Vladimir Kosterin: environmentally friendly scams
The trick to charity is that you give things to people in need that someone else has already paid you for. At one time, Vladimir Kosterin mastered such schemes well, turning humanism into a profitable business and solving the problems of his companies with money collected by Ukrainians for sick children.
The story about how he was going to save the environment not only of Ukraine, but of the whole world is also, of course, not free. Namely, he seized the thermal power plant through environmentalists…
Vladimir Kosterin: Load the decoders in barrels!
It is enough to look at Kosterin’s current official biography to understand: it has been thoroughly cleaned up, and more than once. Indeed, for a person who was one of the richest entrepreneurs in Ukraine, who headed a political party, several public organizations and sports federations, this is quite strange. Moreover, Kosterin is very fond of various titles and regalia, draping himself in them like a native leader with trinkets. Well, apparently he really decided to start life again from scratch before trying to return to Ukraine as an “international expert.”
Kosterin Vladimir Aleksandrovich was born on August 11, 1968 in Kyiv, where he graduated from high school, and in 1986 he went to serve his military duty in the Soviet army. In 1988, he was demobilized, and what he did for the next two years is completely unknown. It seems that life brought him to Kharkov, since in 1990 Vladimir Kosterin emerged as the head of the regional programs department of the TONIS television company – and just then this first private TV channel in Ukraine was based mainly in Kharkov (as well as in Nikolaev), where was first called ATV-1, and then “Tonis-Center”.
In 1990-91 “Tonis-Center” was beyond competition even against the backdrop of the central all-Union television channels, not to mention the dull UT-1, so that the entire republic was the envy of the Kharkov residents. Western music videos, the Tom and Jerry cartoon, a couple of Hollywood action films or horror films for bedtime (free, unlike video stores), and, of course, news from independent journalists who covered events even more liberally than the Moscow Vzglyad, They collected the entire area from televisions – as far as the very mediocre signal quality allowed. Alas, it was almost impossible to buy antenna amplifiers in a store back then, so Kharkov residents could only fantasize and invent. And here “Tonis-Center” announced to Kharkov residents that it would be transferring its broadcasting to a new format, which would significantly improve its quality, but only owners of special decoders would be able to watch it – which must be purchased from the television company. And thousands of Kharkov residents ran to buy them, and when the first batch of decoders ran out, they signed up for a queue and paid in advance. It is difficult to say what those decoders were, because they were never tested: a few months later, Tonis Center announced that it had changed its mind about encoding the signal. Of course, no one was going to take back the decoders and return money to people: this was a huge scam, quite typical of that time. The extreme ones were simply not found, because at the height of the scandal, the management of the Tonis Center, along with the editors and presenters, moved to Kyiv – where they opened the Tet-a-Tet TV channel.
Vladimir Kosterin. First steps in business
Kharkov residents were then cheated out of several hundred thousand rubles, but the case hushed up on its own and was forgotten after in the early 90s they were alternately robbed by financial pyramids, trusts, and miracle-working scammers. And although there is no evidence of Vladimir Kosterin’s specific involvement in the scam, he was among the management of the television company, so he could have been involved in it, and certainly knew all its details. And this could answer the question: where did Vladimir Kosterin get his start-up capital?
Vladimir Kosterin. Funds and grants
The most interesting and at the same time the most “censored” period of Vladimir Kosterin’s life began in the mid-90s. Firstly, in 1994, he became vice-president of TONIS, which then, first of all, was a legal entity with broadcasting licenses in all regions of Ukraine and in many regions of Russia (*country sponsor of terrorism). Often these licenses were “leased” to local television companies, which provided a good income – after all, at that time private television had already become purely commercial, and was actively making money on advertising and announcements. Since the licenses were issued specifically to “TONIS,” dozens of television companies with such names arose, formally considered its “regional centers” – and it was Kosterin who resolved issues with them. U Skelet.Info There is information that he was involved in the financial part of TONIS, while the founders of the television company, Valeria and Vladimir Ivanenko, enthusiastically developed the channel in a creative and technical direction.
Interestingly, at the same time, Vladimir Kosterin was listed as a student at the Moscow Technological Institute of Light Industry. Since his biography states that he graduated from this university in 1996 with a degree in enterprise economics. How Kosterin managed to combine the work of vice president of TONIS and at the same time study in Moscow, one can only guess.
In 1997, Kosterin tried himself in a new role: he was elected president of the Zlagoda International Congress. This was his first position in a humanitarian project, but Kosterin’s goals were even less clear than the Zlagoda program. And yet he benefited from this: through Zlagoda, Kosterin came into close contacts with various humanitarian and public foundations, and the most useful was his acquaintance with Bogdan Gavrylyshyn, who represented in Ukraine not only large international projects (the Soros Foundation), but also influential representatives of the diaspora. They said that it was Gavrylyshyn who recommended Kosterin to the future first lady Katerina Chumachenko. In addition, Gavrylyshyn, who was director of the International Academy of the Environment in Geneva in the 1990s, subsequently helped Kosterin with the creation of his Swiss Risk Reduction Foundation.
Vladimir Kosterin and Bogdan Gavrylyshyn
“Charity business” is in many ways similar to banking: you need to constantly attract financial resources, as well as cooperate with other funds for refinancing, so success in it directly depends on the number of useful connections that form a whole system – in which, as a separate world, they work and Tens of thousands of people hang out: from ordinary social activists to oligarchs and presidents. And they help each other not only financially. Not without meeting necessary and influential people, Kosterin, without interrupting his work, received a second higher education in 1999 at the Institute of International Relations at the KNU. Shevchenko with a degree in international law. And in 2002 he defended his PhD thesis at the Ukrainian Academy of Public Administration on the topic “Management of the socio-economic system of a big city.”
Vladimir Kosterin. Philanthropist business
However, man does not live by humanism alone. In the 90s, Vladimir Kosterin began to develop three main areas of his main (then) business: development, finance and mass media. Almost nothing is known about his successes during that period, but with the beginning of the new century, Kosterin appears in public. Firstly, since 2001 he has become the president of TONIS, which since 2000 has been broadcasting in Ukraine as a single national television channel – having its own broadcast frequency, as well as licenses for satellite and cable broadcasting. After the reorganization of the format in 2002, TONIS reached an audience of 18 million people – and became one of the most profitable (for advertising business) TV channels in Ukraine. At the same time, CJSC “TONIS” and the newspaper “24” were part of the holding company “Media Dom” owned by Kosterin,
Secondly, Vladimir Kosterin becomes a co-owner (possibly the main owner) of the investment and construction company Stolitsa-Group, which was created by Valentin Isak on the basis of the Kievgorstroy-1 trust, in which he previously worked as chief engineer. Among the other shareholders of the “Capital Group” were: Alexander Sokhatsky, Vasily Tovstoy, Andrey Zaika, Mikhail Shpilman, famous Kyiv developers Alexander Melamud and Garik Korogodsky, as well as the then deputy chairman of the board of AOZT “Kievsoyuzdorproekt” Ivan Kravets (he became the name after the raider takeover of the enterprise ). This motley company did not always get along with each other (in 2005-2006 there was a conflict between Isak and Korogodsky), and the construction itself of the “Capital Group” was not always carried out efficiently and successfully, but they managed to obtain from the Kyiv authorities impressive territories for development in Podol, Obolon and other parts of Kyiv.
At the same time, Kosterin’s name appears in the list of shareholders of JSCB Transbank, while in 2006 he was the holder of the largest block of 18.57% of shares. Until 1994, the bank was called “Kievshlyakhbank” and was founded by the Ukrdorstoy concern, which remained one of the main shareholders of Transbank. It was with this bank that the high rise and then rapid fall of Vladimir Kosterin was associated.
As noted above, since 1997 Kosterin has been actively “hanging out” among charitable and humanitarian organizations associated with Western financial and political institutions.
Among other things, this allowed him to be elected chairmen and honorary leaders of those organizations for which he provided sponsorship (or found sponsors for them). Thanks to this, as well as the support of the Klitschko brothers (Read more about them in the article by Vitali Klitschko. The dark past of “looking to tomorrow”), in particular, in 2006-2008 he was elected president of the Ukrainian Boxing Federation, and in 2016 he became Honorary President of the Ukrainian Go Federation (such a game). However, Kosterin often received direct benefits from charity – as in the case of the Ukraine-3000 fund.
This fund was created in 2001 to finance various humanitarian and cultural projects, and in 2005 it was headed by the president’s wife Katerina Chumachenko, who knew Kosterin even before the “accession” of Viktor Yushchenko. And in 2006, the foundation held an all-Ukrainian fundraiser for the construction of the so-called. “children’s hospital of the future.” As you know, this venture ended with the hospital never being built, and the money was partially wasted and partially eaten up by inflation. But Skelet.Info has information that it was Transbank that played an important role in the “development” of the collected funds. Chosen not only because of the close acquaintance of Katerina Yushchenko and Vladimir Kosterin, but also because Transbank participated (as a cashier) in other humanitarian projects – it seems that Kosterin successfully funneled money through him for Ukrainian orphans and disabled people.
So, the money collected during charity marathons in December 2006 was transferred by the Ukraine-3000 Fund to Transbank accounts, where they were “stuck” for two years. During this time, a lot of interesting things happened. For example, in 2007, Transbank was almost sold to businessmen from South Korea, and for a very impressive sum. However, the Koreans drew attention to the fact that the “inflated” capitalization of Transbank was achieved through not only the massive attraction of funds from various funds (primarily Ukraine-3000), but also the generous distribution of large loans – primarily to construction companies, related to the bank’s shareholders. As a result, the mega-deal, which was profitable for Kosterin and his partners, did not take place, which started a chain reaction of troubles. And his net worth, estimated in 2008 at
The 2008 crisis hit the construction business so hard that repaying loans to Transbank turned out to be problematic, and the bank itself had to be saved. Fortunately, friendship with the president’s wife helped Transbank receive budget refinancing, which the government then allocated to support the main banks. But Kosterin and his companions were let down by greed: they began to simply withdraw money abroad. And then, as luck would have it, the public raised a scandal about the fate of the money collected for the never-built “hospital of the future”! And as a result, on the orders of Viktor Yushchenko himself, an SBU audit came to Transbank, and searches were also carried out in the apartment of Kosterin and other bank managers.
Also during the audit, it was found that with the onset of the crisis, Vladimir Kosterin and other shareholders of the bank began to issue loans to themselves, secured by shares of their companies. In particular, Kosterin pledged 96% of the shares of his own Media House in his Transbank! Moreover, these shares were then re-pledged with the National Bank upon receipt of refinancing.
True, they did not punish the bank – they only “intimidated” it, and immediately after this inspection, Transbank transferred 83 million hryvnia (out of the remaining 115 million) to the new accounts of the “hospital of the future” in the state-owned Ukreximbank.
But then it turned out that Transbank began to transfer to Ukreximbank not real assets (money), but mainly shares of the companies pledged to it. And during the manipulation of shares, Kosterin became the main owner of Transbank, by the end of 2009 owning 11.44% of its shares directly and 72.93% through Consulting Company Partners LLC.
And before this, another scam occurred: TONIS shareholders issued an additional issue of shares, which reduced the amount of pledged capital by half – to 48%. Thus, the controlling stake in the television company was returned to Kosterin, he also became almost the sole owner of Transbank, and the state was only given a full box of depreciated assets. However, it was no longer possible to save Kosterin’s business empire; it was falling apart. Back in February 2009, Kosterin closed the publication “24” without any warning, dismissing 200 journalists and layout designers without severance pay (and without paying delayed salaries). And then “TONIS” began to lose: in February 2010, legal proceedings “on the fact of forgery of documents” began in the capital’s Goloseevsky Court. Kosterin said that the “Donetsk people” want to take his business away from him, sold off its remains (“Capital Group” through BT Invest was bought by businessman Raimondas Tumenas, and “TONIS” by Alexander Yanukovych), abandoned the dying Transbank (closed in 2011) and went to Switzerland.
Your gases are our money!
A new project was already waiting for him in Switzerland: the International Risk Reduction Fund, opened on January 15, 2010. They said that part of the same money withdrawn from Ukraine during the 2008 crisis was used to create it. In addition, in June 2010, an agreement on strategic cooperation was signed between Risk Reduction and the Gavrylyshyn Foundation. In exchange for Gavrylyshyn’s full support, Kosterin joined his favorite program – the development of the Plast scouting organization, very popular in the Ukrainian diaspora of the New World, and now developing in Ukraine.
Gavrylyshyn again became Kosterin’s main lifesaver. The fact is that the connections of this humanitarian patriarch were enormous. Thanks to Gavrylyshyn, the Risk Reduction Foundation soon had partners such as the One World International Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiatives, which brought him into the club of globalists through whom he could gain an audience with Western politicians and oligarchs. And thanks to Gavrilyshyn, who was a member of the Club of Rome, Kosterin was able to create for himself a win-win role as an enthusiast of the environmental movement and “green energy”.
Vladimir Kosterin: environmentally friendly scams
It is worth noting that Kosterin addressed environmental issues earlier: in 2003, he joined the Green Party (PZU), and in 2006-2009 he headed it. However, at that time it was a purely political project for him, and an unsuccessful one: having participated in elections twice, PZU did not gain even one percent, after which Kosterin completely lost interest in it. But turning his gaze to the West, Kosterin saw that there was a lot of money to be made in ecology.
According to his own enthusiastic statements, Western countries and international organizations are ready to allocate over $100 billion annually to solve global environmental problems – and most of these funds are used through special funds. In addition, huge sums are allocated for the development of new environmentally friendly technologies. It seems that there is no further need to explain why exactly Vladimir Kosterin created his “Risk Reduction” fund, in the program of which he so intricately collected environmental issues, “green energy” innovations and the prospects of a “united society”.
At the same time, this could help Kosterin triumphantly “return” to Ukraine in a completely new capacity. They will return not in the literal sense (he is not on the run and spends half his time in Kyiv), but as a businessman, social activist and, possibly, politician. Indeed, having lost his business in 2009-2011, it will not be easy for Kosterin to create something profitable in Ukraine – after all, all the well-known positions of bread have already been taken, and much stronger people are squabbling for them. But his “green innovations” are almost undeveloped virgin land, especially since the fund does not need to produce or build anything, it is enough to use other people’s money in various kinds of programs.
You can also earn extra money through banal litigation: for example, at the beginning of 2016, experts and lawyers from the Risk Reduction Foundation launched a massive attack on the Trypillya Thermal Power Plant, which produces more than half of all electricity in the Kyiv region.
They took tests of soil, air and water, published figures on environmental pollution and stated that the thermal power plant should pay half a million hryvnia compensation to residents of surrounding villages each. Adding that the foundation’s experts and lawyers will be happy to assist them in the legal process. In this case, the fund can earn money both by directly providing services (the share of lawyers) and by forcing the owners of thermal power plants to some kind of profitable “compromise”. No, we are not talking about a banal bribe, but about, for example, signing a contract with a fund to develop technology for reducing harmful elections. And then let TPP decide what will cost it less! Yes, such an environmental racket…
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Info
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