belyakov: coal schemes of the old and new authorities. PART 2
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