Vyacheslav and Alexander Konstantinovsky
When Ukraine plunged into conflict chaos in 2014, some of its elite with dark criminal histories decided that this was a good chance to improve their image in the eyes of the new government by atoning for their past with blood – not their own, of course, but someone else’s. And at the same time, perhaps, to arrange for themselves an exciting “safari” to remember their youth and the wild 90s…
The Brothers Karamazov
In early autumn 2014, Ukraine was preparing to change the composition of the Verkhovna Rada once again, and Kyiv was once again covered with election “big faces”, piercing the voters’ gazes from all sides. Among them, the advertising billboard of the candidate from the “People’s Front” Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky stood out with the provocative slogan “Sold Rolls-Royce, went to the front”. Very soon, the media and bloggers spread the legend throughout the country about the oligarch-patriot, who, for the sake of defending the fatherland, quit his business and sold an expensive car to buy himself equipment for participation in the ATO. Thus, Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, almost unknown outside of Kyiv, suddenly gained all-Ukrainian fame and entered the top ten leading patriots of the country – and, of course, won the elections in his majoritarian district No. 220.
However, immediately after this, other, completely scandalous information about Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky and his brother Alexander appeared in the media: about their criminal past, in which they were known under the nickname “the Karamazov brothers” and members of the famous international organized crime group Alik Magadan. The apotheosis of these revelations was an interview with Leonid Roytman – in his words, a former accomplice of the brothers, who served time in an American prison in 2006-2014 for the attempted murder of Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky…
Vyacheslav Leonidovich Konstantinovsky and his twin brother Alexander were born on November 11, 1960 in Kyiv, near Syretsky Park (Shevchenkivsky district of the capital), where they studied together at secondary school #24. They had no interest in studying, and at home, due to the constant absence of their working parents, they had nothing to do, so the brothers, left to their own devices and accustomed to relying on each other, divided their time between classes in the freestyle wrestling section and the street. Then the brothers graduated from the Kiev Institute of Physical Education, became masters of sports, but the modest salaries of physical education teachers and coaches did not satisfy them. And then they were saved by their acquaintance with Igor Tkachenko, nicknamed Skull (1964-2001), who in the mid-80s, together with Valentin Dyachenko (Bald), assembled his “brigade” from graduates of the Institute of Physical Education. The Konstantinovskys worked for him in their specialty, that is, as ordinary “bulls” or “torpedoes”: they guarded their own, scared strangers, went to “meetings”. That’s where they got their nickname “the Karamazov brothers”. In the official biography of Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, this period is recorded as “work in the catering industry”, and this is true: in the evenings, the brothers kept order in the Passage cafe on Khreshchatyk, which Cherep’s brigade took under its “roof”.
According to eyewitnesses, Cherep’s organized crime group was distinguished by that excessive cruelty for which the old “criminal world” considered “athletes” to be thugs and outlaws. They did not simply “work”, that is, earn money, but literally looked for conflicts, enthusiastically getting into fights and beating up “suckers” with gusto. Cherep instilled his own concepts in the “brigade”, based on the principle of “whoever is stronger is right”. And it seems that the “Karamazov brothers” learned these lessons for life.
At the very end of the 80s, the Konstantinovskys managed to emigrate to Israel under the repatriation program – and this was the most “murky” story of their stormy and dark biography. After all, officially they have no connection to the descendants of Abraham and Isaac, and Konstantinovskys’ acquaintances also claim that they are not Jews. Literally immediately, on an Israeli visa, they moved to the United States, to New York, where they got jobs as waiters in the Brooklyn restaurant “Metropol”. And then they found themselves in the ranks of the so-called Russian mafia (represented mainly by people from Ukraine), associated with the Russian Solntsevskaya organized crime group, in the company of such famous personalities as Semyon Mogilevich, Oleg Asmakov (Alik Magadan) and Leonid Roytman (Lenya Dlinny). It is quite possible that this sudden emigration of the Konstantinovskys was part of the “brothers'” plans to develop the West. Sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported that it was precisely in 1989-90 that Cherep’s organized crime group entered into business contacts with Mogilevich, who at that time was developing his specific business in Europe and the USA. And by the way, he could have easily arranged the repatriation of several of Cherep’s people in order to then transfer them to the States on an Israeli visa.
Semyon Mogilevich
Leonid Roytman and Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky
According to Roytman, it was Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky who killed Yefim Ostrovsky, the president of the Dynamo Kyiv club and co-founder of the Dynamo-Atlantic joint venture created under him, on January 21, 1992. This murder was allegedly ordered by his second co-founder, Grigory Surkis (Read more about him in the article Grigoriy Surkis: How to divide Ukraine in a brotherly manner), carried out through the organized crime group of Alik Magadan and Semyon Yukhimovich. Interestingly, immediately after that, Surkis’s partner was killed, and scams totaling $1.7 million were carried out through the Dynamo-Antlantic joint venture. And the Konstantinovsky brothers caught Alik Magadan’s attention as “reliable guys.” Another similar case was the attempt to liquidate Monya Elson, one of the authorities of the Russian mafia in New York, which was ordered by his competitor Boris Nayfeld. It was written that three people took part in the “operation”: Alik Magadan himself, Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, and Boris Grigoriev. Elson, his wife, and bodyguard (nephew) were attacked on July 26, 1993 near his home, but they were only wounded in the shootout. Monya himself quickly fled to Italy, but his bodyguard and nephew Oleg Zapivakmine was killed two months later in Brooklyn, near his home, by an unknown person – they said that he was “finished off” by one of Alik Magadan’s people.
Monya Elson: more alive than all the living!
The police and the FBI combined about 30 murders committed in New York in 1992-95 into one case of “internal showdowns of the Russian mafia”, many of which could be linked to the activities of Alik Magadan’s organized crime group. And here’s what’s interesting: when these showdowns with murders ceased, the Konstantinovsky brothers returned to their native Kyiv. Coincidence?
“Kyiv-Donbass”
The Konstantinovskys returned to Kyiv in the mid-90s, at the very peak of the internecine showdowns of the Ukrainian organized crime groups, but there is no information about their participation in that massacre. Perhaps the matter was that during their stay in the US their status had risen sharply: now they were Alik Magadan’s trusted persons, and not just “torpedoes”, and accordingly their role had changed dramatically. While the younger “brothers” were driving old “Beamers” to “showdowns”, the Konstantinovskys joined Magadan’s Ukrainian business. In fact, it was a reverse process: the Ukrainian criminals, who in the late 80s went to explore America and mixed with the “Russian mafia” there (which was accompanied by fierce internecine strife), began to re-establish themselves in Ukraine from the early 90s – which also caused a wave of fierce showdowns.
During this, the organized crime groups not only feuded, but also cooperated with each other, and this is how Alik Magadan “teamed up” with Semyon Mogilevich, who represented the interests of the “Solntsevskaya” gang, and the people of Mishka Yaponchik (Mikhail Ivankov). Together with the share of corrupt officials, this gave birth to such an interesting business project in Kyiv as the holding “Kyiv-Donbass”, created in 1993. The initial composition of its co-owners included: the head of the board of JSCB “Nadra” Victor Topolov (a person close to Viktor Yushchenko), US citizen Alexander Levin (called a member of the “Russian mafia”, came to Kyiv in 1994, but is officially a philanthropist and chairman of the Jewish community of Kyiv), Leonid Roitman (Alik Magadan’s man) and Petr Slipets (a financial genius with a very dark biography). But Vyacheslav and Alexander Konstantinovsky, according to Roitman, worked for a salary and played the role of “guards” of the holding and all the companies included in it from encroachments by both the criminal world and law enforcement agencies. And this forced the Konstantinovskys to establish very strong ties with the Kyiv police and the SBU. At the same time, as Roitman later claimed, an important element of the “cop roof” of the company was an employee of the Kyiv UBOP Valery Geletey (Read more about him in the article by Valery Geletey. I am not happy to serve, but I must grovel) and his colleague Vitaly Yarema (Read about him in the article Vitaly Yarema. “Honest cop” and godfather of Sergey Dumchev) and Alexey Savchenko (more about him: The steep turns of the odious BPP MP Alexey Savchenko ). Future head of the State Security Service and Minister of Defense, Prosecutor General and Vice President of Avant-Bank.
Valery Geletey
Alik Magadan was not destined to transform into a “businessman and philanthropist” as the surviving leaders of the 90s organized crime groups managed to do. According to his acquaintances, he was always “meddling where he shouldn’t” – and one day he really got on everyone’s nerves. Firstly, Semyon Mogilevich – they claimed that he was the one who ordered Magadan’s murder. Secondly, the Surkis brothers – who were indirectly involved in this case. Thirdly, the Konstantinovsky brothers, who wanted to have a share in the business, and not work for Magadan for a salary.
Oleg Asmakov (Alik Magadan)
The murder of Oleg Asmakov (Alik Magadan) was described as follows: on a March evening in 1999, when everyone was talking about the war in Yugoslavia, Magadan received a call and was invited to Igor Surkis’s office for a meeting with Leonid Kuchma – the talk was allegedly about Magadan’s participation in financing his election campaign and providing people to organize public support events, in exchange for Asmakov’s amnesty from past criminal cases and his admission to large-scale privatization. In connection with this, Magadan decided to go not accompanied by the “Titan” police guards, whose services he used, but accompanied by three close people, two of whom were the Konstantinovsky brothers. When Magadan got into the front seat of an approaching car (Aleksandr Konstantinovsky was driving), Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, who was sitting behind him, allegedly shot Asmakov in the back of the head. After which they dealt with Magadan’s body in the way the New York mafia often does: they froze it, sawed it into pieces and buried it in different places in the city’s forest parks. Whether this was true or not is unknown, but here is another interesting piece of information: Ekaterina, Alik Magadan’s “common-law wife”, then left for Grigory Surkis and became his official wife, later giving birth to his son. Yes, simply Shakespearean passions!
But that was not the end of it. The Konstantinovsky brothers not only took Magadan’s share in Kyiv-Donbass, but together with Levin, Topolev and Slipets they also “screwed” Leonid Roytman, depriving him of 14% of the company’s shares and deposits in Nadra Bank. Apparently, this was an attempt to completely break with the “American past”, while throwing “extra mouths” out of business.
And the business was expanding steadily: the Kyiv-Donbass holding, initially focused on real estate, grew into a structure engaged in three main areas. Firstly, it was the development business, which was directly handled by the Kyiv-Donbass company of the same name, which after 2004 was re-registered in the Netherlands and received the more “European” name of Kyiv Donbas Development Group (KDD Group). However, its activities were more reminiscent of scams with the price of its shares, rather than work with real estate. The company reached the peak of its success in 2007, when it sold 19.6% of its shares on the London Stock Exchange for $130 million, announcing that it was raising funds to expand its projects. After the 2008 crisis, the company’s capitalization fell to 34 million, and it accumulated huge debts: 190 million dollars, received from the sale of the Sky Towers and Zazimye complexes, went to cover the debt to Cimbrorum Holding and Ukreximbank. Nevertheless, the Konstantinovskys managed to sell their subsidiary KDD Group (registered in Ukraine) to oligarch Andrey Verevsky in 2011 (owner of “Kernel”, a story about him: Agrarian Andrey Verevsky. The success story of a former regional and BYuT member ) for $16 million. It was a dead investment: without bringing in any profit, the company was liquidated in 2015.
Secondly, it is a profitable trade and sublease of real estate, for which the company “AIK – Agricultural International Kompany LTD” was created at one time, which gave birth to a number of subsidiaries. Through which the Konstantinovsky brothers and their partners own such different objects as the Globus complex or the Arsenal-Kiev football club. Finally, the most profitable area of business of the Konstantinovskys today is the Puzata Hata chain of public catering establishments and Carte Blanche restaurants. In addition, their business includes the Nadra bank (SKELET-info is investigating how the influence of the Konstantinovskys on the Nadra bank, which was controlled by Dmitry Firtash, is repeatedly mentioned in narrow circles. More about him – DMYTRO FIRTASH. THE STORY OF THE TERNOPIL BILLIONAIRE) – has repeatedly become the center of scandals. The brothers’ fortune speaks volumes about the profitability of this business: in 2013, the joint capital of Vyacheslav and Alexander Konstantinovsky was estimated at 335 million dollars. And they are only co-owners!
brothers Konstantinovsky
But the “Russian mafia” does not forgive either the insults inflicted or the money lost. In 2005, the abandoned Leonid Roytman and the surviving Monya Elson came together on the basis of their mutual hostility towards the Konstantinovskys, and decided to take revenge on them. Soon, informants from the capital’s UBOP reported to Valery Geletey that the “Russian mafia” in America was looking for killers to eliminate Vyacheslav and Alexander Konstantinovsky in Kyiv. The calculating Geletey came to the brothers with this information, but he was unable to sell it to them: they already knew about the assassination attempt being prepared by Mogilevich on them. And then Geletey offered them his services in eliminating the threat. Of course, this required the help of officials much higher than Geletey, and the international special operation was successfully carried out, with Valery Geletey personally participating in it! Leonid Roytman and Monya Elson were arrested on March 24, 2006, in New York, with the participation of the FBI, special forces, police helicopters and Geletey, who was peeking out from behind his car. That’s how Lenya Roytman ended up behind bars, after which, upon his release in 2014, he decided to take revenge on the “Karamazov brothers” by leaking information about their dark past.
How to become a hero
This story was later used for political propaganda: supposedly, the “Russian mafia” tried to kill Ukrainian entrepreneurs! However, the Konstantinovsky brothers came to the forefront of supporters of European choice and democracy much earlier, back in 2003, participating in the financing of Viktor Yushchenko’s political campaign. And during the “orange revolution” (2004), Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky’s people organized the security of the Maidan, together with other “brothers” – for example, the lads of Lviv authorities Vova Morda (Vladimir Didukh) and Pupsa (Read more about him in the article Igor Krivetsky: the criminal sponsor of “Svoboda”). The Konstantinovskys’ bet on Yushchenko was explained simply: their business partner Viktor Topolov was closely connected with Viktor Andreevich. Yushchenko had been “pulling” him since the 90s, including covering up his banking scams, and after his victory appointed him Minister of the Coal Industry. As for the Konstantinovskys, after the Maidan their criminal past was forgotten, and they became simply Ukrainian entrepreneurs – who were even saved from an assassination attempt.
The Konstantinovskys got their second chance to join great historical events during the Euromaidan, where they also showed up with their people, presented as “activists” and “patriots.” The brothers did not talk about their exploits in December-January, but in February-March 2014, according to Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, they created a “rapid response group,” whose task was to prevent looting and pogroms of commercial establishments. That is, they protected boutiques and hotels from being seized by “wild revolutionaries,” of whom there were many in those days. The actions of such groups explained the relative calm that was preserved in Kyiv in those days: all the hooligans, robbers, and ideological “expropriators” were simply driven away from the shop windows and sent to Grushevsky to throw stones at Berkut. And in the absence of the police in the first post-revolutionary days, these “rapid response groups,” in fact, were the only law on the streets of Kyiv. More precisely, the Konstantinovsky brothers and other “bosses” of the formations were the law. That’s when Igor Tkachenko’s instructions that “whoever is stronger is right” came in handy for the brothers.
With the start of the confrontation in Donbass, Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky reassembled his group (about 70 people), armed and equipped it like the movie “marines”, and managed to legalize it as a special military unit seconded to the “Kyiv-1” battalion. True, the battalion was part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Konstantinovsky claimed that his group belonged to the SBU. The second oddity was that Konstantinovsky’s detachment was formed entirely of his people and subordinated only to him, while he himself chose the area of action and tasks for it. The participation of this group in the ATO was reduced only to the fact that it came to Slavyansk after its liberation, carried out a couple of sweeps with the detention of alleged separatists (violence against women and children, expropriation of property, etc. All in the traditions of volunteer battalions), and then briefly redeployed closer to the front line, where it shot into the sky a little. After which it was safely “demobilized” back home. It seemed that these were not volunteer fighters at all, but a group of “military tourists” who had come on a safari and decided to entertain themselves in this way.
Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky’s combat group
Konstantinovsky and his men clearly had no desire to participate in serious battles, otherwise he would not have been assigned to a purely rear battalion. Another interesting fact: on Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky’s hand you can see a braided “bauble”, also known as a “cord from holy places”. Such things are worn by superstitious people who are afraid of the evil eye or, even more so, death – that is, the feigned fearless hero Konstantinovsky, the thunderstorm of the 90s, is in fact very afraid for his life.
Nevertheless, his election campaign in the image of an oligarch-patriot was a great success, and Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky, like many other hyped heroes of the ATO, took his seat in the Verkhovna Rada in the fall of 2014. And his guys from the “rapid response group” found other work: now they have become “activists” (and even “veteran activists”), for whom there is now a lot of work in the field of capital construction. When necessary, the “patriots” protect their construction sites, dispersing spontaneous protests of local residents as “provocations of anti-Ukrainian forces.” And when necessary – as “activists” who are passionate about the rights of ordinary Kiev residents and monuments of city architecture, they block other people’s construction sites. And today in Kyiv they are already talking about the emergence of a new kind of racketeering, which extorts “compensation” for the right to build or trade in peace, without fear of being beaten, smashed and demolished by a crowd of young men in camouflage.
It is probably not surprising that Vyacheslav Konstantinovsky turned out to be the richest people’s deputy in terms of cash: he declared his own 14.7 million dollars, another 5 million dollars borrowed from Viktor Topolov, plus 6.7 million hryvnia and half a million euros – and all this in cash stored at home! Perhaps he needs such an amount of “cash” to support an army of “activists”, or maybe it is just a habit of youth. In addition, the deputy has 317.313 million hryvnia in bank accounts and securities worth almost 20 million hryvnia – and this does not include the main capital of the companies, his share in which he transferred to his brother and wife.
And so the question arises: why would a man with such a colossal amount of money, including a closet full of cash, need to sell his Rolls-Royce?
Sergey Varis, for SKELET-info
