Elite corner on the Cote d'Azur of France. Near the villa-museum of Baroness Beatrice Rothschild, in a cozy bay of the Mediterranean Sea, the town of Saint Jean Cap Ferrat is located.
Here, at a distance of tens of meters from each other, two beneficiaries of Ukrainian corruption settled - Sergei Levochkin and Dmitry Firtash.
A possible explanation for this strange selectivity is that the first post-Maidan prosecutor general, Makhnitsky, was dependent on the gray cardinal of the Svoboda party, Igor Krivetsky, who, in turn, had common business interests with Firtash in real estate.
The cost of such a "service" as the avoidance of EU sanctions is difficult to overestimate. Unlike many people on the sanctions list, for whom the punishment of the European Union did not have consequences because they did not own assets in Europe, for Lyovochkin and Firtash, being on the EU "black list" could have serious consequences. After all, these people are the owners of numerous real estate abroad.
But the moment was lost, and all members of the Ukrainian political clan RosUkrEnergo escaped even the minimum punishment.
Lyovochkin and Boyko are now members of parliament, occasionally threatening early elections in the spring of 2016. And Firtash is under investigation in the United States for an episode not related to Ukraine. In 2015, he was able to avoid extradition to America by obtaining a positive decision in the first instance of the Vienna court.
The chance to introduce international sanctions against Yanukovych's entourage existed only in the first weeks after the change of power. Then, when the European Union took a step towards Ukraine and agreed to impose restrictions on persons who could be involved in the theft of state property during the years of Yanukovych's rule.
After April 2014, no new defendants were added to the sanctions list, but only removed from it. Therefore, to date, there is no way to include Levochkin, Firtash or Boyko in the existing list. The only possibility is to start an investigation by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and turn to foreign states for legal assistance.
Story 2. "Lazurka" Firtash
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian President Vladimir Putin and his current entourage owned summer houses in the middle of the Karelian Isthmus, which were united in the "Ozero cooperative".
Firtash and Lyovochkin arranged a kind of cooperative for themselves on the most expensive lands in Europe - the Cote d'Azur of France. The two own land and villas in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.
Villa La Mauresque by Dmitry Firtash
Villa Firtash is surrounded by greenery. It is called "La Mauresque" ("Moorish") and is located at two addresses - number 52 on Charles de Gaulle Boulevard (Boulevard Charles De Gaulle) and number 48 on Bellevue Avenue (Avenue Bellevue).
This €49 million luxury home with a garden, swimming pool and tennis court is owned by LM Holdings. According to the documents that the author has at his disposal, the assignors (persons who cede their rights - UP) of the company are the director of many of Firtash's enterprises Robert Shetler-Jones and another Briton David Brown, and the assignee (successor - UP) is Dmitry Firtash himself .
One of the previous owners of Firtash's villa on the Cote d'Azur in France was the writer Somerset Maugham, as local residents can tell. One of them, Monin Lutun, admitted during a walk with her dog that Firtash was never seen on the street, and the residents of the house were unfriendly and secretive.
Although Firtash's "business" was always associated with loyalty to the authorities, he never worked in elected or government positions and was not required to declare his property. Unlike his partner Sergei Levochkin.
Next to Firtash's house, literally behind the fence, is the house of the former head of the presidential administration, former first assistant to the president, former head of the secretariat of the Cabinet of Ministers, Sergei Lyovochkin.
Story 3. "Lazurka" Levochkin
Villa Lyovochkina is not just a visual embodiment of where the money earned over decades of being in Ukrainian politics is invested.
This is an opportunity to follow offshore companies and get on the trail of Levochkin in other resonant scandals - such as RosUkrEnergo and Ukrtelecom.
First there was a photo on the social network Instagram. Levochkin's daughter posted a picture from their family vacation last year. Almost nothing got into the frame, except for the characteristic fence and lanterns. The fact that Lyovochkin has real estate in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat has long been rumored among Ukrainian businessmen and politicians.
Knowledgeable people, who wish not to mention their names in this material, have narrowed our focus to a specific part of the cape. Next was a Google Street View search to find a similar exterior. So, the luxurious villa of Levochkin is located at the address: house 56, Charles de Gaulle Boulevard (Boulevard du G?n?ral de Gaulle) in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.
Sergei Levochkin's Villa in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat
We move on. The cadaster is located in the city hall of Saint Jean Cap Ferrat, where a friendly employee reveals the secrets of the secret property of the former head of presidential administration Yanukovych.
As it turned out, Levochkin owns five land plots at once, united by one territory and a postal address. Here you can also get information about the owner. Levochkin's real estate is registered to the Danish company Glorietta Investments I APS.
The house on Cape Ferrat, which today belongs to Levochkin, has a history.
At first it belonged to a family of entrepreneurs who specialized in maritime freight transport. Then - to the German industrialists involved in the manufacture of weapons. A few years ago, it ended up in the hands of a longtime Ukrainian official who spent four years building an authoritarian regime along with Viktor Yanukovych .
At first the house was owned by a company from the Netherlands Glorietta Investments Amsterdam BV, which is now inactive. In November 2005, the property was re-registered to the Danish company Glorietta Investments APS, and in February 2014 it was renamed Glorietta Investments I APS.
Danish registries are a treasure trove of information. Thus, we managed to get access to the report prepared by the auditors for the annual meeting of shareholders in May 2015.
Page 14 of the report confirms that Glorietta Investments I APS does indeed own real estate in France for an astronomical amount of 40 million euros. This is the cost of Levochkin's house in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat.
The next page also states that since the property is located in France, she pays taxes there as well, so she does not conduct any activity in Denmark that would require taxation.
So, the company Epic Telecom Invest Ltd today exists under a different sign. On December 19, 2013, three years after filing an application for Ukrtelecom, it changed its name to Raga Establishment Ltd (they have the same registration number in the Cyprus registry No. NE 276881).
Let's look at the Cypriot registry data for Raga Establisment Ltd.
One of the directors of this company is the director of the Danish laying, who owns Levochkin's villa on Lazurka - Audriana Pias. The other director of Raga/Epic is a woman named Georgia Georgiou, sister of Xenia Georgiou. The same Xenia, who, together with Pias, is the second director of the firm that owns the villa.
That is, the same people at the same time head the company that owns Lyovochkin's house on Saint Jean Cap Ferrat - and which "won" the privatization of Ukrtelecom during the Yanukovych era. But let's move on.
The Georgiou sisters still surface a lot in the companies leading to Levochkin. So, in addition to being directors in firms that own a villa and bought Ukrtelecom, the sisters also appeared in the Levochkin family bank "Clearing House".
According to the official response of the National Bank, Yulia Lyovochkina, the sister of Sergey Levochkin, officially identified herself as the ultimate beneficiary of this financial institution. One of the companies that Lyovochkina recognized as her property in the share distribution structure of the Clearing House bank is called Utelo Holdings Ltd. The secretary of Utelo Holdings Ltd is Georgi Georgiou herself - who was also the director of the privatizing company Ukrtelecom, and whose sister Ksenia Georgiou is the director of the company that owns the Levochkin villa.
And what about Sergei Levochkin himself? - You ask.
Until recently, he officially admitted that he was the owner of only one company - the Cypriot firm Oskaro Investments Ltd. He announced his rights to this company back in the days of Viktor Yanukovych. So, the director of Oskaro Investments Ltd is Maria Shufta, who simultaneously with Georgy Georgiou works in the above-mentioned Utelo Holdings Ltd, which holds shares for Yulia Lyovochkina in the Clearing House bank, both in the direction and through the Intrade company .
Story 7. Ukrtelecom - Firtash
As noted above, the privatization of Ukrtelecom in 2010 was not transparent and without competition. The only bidder and winner was the ESU company owned by unidentified Cypriots. Who was included in the first ration for the privatization of Ukrtelecom was never known.
Sources say it was a "pool" of oligarchs and corrupt officials. Different people call different names, including Yanukovych, Akhmetova, Firtash and Lyovochkin, who bought Ukrtelecom "sharp money" - including using financing from Sberbank. At least, these persons appear in Ukraine's request to some European states for legal assistance in identifying the ultimate beneficiaries of the ESU company.
Subsequently, in 2013, the shares in the ESU company were completely transferred to Rinat Akhmetov.
The author has at his disposal a note prepared by the oligarch's court organization "Bureau of Economic and Social Technologies" for his boss, where various options are being worked out and Firtash is mentioned as a seller of Ukrtelecom.
When Akhmetov was preparing to buy Ukrtelecom from the previous mysterious owners, it was privatized, the PR headquarters of a wealthy Ukrainian launched a whole Jupiter project to explain this deal to the public.
In the "Existing reputational risks" section, the authors of the report recall that it is proposed to go public with the version of "Firtash as a seller." "This information can be interpreted as an opaque transfer of an asset from one pocket, close to the family of the first person, to another," the document says.
To date, the Ukrtelecom episode is the only one on which Yanukovych's trial in absentia began, and which became the basis for declaring him wanted by Interpol.
Yanukovych is charged with issuing an order according to which the ESU company transferred to the state the obligation to build a special communications network. The price of the issue is considerable - 220 million hryvnia, almost 30 million dollars at the then exchange rate.
So, in order to remove from ESU the obligation to spend 220 million hryvnias on the development of the network, according to the materials of the case, "Yanukovych entered into a criminal conspiracy" with other high-ranking officials and achieved changes in the budget of Ukraine. After that, these obligations for 220 million were hung on the citizens of Ukraine.
True, Levochkin's close circle - Georgy Dzekon and Ilya Solodovsky - were taken out from under the blow. At first they were suspected, but two months later they were removed from the wanted list.
Story 8. Levochkin - RosUkrEnergo
In addition to exposing Lyovochkin as having something to do with the privatization of Ukrtelecom, his villa on St. Jean Cap Ferrat opens up another trail.
We are talking about the gas intermediary RosUkrEnergo, which for many years was a hub for paying corruption funds to politicians involved in organizing gas supplies to Ukraine.
When the then mysterious company RosUkrEnergo had just appeared on the political horizon, there was a lot of conflicting information about its owners. At first, 50% of the shares were registered with Raiffeisen Investments, but later they made public the name of the person they represented - this is Dmitry Firtash.
Subsequently, the share of Raiffeisen Investments was transferred to Centragas. This firm is one clue to unravel the nest of corruption. Thus, the Supervisory Board of Centragas headed Robert Shetler-Jones, the nominal owner of the Firtash house in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat. But if we analyze the directors in companies that own another house on the Cote d'Azur, owned by Levochkin, this gives reason to assert that he is also interested in RosUkrEnergo.
As you know, this gas intermediary entered the Ukrainian market in the last year of his presidency. Leonid Kuchma when Levochkin worked at Bankova as the first assistant to the president. So, Ksenia Georgiou, mentioned at the beginning of the article (director of the Danish company that owns the house for Lyovochkin on Lazurka), was also the head of the Cypriot company Prelux Holdings Limited, which during the second premiership of Yanukovych was the owner of a gold mine - about 25% of the shares of RosUkrEnergo (Prelux acted as a shareholder by 44% in the Austrian company Centragas, which, on a parity basis, together with Gazprom, owned half of the shares of RosUkrEnergo.
In addition, 10% in Centragas belonged and still belongs to another Cypriot company, Grenar Enterprises, whose director is Amal Sarout Lambrou, one of the directors of Boutifour SA from Luxembourg. She owns the aforementioned Danish company, keeps Levochkin's real estate on the Cote d'Azur on her balance sheet.
At the same time, Lambrou's colleague, secretary at Grenar Enterprises, our old friend Maria Shuftas, who manages the only officially and publicly recognized by Lyovochkin company Oskaro Investments Ltd.
By that time, RosUkrEnergo not only supplied gas from Russia, but also sold it within Ukraine, earning hundreds of millions of euros in excess profits.
All the mentioned Cypriots - sisters Georgiou, Maria Shuftas, Audriana Pias, Amal Sarout Lambrou - appear in dozens of companies of Firtash and Lyovochkin.
Not only those related to the privatization of Ukrtelecom or ownership rights in RosUkrEnergo. But, for example, in companies that own helicopters of the Firtash group.
Thus, Audriana Pias is a director in the Cypriot company Kilchoman Ltd, which is identified in the state register of Ukraine as Firtash's office, according to which he owns the DF Aviation enterprise.
Also, Audriana Pias is the director of Arakua Ltd and Bokar Ventures Ltd, which own two Agusta AW109 premium-class helicopters in the State Register of Civil Aircraft of Ukraine (Yanukovych flew similar helicopters during his presidency and disappeared from Kyiv). Her colleague in these firms is Howard Wilson, who, along with Firtash, is a director at Centragas.
If the reputation of Dmitry Firtash has long been destroyed, then his companion Sergei Levochkin has managed for many years to remain in the shadows and avoid direct association with odious bosses.
So it was in the days of Kuchma, whom he helped as the first assistant, and in the days of Yanukovych, whose regime Lyovochkin reduced with his own hands. In both cases, he positioned himself as a "moderate" wing surrounded by authoritarian leaders and built up his own capital - both monetary and political, and international.
Lyovochkin does not hide the fact that he wants to be the prime minister of Ukraine. He is on friendly terms with US Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland. Speaks English. He manages the country's powerful media tool - the Inter TV channel and publishes in the Western press.
At the same time, this should not be misleading - Lyovochkin is the whip and blood of Yanukovych, his close associate.
He was a member of the family and participated in the wedding of the eldest son of Yanukovych, when many did not yet know this name. When the Donetsk governor, back in the 1990s, was looking for channels of influence on central Ukrainian politics, Lyovochkin became his representative in Kyiv.
While working in the civil service, Levochkin constantly enriched himself, evidence of which can be seen on the Cote d'Azur of France.
Realizing that such real estate is not available to a civil servant, Lyovochkin registered the property with nominees and did not declare the property. This desire to hide his tracks played a cruel joke - after all, through the nominee directors of Levochkin, you can trace him in other transactions ..
When Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk visited France this spring, he was received by the country's top officials.
During a conversation with the head of the government of the republic, Yatsenyuk decided to go beyond the traditional exchange of views and half-jokingly, half-seriously suggested that the French prime minister confiscate the property of Ukrainian oligarchs on the French Riviera.
But this can be done only in the conditions of the opening of the relevant criminal proceedings in Ukraine. Corresponding appeals will be sent by the author of these lines to the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Sergey Leshchenko
http://www.rospres.com/politics/15275/
The famous gas intermediary, co-owner of Rosukrenergo Dmitry Firtash is back in the game: his company sued Ukraine's Naftogaz for 12.1 billion cubic meters of gas
Vsevolod Belchenko
Dmitry Firtash is a mystical figure. In 2006, it turned out that it was this person, previously unknown to the public, on shares with Gazprom, who controlled the trader RosUkrEnergo, which supplies Turkmen gas to Ukraine. A little later it turned out that Firtash built a real industrial empire with gas money.
In 2008, Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko declared Firtash the number one enemy of the state and unleashed a real war against him: gas was cut off at Firtash's plants, officials began the nationalization of several enterprises, and Rosukrenergo was thrown out of the Russian-Ukrainian gas trade. But after Viktor Yanukovych's victory in the presidential election, fortune turned again to face the entrepreneur: the nationalization of factories was canceled, Firtash's group got the large Ukrainian bank Nadra (at the same time, the government carefully supported him with loans), and finally the businessman returns to the gas game. Who is Dmitry Firtash?
Arctic fox and gaiters
Dmitry Firtash is 45 years old. He comes from the village of Bogdanovka, Ternopil region. Mother worked as an accountant at a local sugar factory, father worked as a driver and instructor for DOSAAF, but the main income of the Firtash was not the earnings of co-workers, but the proceeds from the sale of tomatoes grown on the family plot.
“At that time, my parents were not at all poor people: they grew tomatoes at home and earned 5 thousand rubles per season, then Zhiguli cost so much,” Firtash said in an interview with Vedomosti and The Financial Times in 2006, the first interview in of my life. - I was forced to work in greenhouses from morning to night, at the age of 6 I got up at four in the morning and worked until late in the evening. But I got tired of growing tomatoes, and at the age of 17 I began to live an independent life.
Dmitry did not start his independent life very successfully: he wanted to enter the railway institute, but he could not - triples in the school certificate and poor knowledge of mathematics interfered. Instead of a university, Firtash went to a railway school in Krasny Liman, Donetsk region, where he trained as a driver.
The future tycoon did not have to drive trains: immediately after school he was taken into the army.
“After the army, he continued to think about studying at the institute for some time, but then he started talking about marriage,” recalled the businessman’s mother, Maria Firtash, in an interview.
Dmitry chose his classmate and daughter of the director of the local school, Lyudmila Grabovetskaya, as his wife. Lyudmila will be a loving wife to Firtash: their marriage will last until the mid-1990s, she will give birth to Dmitry's only daughter, Ivanka. But then Firtash was seriously shy: he sent his mother instead of himself to match with Yuli Grabovetsky.
The businessman himself does not like to remember about matchmaking: in conversations with journalists, he prefers to talk exclusively about the professional side of his career.
In 1984 I joined the army. When he returned, he came to his parents and asked for money for his own business, but they said: go and earn money yourself,” says Firtash. “I remember that I was very offended by them then ... I packed my suitcase and left for Chernivtsi. There, an army comrade got me a job as a fireman. But the country was becoming completely different, they stopped paying salaries. And I decided to act - my friends and I were engaged in food deliveries.
After the army, the businessman at one time was engaged in breeding arctic foxes, says his father-in-law Yuli Grabovetsky, and sold the skins of the animals to Moscow. During perestroika, the fur business began to decline, and Firtash moved to Chernivtsi, where he worked as a fireman in a unit at a local shoe factory, and from under the counter traded in the products of that same factory.
- He was a good guy. Smart, didn't smoke, didn't drink,” one of Firtash's friends said. “There was only one thing. After some time, they began to notice that he was trading in leggings, which the factory produced. It will throw 50-60 pairs over the fence at night, and in the morning it leaves, picks up and sells. Somehow they caught him on this. They call me at three o'clock in the morning, they ask: "Your brother Firtash? He is here with us in the bullpen." I arrived, they let him out - it seems like a small matter.
The first major business - the supply of a batch of powdered milk to Uzbekistan - turned up to a businessman at the turn of 1988-1989.
“I sent powdered milk to Uzbekistan, but I received not money for it, but cotton,” Firtash said. “I had to go to the port of Odessa and negotiate the shipment. I was lucky again - I found understanding with the head of the port, who helped me send this cotton to Hong Kong and found a buyer. Somehow I was lucky - I quickly found a common language with the right people and, as a rule, got on decent ones. The deal took eight months and we made $1.2 million. I got a net 50 thousand dollars.
Gas for food
After the milk deal, Firtash, in his own words, moved to Moscow and began selling food on a grand scale. That is how he entered the gas market: in 1993, Firtash and his partners delivered a batch of products to Turkmenistan, but did not wait for the money.
“I went there to sort things out, and they offered me gas instead of money,” Dmitry Firtash recalled. “There I met Ukrainian businessman Igor Bakai, who was ready to buy gas from me. Bakai had a quota for gas supplies to Ukraine, which was given to him by Kravchuk. I just happened to be there, I needed money for goods, and Bakai needed gas. Here is the deal.
The accidental "gas for food" scheme fed Firtash for the next 10 years: Bakai was replaced by Omraniya, then the quota for gas supplies to Ukraine went to Itera, but Firtash provided the food part of the scheme all this time. Its headquarters was located in Ashgabat, and partners were responsible for operations in Ukraine.
— I was the largest supplier of goods to Turkmenistan, — the businessman will tell later.
But the real breakthrough in the work of the entrepreneur came in 2001 - the war between the new managers of Gazprom and the team of Rem Vyakhirev led to the fact that Itera was excluded from the supply chain of Central Asian gas. Firtash offered his services.
“Gazprom didn't have to be convinced of anything,” the businessman said. “Gazprom never controlled the supply of Central Asian gas, did not transit it, and did not even have its own markets for its sale. This has always been done by outside companies. Gazprom did not really want to enter the Ukrainian market, where there were continuous non-payments. It was important for him that Ukraine clearly transported his gas for export, and he paid for it with his own gas ... I just happened to be at the right time in the right place. I knew the Ukrainian market well, I also had good contacts with Turkmenistan for a long time. In addition, the leadership of Ukraine then perfectly understood that Itera had a difficult relationship with Gazprom ... In October 2001, I created Eural Trans Gas, and in November we signed a contract with Gazprom.
Firtash became the main intermediary in gas supplies to Ukraine, his company gained access to big money, and the businessman himself entered the big business league. However, he still remained in the shadows.
With the advent of Eural Trans Gas, Firtash's center of operations moved to Budapest: it was in Hungary that a new gas intermediary was registered. The Hermitage Capital Fund in its report said: Eural Trans Gas is a monopoly in the supply of Turkmen gas to Ukraine, it owns 57 percent of the Ukrainian gas market, and the company's net profit in 2003 amounted to $767 million.
At the turn of 2003-2004, a scandal erupted around Eural Trans Gas - the shareholders of Gazprom demanded an explanation why large volumes of gas are flowing through an unknown offshore company owned by some private individuals?
Gazprom responded by setting up its own intermediary, RosUkrEnergo, in 2004, in which it had a 50 percent stake. The second 50 percent belonged to Ukrainian partners: in 2006 it will become known that these are Dmitry Firtash and Odessa banker, owner of a local film studio, Ivan Fursin. They control their half of RosUkrEnergo through the Austrian company Centragas (90 percent for Firtash, 10 percent for Fursin).
The creation of RosUkrEnergo was the pinnacle of Firtash's career: now he was not just a major gas intermediary, he became an official partner of Gazprom and a monopoly in foreign gas supplies to Ukraine.
The entrepreneur began to buy up assets: in Ukraine, the Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant and the Volnogorsk Mining and Metallurgical Plant, the nitrogen fertilizer manufacturer Rovnoazot, the Crimean Titanium plant, the Crimean Soda Plant, half of Mandarin Plaza CJSC (owns a shopping center "Mandarin Plaza" and business center "Sail"). In Hungary, the entrepreneur owned one of the largest local gas traders Emfesz, in Russia - 74.9 percent of the Astrakhan oil and gas company and 50 percent of Pechorneftegazprom, in Austria - the chemical company Ostchem, in India - an ilmenite ore deposit. The tycoon also owned the Kyiv basketball club and two TV channels. In 2007, the entrepreneur merged all assets into a single company, Group DF. In 2008, the Ukrainian magazine Korrespondent estimated Firtash's fortune at $2.9 billion. Soon, the new government of Ukraine removed Rosukrenergo from gas supplies, and by the spring of 2009, Firtash's fortune in the same rating had decreased by more than 10 times - to $255 million.
Dangerous ties
At the first stage of his gas career - in the 1990s - the businessman's key partner was Maria Kalinovskaya: as resourceful as Firtash himself, a former bath attendant from Chernivtsi and co-founder of the KMIL company.
- Everyone who worked with us then was actually a performer. The motor has always been Dima and Marina, - recalled one of the friends of the Kalinovsky family. - They were a single whole. Most of the time was spent at work, spent the day traveling.
The partnership between Firtash and Kalinovskaya will be so close that in 2002 they will get married. A little later, Firtash's relatives and acquaintances, speaking in the Ukrainian press, will argue that the marriage was fictitious. His background, according to Firtash, is as follows: in 1996, Firtash and Marina took their families to Germany for permanent residence. Marina at the same time made violations in the preparation of documents. As a result, she was threatened with a ban on entering Germany, and Kalinovskaya asked her business partner to enter into a fictitious marriage: Firtash, after all, everything is in order with the documents, being his wife, she could again move freely around Europe. Kalinovskaya herself claimed that they married Dmitry for love. But be that as it may, they divorced at the beginning of 2005, immediately after the creation of the scheme with RosUkrEnergo.
According to the agreement on the division of property during the divorce, Kalinovskaya received compensation from her husband in the amount of $ 36 million, a Cadillac Escalade car and three apartments in Kyiv (one of them is in the same house as the Ukrainian oligarch N 1 Rinat Akhmetov). Firtash received the Kyiv basketball club and all the partners' gas assets. An interesting fact - Firtash's confidant in that divorce proceedings was ... Yuriy Boyko, the current Minister of Fuel and Energy of Ukraine. As Ukrainian media reported, and as Kalinovskaya later said in her interviews, it was Boyko, on behalf of Firtash, who signed an agreement on the division of property with her.
Another person with whom Dmitry Firtash is credited as a partner is Semyon Mogilevich, a high-profile businessman listed by the FBI as one of the ten most wanted people. He crossed paths with Firtash several times. Among the founders of the Hungarian company Highrock Holdings, through which Firtash has been supplying food since 2000, was the wife of Semyon Mogilevich, and Igor Fisherman, a longtime partner of Mogilevich, turned out to be the financial director of the Israeli Highrock Properties associated with her.
“I became one of the owners of these companies later,” Firtash justified himself. “And I accidentally found out that the wives of Mogilevich and Fisherman are on the lists of the founders of these companies. But I immediately went to Cyprus and rewrote everything. I simply did not double-check out of naivety ... I saw Semyon Mogilevich several times, but I never knew him closely. I just couldn't be his partner.
But Highrock is not the only link between Firtash and Mogilevich. Firtash once owned a 33 percent stake in Rinway LLC, which owned a stake in the Arbat Prestige chain of stores. Rinway had two more co-owners: Olga Zhunzhurova, the wife of that same Igor Fisherman, and one of Mogilevich's wives, Galina Telesh.
But even without Semyon Mogilevich, Firtash's connections are very extensive: for example, the key divisions of Naftogaz, Ukrtransgaz and Ukrgasdobycha are headed by former Firtash employees Sergey Vinokurov and Yuri Borisov. According to Firtash's own words, about 100 Rada deputies are people who, like him, made money on Turkmen gas. Firtash is also favored by the new President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych: he demanded that the competent authorities find out where 11 billion cubic meters of gas belonging to RosUkrEnergo disappeared from the underground storage facilities and punish those responsible. The Security Service of Ukraine has already opened a case on this matter.
January 5, 2013, 20:01This post, of course, did not include all the wives of our billionaires, but only those names of husbands that many people hear. Lilia Smirnova (Akhmetova) Age: 47 years old 
Lilia Akhmetova is the wife and mother of the children of the richest man in the country, Rinat Akhmetov, co-owner of SCM, president of FC Shakhtar, People's Deputy of Ukraine (Party of Regions). His current fortune is estimated at $12 billion. Akhmetov is also the owner of the Donbass Arena stadium in Donetsk, the first stadium in Eastern Europe designed and built in accordance with 5-star UEFA accreditation. $400 million was spent on the construction of the Donbass Arena, the opening took place on August 29, 2009. Through the System Capital Management business structure, Riant Akhmetov controls stakes in: - Kramatorsk Machine-Building Plant; - Dneprovsky metallurgical plant named after. Dzerzhinsky; - Dnepropetrovsk Pipe Plant named after Lenin; - Kerch metallurgical plant; - 52% of the trading house (TD) "Azovstal". Through Trade House Azovstal owns a controlling stake in FUIB; - Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant; - over 50% of ASKA insurance company; - Football club "Shakhtar"; - Hotel "Donbass-Palace"; - Brewery "Sarmat". With the help of affiliated structures, Rinat Akhmetov influences: - the mobile operator life:), - a number of breweries, - the Gefest oil trading company. Akhmetov also owns the Ukraina TV and radio station, the Lux radio station, and the Segodnya publishing group. According to media reports, Lilia Smirnova previously worked at the Donetsk plant of rubber products, her position was a 2nd category minder. Now Lilia Akhmetova is the owner of a 10% stake in System Capital Management, which manages the assets of the largest Ukrainian financial and industrial group. Despite her high status, almost nothing is known about Lilia Akhmetova's hobbies and interests. They say that she is interested in football, and her favorite team, of course, is Shakhtar Donetsk. About five years ago, the yellow press actively exaggerated rumors that Rinat Akhmetov was allegedly going to file for divorce. Say, the billionaire liked the young fashion model. However, the press service of Mr. Akhmetov promptly refuted this information. It turns out that Rinat Leonidovich is not going to divorce and loves his wife and his sons very much. L. Akhmetova has two sons - Damir (born in 1988) and Almir (born in 1997). Apparently, Lilia Akhmetova is not a public person, since these are all her photos that we managed to find. Elena Pinchuk Age: 42 
Also known as the daughter of the second President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma, she is the wife of Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Pinchuk, co-owner of the Interpipe Corporation, president of the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation, the owner of shares in several Ukrainian TV channels, located in third place and whose fortune is estimated at $ 4.4 billion. Pinchuk became the first Ukrainian public figure in history to be included in the list of the 100 most influential people in the world according to TIME magazine (2010 TIME 100: The World's Most Influential People). He took 7th place in the Thinkers category, which also included Apple founder Steve Jobs has been married to Viktor Pinchuk since 2002. The couple have a daughter, Ekaterina, who is called Ukraine's richest heiress, in 2003. In the same year, Elena founded the ANTIAIDS Foundation. concerts with the participation of world stars.In June 2007, a concert by Sir E lton John. In 2010, Elena Pinchuk joined the UN Commission, created for the "preventive revolution" - a breakthrough in preventing new cases of HIV / AIDS in the world. 
From her first marriage, Elena Franchuk already has an adult son, Roman Franchuk. Pinchuk also has a daughter, Maria, from her first marriage to Elena Arshava. In 2011, the Pinchuks had a second daughter, Veronika. A few facts about Elena Pinchuk: - bought the most expensive house in London for 80 million pounds (159 million dollars). - Elena lives with her family near Kyiv in a country-style private house. - enjoys interior design, badminton. - at one of her charity auctions, Elena Franchuk bought a dress from Ukrainian designer Larisa Lobanova for 7,500 euros. - celebrated her birthday on December 3, 2010, together with her husband's fiftieth anniversary in Courchevel, and the two events merged into one grand celebration on a grand scale, among the guests were Bill Clinton, Paul McCartney and Elton John, and Christina Aguilera was called to sing for the guests. Irina Kolomoiskaya Age 47 or 48 years. There is no photo, and almost no information about the wife of Igor Kolomoisky, who is in fourth place in the ranking with a fortune of $ 3.3 billion. Igor Kolomoisky, who lives mainly in Switzerland, has two citizenships, Ukrainian and Israeli. Considered one of the largest businessmen in Ukraine. Together with his friends - Gennady Bogolyubov and Alexei Martynov - he is a co-owner of the Privat group. Or rather, the main figure of the financial group. 
The owner of the Naftohimik Prykarpattya oil refinery, as well as the Ukrnafta oil producing company, the 1 + 1 TV channel and owns many other enterprises. In 2010, he was elected head of the European Jewish Council for a period of 5 years. It is known that Igor met his future wife Irina, who is a year and a half younger than him, at the age of 13, in a pioneer camp, and they got married in the third year of the institute. A year later, daughter Angelica was born. Irina comes from a simple family, graduated from the Pedagogical Institute and immediately worked at the school. Yes, and Igor Kolomoisky, who was born in a family of simple Dnepropetrovsk engineers, graduated from the Dnepropetrovsk Metallurgical Institute. Daughter Angelica Husband 
What did help the son of engineers to break out not just into people, but into very influential people? Yet most of those who know him believe that at the root lie "an extraordinary analytical mind and amazing mathematical abilities." 
But first, he nevertheless found start-up capital, and the Jewish community helped him a lot in this, with which he maintains close ties to this day. Elena Gaiduk Age: Estimated 52 years old. Wife of Vitaliy Gaiduk, co-owner of the Industrial Union of Donbass corporation and a prominent former Ukrainian politician, who is in sixth place in this rating with a fortune of $2.3 billion. 
According to political scientist Kost Bondarenko, Vitaly Anatolyevich met her at a disco: he was then in his fourth year, and she was in her first year. The Gaiduks raised a son and a daughter. He owns a lot of profitable real estate with a total area of hundreds of thousands of square meters. Including, according to rumors, one of the most expensive mansions in Kyiv - a building on Shelkovichnaya, 19, built at the beginning of the 20th century. Let us clarify that the lion's share of family property is registered with Vitaly Anatolyevich's wife. When asked how much he estimates the value of his family's property, Vitaly Gaiduk answers: “I have never asked myself such a question. For this, there are appropriate appraisal companies and the market. I do not consider myself to be poor. I have an absolutely normal family and absolutely normal incomes.” Lada Firtash Age unknown. 
The third wife of Dmitry Firtash, Ukrainian businessman, billionaire, investor, owner of the private group of companies Group DF (The Firtash Group of Companies). Co-owner of the gas trader RosUkrEnergo since 2004. Dmitry Firtash is in ninth place in the rating with a fortune of $1.4 billion. 
The circumstances of his personal life are also unknown. It is only known that the first wife is Lyudmila Grabovetskaya, daughter Ivanna, born in 1988. The second wife - from September 2001 to 2005 Maria Kalinovskaya. Ukrainian journalist Mustafa Nayem claims that this marriage was fictitious and its purpose was to guarantee Kalinovskaya's investment in Eural Trans Gas. 
The current wife Lada Firtash is the Director of the DF Foundation and the Chairman of the Council for Investments and Development Projects. Daughter Anna (born 2005), son Dmitry (born 2007). Victoria Tigipko (Lopatetskaya) Age: 39 years old. Victoria Tigipko is a business woman, public figure, wife of the Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Labor and Social Policy, founder and co-owner of the TAS group, Sergei Tigipko, who is in seventeenth place in the rating and whose fortune is estimated at $ 780 million. This is Sergei's second marriage Tigipko, imprisoned in 2005. He divorced his first wife Natalia in 2004. From his first marriage, Sergei Tigipko has a daughter, Anna, born in 1984. The couple have three children: Timofey (2002), Anastasia (2005), Leonty (2008). Note the date of birth of their first child. 
Hobbies - cinema (art house, art mainstream), jazz, contemporary art, yoga, skiing. Victoria Tigipko is a collector of contemporary art and tries not to miss a single iconic world art forum. Victoria also loves to attend various fashion shows. and loves to lead a public secular lifestyle 
Her passion for cinema in 2010 grew into a large-scale social and cultural event - as president, Victoria Tigipko organized and held the Odessa International Film Festival. and continues to do so to this day 
Marina Poroshenko Age: 50 years old. 
Marina Poroshenko, wife of People's Deputy Petro Poroshenko, founder of the Ukrprominvest concern. Petro Poroshenko ranks eighteenth in the ranking, his fortune is $ 756 million. He is also the chocolate king, Yushchenko's godfather, the former head of the National Security and Defense Council and the former "worst enemy of Tymoshenko" Marina is a cardiologist and mother of four children. She is three years older than her husband. They met when they were students. 
Marina was not an ordinary girl, her father was the Deputy Minister of Health of the Ukrainian SSR. Marina, of course, graduated from a prestigious medical institute at that time. And Petr Poroshenko, the son of the director of some of the factories in the Moldovan city of Bender, studied at the Faculty of International Economic Relations at Kiev Shevchenko University. 
Ekaterina Surkis Age: 32 years old. 
The current wife of Hryhoriy Surkis, a Ukrainian businessman and politician, who was the president of the Football Federation of Ukraine until September 2012, is now its honorary president. His fortune is estimated at $ 730 million and he is in nineteenth place in the ranking of the richest people in Ukraine. 
The President of the Football Federation of Ukraine, 63-year-old Hryhoriy Surkis, has been married for the third time. His current wife, master of sports in swimming, 32-year-old Ekaterina, is even younger than Surkis's daughter from Svetlana's first marriage (b. 1972). The age difference between the spouses is 31 years. 
Married to Grigory, Catherine in 2006 gave birth to his son. Marina Yaroslavskaya (Sventitskaya) Age: 24 Co-owner of UkrSibbank, Kharkiv Tractor Plant, Cherkassy Azot, president of the Metalist football club, well-known businessman Alexander Yaroslavsky also has a young wife. His fortune is $ 725 million and he is in twentieth place in the ranking. They say that Yaroslavsky laid eyes on Marina Sventitskaya when she was only 18 years old. In 2006, she participated in a beauty contest and won the title of "Vice-Miss Kharkov". Now Yaroslavsky is 53 years old, his wife is 29 years younger than him, she is only 22. But Marina is already ripe to give birth to the oligarch of two children - a son and a daughter. From his first marriage, the businessman, as the media wrote, has a son, Alexander, born in 1993, and another son who recently went to high school. Oksana Marchenko Age: 39 years old 
The wife of the famous Ukrainian statesman and politician Viktor Medvedchuk, who has earned $ 367 million in this field to date. Forty-seventh place in the rating. Well-known TV presenter Oksana Marchenko is 19 years younger than her husband. This is the third marriage of Viktor Medvedchuk. They got married in 2003 in the old Foros church, when Medvedchuk was the head of the presidential administration. Among the guests who came to congratulate the newlyweds were the then President Leonid Kuchma, Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, friends Grigory Surkis, Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk and others. 
Married to Viktor, Oksana gave birth to a daughter, Daria, whose godfather is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Oksana's eldest son from a previous marriage studies and lives in Switzerland. Alina Aivazova Age: 57 years old 
The wife of the former scandalous mayor of Kyiv, Leonid Chernovetsky, whose fortune is $ 275 million, is vice president of the Pravex concern. Daughter Kristina and son Stepan are the chairman of the supervisory board of PravexBank, a deputy of the city council. Grandchildren: Alina, Leonid, Ivan. Alina, as she herself admits, is from a very wealthy family. But, despite this, in an interview, she likes to fill in the fog and tell how, after marrying Chernovetsky, she wandered around rented apartments with her children and husband for 8 years and lived on his investigator’s salary of 120 rubles. Judging by the words of Aivazova, Leonid Chernovetsky owes much of his wealth to his wife and her father. 
According to experts, it was Alina Aivazova who had the final say both in city administration and in the management of the family business. In addition, she is known for her loud appearances. There are legends about the exclusive diamonds owned by this woman, and the cars driven by the wife of the former Kyiv mayor amaze with sheer luxury. Her weakness is furs and fur capes. Aivazova appears everywhere in them. In addition to fur and diamonds, the billionaire's wife loves dresses in the style of French queens: puffy and with a decollete. Status obligated to wear expensive things, to celebrate birthdays in Cannes. Her love for brands, fur coats and diamonds did not appear by chance. In the mid-90s, Alina Aivazova was engaged in business. Then she owned jewelry stores and clothing boutiques of world brands, which she brought from the USA and Italy. “Money is not important to me, the Lord just gives it to me, diamonds are not important to me, although I can distinguish them from fakes in one second,” a business woman once said in one of her interviews. Valeria Miroshnichenko Age unknown. Wife of Oleksandr Rodnyansky, Ukrainian television mogul and producer, worth $260 million. Two children. 
Valeria Miroshnichenko is a candidate of technical sciences, after her husband moved to Germany, she had to change her specialization and became a radio journalist. Since then, she has been working with Rodnyansky on TV projects: first on the Ukrainian channel "1 + 1", and then on CTC. Owns the Kinodetal production company, which produces the Kino in Detail program. 
Updated on 05/01/13 21:22: Since I made a mistake in the post, the wrong photo was posted, I add a photo of Alexander Yaroslavsky with his wife. Hope it's right this time.
Updated on 05/01/13 21:48: and once again the daughter of Kolomoisky Angelica (the first photo was not hers, as I was already told). 
Ukrainian businessman and investor, billionaire.
A family
Dmitry's father worked as a driver, then taught at a driving school. The mother has two higher educations - veterinary and economic. She worked as an accountant at a sugar factory.
First wife - Ludmila Grabovetskaya, daughter Ivanna, born in 1988
Second wife - from September 2001 to 2005 - Maria Mikhailovna Kalinovskaya. The media claimed that this marriage was fictitious, with the aim of Kalinovskaya's investment in the company Eural Trans Gas.
The third wife is Lada Pavlovna Firtash. There are two children in this marriage: daughter Anna, born in 2005. and son Dmitry, born in 2007 Lada Firtash - Founder and Chairman of the Board of the Charitable Foundation FIRTASH Foundation, as well as the Chairman of the Council for Investments and Development Projects.
Biography
Dmitry was born on May 2, 1965 in the village of Sinkov (formerly Bogdanovka) of the Zalishchitsky district of the Ternopil region, Ukrainian SSR. In 1984 he graduated from the Krasnolimansk railway vocational school.
In 1984-1986 he served in the army. During his service, Dmitry Firtash was awarded the VDNKh medal "For achievements in the development of the national economy of the USSR" and the Order of the Badge of Honor.
Not enrolling in a university in 1986 (later he graduated from the National Academy of Internal Affairs of Ukraine with a degree in law), Firtash moved to Chernivtsi, got married and worked for some time as a driver in the fire department of the Chernivtsi shoe factory, but soon went into business.
The first major deal was the exchange in 1988-1989 of 4,000 tons of Ukrainian dry milk for a batch of Uzbek cotton, which Firtash then sold in Hong Kong and made money on this deal. 50 thousand dollars.
In 1988, he began working in the field of trade in Chernivtsi, then in Moscow.
In 1990 (according to other sources, in 1991, Firtash arrived in Moscow and settled in the Rossiya Hotel, which "served as both a business club and an exchange", since officials and businessmen from all over the former USSR lived in it.
There he met with employees of the Ministry of Commerce. Turkmenistan. Thanks to these connections, Firtash in 1993 (according to other sources - in 1994) signed the first contract with the government of Turkmenistan, providing for the barter supply of food in exchange for natural gas.
Then Firtash sold his goods to a Ukrainian entrepreneur Igor Bakai, which had a quota for the supply of gas to Ukraine. It was noted that this deal marked the beginning of Firtash's "gas career". For most of the 1990s, the entrepreneur lived in Ashgabat.
After Bakai's company, according to Firtash, "left the stage", he continued similar cooperation with the Omraniya company, and later with the major gas trader Itera. Igor Makarov, who in 2000 (according to some reports, it was back in the 1990s) offered Firtash to jointly engage in a food-for-gas program through the Cypriot Highrock Holdings and the Israeli Highrock Properties).
This company was linked to an FBI-wanted international authority. Semyon Mogilevich. Subsequently, according to WikiLeaks, Firtash explained to the US ambassador that "in the 1990s he needed Mogilevich's approval to do business."
In addition to food, Firtash gradually began to sell drilling rigs, railway equipment, fertilizers, and, "in order to have his own goods, he began to buy plants and factories," including "Tajikazot"- one of the leading producers of mineral fertilizers in Central Asia.
In 2003, Firtash acquired a chemical plant "Nitrofert" is the only ammonia fertilizer producer in Estonia with access to the Baltic Sea ports.
Then he created a company in Hungary Emfesz for the development of gas and energy business. Two years later, this company received a license to sell natural gas in Poland.
In the same year, Dmitry Firtash became a shareholder of OAO "Rivneazot"- a major producer of nitrogen fertilizers in the west of Ukraine. Thanks to a large-scale modernization, today this enterprise is the most advanced among Ukrainian producers of nitrogen fertilizers.
In 2004, Firtash, together with Gazprom, created a company "RosUkrEnergo" for gas transit to Ukraine and to the countries of the European Union. In the same year, the Austrian company Zangas Hoch-und Tiefbau GmbH, which specializes in the construction of gas pipelines, was acquired. And also Dmitry Firtash became the main investor of the Crimean Soda Plant (Krasnoperekopsk) and Crimean Titan (Armyansk). On July 7, 2014, Russian Gazprom and Austrian Centragas Holding AG, controlled by Firtash, decided to liquidate RosUkrEnergo AG (RUE, Switzerland).
In 2007, with the aim of consolidating asset management in various business areas, a Group DF. It includes a number of assets in the chemical industry, energy and real estate.
The gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine in late 2008 and early 2009 led to the fact that the prime ministers of the two countries, Vladimir Putin and Yulia Timoshenko, agreed to get rid of the intermediary in the person of RosUkroEnergo: since 2009, gas to Ukraine was supposed to be supplied by Gazprom directly.
However, Firtash himself said that RosUkroEnergo would continue to supply gas to consumers in Ukraine and Europe. In addition, according to him, over the years of its activity, RosUkroEnergo has actually subsidized the economy of Ukraine in the amount of $5 billion.
After the conclusion of bilateral gas agreements, Tymoshenko and Naftogaz Ukrainy tried to withdraw gas owned by RosUkroEnergo from underground gas storage facilities: this led to another scandal, the president opposed the withdrawal of fuel Yushchenko and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU).
Although the Russian side supported RosUkroEnergo's claim to the Stockholm Arbitration Court, the gas from the company's storage facilities remained with Naftogaz. After that, Tymoshenko announced that by the end of the year she would also take away control over 75 percent of Ukrainian oblagazas from RosUkroEnergo.
The conflict around RosUkrEnergo was settled during negotiations in November 2010. Naftogaz agreed to return 12.1 billion cubic meters of gas to RosUkroEnergo, and RosUkroEnergo to pay off debts to Naftogaz ($1.7 billion) and Gazprom ($810 million). According to experts, as a result of the agreements, Naftogaz lost about three billion dollars, while the sale of gas outside of Ukraine could lead to an energy collapse during the heating season.
In February 2011, it became known that RosUkroEnergo would sell the gas it received from Naftogaz to Gazprom Export, and after that it would end its operations. On April 20, 2011, Firtash announced that Naftogaz had fully returned all 12.1 billion cubic meters of gas to RosUkroEnergo.
In the same year, Firtash in an interview with the Russian "Forbes" called the story with RosUkroEnergo "neat Russian takeover". In his opinion, Russia "couldn't get close to the Central Asian gas" for a long time, their company was needed in order to gain access to it. Having achieved his goal, Putin, according to Firtash, wanted to be the main player and "buried" RosUkroEnergo. People who know him claim that from that moment on, the oligarch strongly disliked not only Tymoshenko, but also Vladimir Putin.
In 2010, in order to strengthen Ukraine's position in the global fertilizer market, Dmitry Firtash began the process of merging Ukrainian nitrogen enterprises. In September 2010, he acquired a chemical company PJSC "Concern Stirol", Gorlovka, Donetsk region, the main producer of ammonia, carbamide, ammonium nitrate and nitrite-nitrate salts in the region.
In July 2011, Dmitry Firtash became the majority shareholder of a large Ukrainian retail bank "Nadra".
In November 2011, he was elected Chairman of the Council of the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, whose members are about 10 thousand enterprises. They employ more than 5 million people who produce 70% of Ukraine's GDP.
In February 2013 the company GDF MEDIA LIMITED, a member of Dmitry Firtash's Group DF, acquired U.A. Inter Media Group Limited (combining TV channels Inter, Inter+, K1, K2, Mega, NTN, Pixel, Enter-film and Zoom).
On January 23, 2014, the Group DF group of companies signed an agreement with the Italian group Intesa Sanpaolo to acquire 100% of the shares of the Ukrainian "Pravex-Bank".
Group DF currently combines assets in the chemical industry, energy and real estate.
More than 100 thousand people are employed at enterprises in 11 countries of Europe and Central Asia that are part of Group DF. In addition to direct control of companies in which Firtash owns controlling stakes, Firtash's group also controls other structures. So, Firtash actually controls the state gas companies "Ukrgasdobycha" and "Ukrtransgaz".
Firtash is actively interested in the titanium industry in Ukraine and controls the chain from the extraction of raw materials to the production of products, although formally many enterprises from this chain are state-owned. For example, Firtash's structures lease Irshansky GOK and Volnogorsky GMK.
Thus, over the past 15 years, Dmitry Firtash has become the owner of assets in the energy, chemical and titanium industries in Central and Eastern Europe. Its enterprises and companies operate in Ukraine, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Tajikistan, Switzerland, Estonia.
The total volume of investments in Rivneazot, Stirol, Severodonetsk and Cherkasy Azots for the period from September 2010 to September 2013 amounted to about UAH 3.2 billion.
Dmitry Firtash proposed to the Government to create a public-private titanium holding that would unite all titanium enterprises in Ukraine. In order to expand the raw material base of the titanium industry in Ukraine, in 2010 the Group of companies of Dmitry Firtash Group DF launched the Mezhdurechensk Mining and Processing Plant.
Political activity
Dmitry Firtash has never been a member of any party. In 2008, in a conversation with the US Ambassador to Ukraine William Tayler(William B. Taylor), the content of which was subsequently published by WikiLeaks, Firtash said that his parents held anti-communist views, and he himself was forcibly admitted to the Komsomol - only after he was locked in a Komsomol cell room and left without drink and food.
Only once, during the 2002 election campaign, Firtash tried to get into parliament from the All-Ukrainian Political Association "Women for Future", ward Lyudmila Kuchma, the wife of the President of Ukraine, but not successfully.
During the political crisis in Ukraine in 2013-2014, Russian journalists named Dmitry Firtash as one of the sponsors euromaidan and Ukrainian opposition - Klitschko, Tyagnibok and Yatsenyuk.
Dmitry Firtash is one of the most closed and non-public rich people in Ukraine. In Russia, this man was not known at all for a long time: he did not give interviews, he did not get into public politics, he practically did not appear on TV.
For the first time, his name was widely publicized by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In January 2009, during another gas scandal with Ukraine, he made it clear: Firtash, who represents the intermediary company RosUkrEnergo on the Ukrainian side, has reached such a degree of power that it prevents Gazprom from concluding an agreement on direct gas supplies with Naftogaz Ukrainy.
However, when RosUkrEnergo lost control of Ukraine's gas balance, Firtash began to make regular public appearances and comments.
State
In 2012, Forbes magazine put him in 14th position in the ranking of the richest Ukrainians, with assets of $673 million. He is ranked 4th in the ranking of the richest people in Ukraine (2013) with a fortune of $3.327 billion. According to the ranking of the richest businessmen in Ukraine Focus magazine in 2014, Firtash took fifth place with a fortune of $ 2.7 billion.
Scandals and criminal cases
Firtash's name was mentioned on the pages of WikiLeaks in connection with the criminal case of international authority Mogilevich. According to WikiLeaks, Firtash himself explained his participation in the criminal case by a misunderstanding that occurred due to the fact that at one time he bought two foreign companies, the founders of which were Mogilevich's wife and Mogilevich's partner Igor Fisherman(both are still wanted by the FBI).
According to some publications, in addition to Firtash, Semyon Mogilevich stood at the origins of the creation of RosUkroEnergo. At the same time, Firtash allegedly represented the interests of the largest international financial and industrial group headed by Mogilevich in Ukraine. Firtash himself denied this kind of information.
In January 2008, after the arrest of Mogilevich in Moscow, Firtash's name reappeared in the press. Mogilevich, who then bore the surname Schneider, was detained by law enforcement agencies along with the owner of a chain of perfume stores "Arbat Prestige" Vladimir Nekrasov and accused of evading taxes and fees from organizations on an especially large scale.
At that time, in the press, Firtash, along with Mogilevich, was called one of the real owners of the Arbat-Prestige network. At the same time, it was noted that both of them formally had nothing to do with Nekrasov's company. According to experts, the arrest of Mogilevich was just an excuse to remove the businessman and RosUkroEnergo from the market of intermediary services in the natural gas trade.
Interestingly, in connection with the arrest of Semyon Mogilevich, Firtash's gas mediation scheme did not suffer at that time. In April 2006, in an interview with the Austrian Kurier, he explained this by saying that "the Ukrainian president supports our company."
This support was explained by the deputies of the Verkhovna Rada Igor Shurma and Alexander Golub(KPU). In January 2006, they made public copies of payments for the transfer of money from RosUkroEnergo to two structures in the United Arab Emirates and the United States. The deputies claimed that the brother of the former president was involved in these firms Petr Yushchenko. According to Shurma, PetroGas received $53 million, and Refin Commercial Company, registered in Oregon with an account in the Estonian Hansabank, received $12.3 million.
In December 2008, a new scandal erupted around Dmitry Firtash: Prime Minister Tymoshenko accused Firtash's Nadra bank of having attracted refinancing from the National Bank of Ukraine in the amount of UAH 7.1 billion. and directed most of these funds to the purchase of foreign currency. This, according to Tymoshenko, accelerated the crisis devaluation of the hryvnia. Recall that the NBU at that time was directly subordinated to President Yushchenko.
In an interview in 2011, the People's Deputy of Ukraine from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc party Sergei Sobolev said that " Firtash is the chain that linked two Viktors: Yushchenko and Yanukovych".
Sobolev also noted: Without demonizing Firtash, I will say that in the end, Yushchenko personally made the decision: to take Firtash's scheme or enter into direct contracts with RAO Gazprom. But he chose the path through Firtash".
And when the president who won the election Yanukovych formed his own team, many expected to see people in key positions Akhmetova- but they saw Firtash's people. His longtime gas partner became the head of the presidential administration Sergei Levochkin. The former head of Naftogaz of Ukraine became the head of the Ministry of Fuel and Energy again Yuriy Boyko, who was considered the main lobbyist of RosUkroEnergo.
On March 12, 2014, Dmitry Firtash was detained by Austrian law enforcement officers in Vienna at the request of the FBI. Firtash's arrest was carried out by the Organized Crime Department and the COBRA unit.
The Austrian Federal Police reported that Firtash had been wanted since 2006 and charged with bribery and creating a criminal community.
The union of Dmitry Firtash with Maria Kalinovskaya is one of the key moments in the biography of the most mysterious Ukrainian oligarch who controls the country's gas market.
The marriage between Marina and Dmitry Firtash lasted three years - from late 2002 to mid-2005.
If the Group of Dmitriy Firtash presentation had taken place at the beginning of the partners' married life, it would have looked like a pathetic sham. Then Firtash did not have any significant assets to create chemical, media and energy holdings. It was during these years that Eural Trans Gas was created, and then RosUkrEnergo, which became the basis of the oligarch's business.
But now Firtash has a chance to take third place after the governor of Chukotka Roman Abramovich and the American media mogul Sumner Redstone in the world ranking of alimony paid to ex-wives during the divorce proceedings.
The task of Firtash's ex-wife is to prove in court that during the signing of the property agreement between her and Dmitry Firtash's representative Yuriy Boyko, the Minister of Fuel and Energy was misleading about the true scale of his friend's business.
During one party, an acquaintance of Dmitry Firtash and Marina Kalinovskaya jokingly suggested that the abbreviation "KMIL" be deciphered as "Kroyut Obscenities and Barks." Perhaps the abundant use of non-literary vocabulary was one of the few common qualities of partners. In all other respects, Dmitry and Marina were antipodes.
“They were two completely different people,” says a former employee of the company, a friend of the Firtash family, Buma Roif. - Dima was very calm and self-possessed. When necessary, he could explode, when necessary - to remain silent. Marina, on the contrary, is a very impulsive, assertive and tough woman. They were perfect for each other at work.
– Everyone who worked with us at that time was actually a performer. Dima and Marina have always been the motor, - recalls the wife of Marina Kalinovskaya's brother. “They were one. Most of the time was spent at work, spent the day traveling. They were friends with families, they appeared everywhere together - each with their children, Marina with her husband, Dima with his wife Lucy.
Before entering into a fictitious marriage with Firtash, the Kalinovskys and their children often visited Dmitry Firtash's mother in Bogdanovka. Firtash's wife, Lusya, and his daughter, Ivanka, spent most of the summer there, at their parents' house.
"Dima was busy with everyone, as with his children," says Dmitry Firtash's father-in-law. "He was very kind to Seryozhka and Sasha (sons of Marina Kalinovskaya), they called him Uncle Dima."
The oligarch's mother recalls how Marina Kalinovskaya jokingly offered to marry her son Sergei and Dmitry Firtash's daughter Ivanka, "so as not to break the family business."
“Of course, we laughed, and Seryozha promised that if Ivanka would marry him, he would definitely share a share in the business with his brother,” the woman recalls.
However, the commonality of the two families was accompanied by some nuances. Dmitry Firtash at that time had long ceased to be a respectable family man.
According to friends, he rarely appeared in the hotel where his then wife Lyusya and daughter Ivanka lived. Many years later, during the divorce proceedings with his next wife, Marina Kalinovskaya, Dmitry Firtash will assure the court of his "reverent attitude towards marriage and the family." And in those distant days, after work, he went to spend the night in the apartment of a certain Oksana. After a while, he began to meet with her girlfriend.
Not everything was unambiguous in the Kalinovsky family either. There is a version that, while continuing to live in the same apartment, Marina and Zinovy have been divorced for more than ten years.
In the late 1970s, one of Zinovy Kalinovsky's subordinates, a certain Ivan Nikoryak, offered Marina Kalinovskaya to buy one of her two apartments from her.
So that the deal did not raise questions, Marina allegedly offered the buyer to enter into a fictitious marriage and thus register it in her apartment. Moreover, Nikoryak claims that Zinovy himself blessed a small fraud, and after some time Marina blackmailed him into paying large sums of money for an apartment.
Marina Firtash denies knowing a person with that surname. According to her, this is a witness bought by Firtash, designed to cast a shadow on her reputation. However, only a photocopy of Marina Firtash's passport can confirm or deny this fact. However, the UE failed to obtain these documents.
In mid-1996, Marina Kalinovskaya and Dmitry Firtash decided to take both families to Germany for permanent residence. Relatives on both sides claim that they traveled along the so-called "Jewish line".
It should be noted that for Chernivtsi, where one of the largest Jewish settlements in the country was located, such a reason for leaving, especially to Germany, was a common thing.
But in the case of the families of Kalinovsky and Firtash, there was one significant difficulty - out of seven members of two families, only three could document their Jewish nationality: Marina's husband, Zinovy, and his two sons Sergey and Sasha ..
Neither Marina Kalinovskaya, nor Dmitry Firtash, nor his wife Lyusya, nor their daughter Ivanka had the right to legally use the so-called. "Jewish line". Now relatives only smile modestly at questions about whether there was a forgery of documents. Obviously it was.
In Germany, for a year, both families, Kalinovsky and Firtash, lived in the same apartment. Until the final paperwork, the children were sent to school.
Marina Kalinovskaya and Dmitry Firtash did not appear at home often - they spent most of their time in Chernivtsi, continuing to develop their growing business.
The German emigration services did not look closely at the newly arrived emigrants for a long time. The first suspicions of falsification of documents arose regarding Lucy Firtash and Marina Kalinovskaya. Interrogations intensified. And allegedly even began a trial.
The issue with Lyudmila was resolved quickly. Through acquaintances, they found a native German (in the family they call him Anton), the owner of a small insurance company, who agreed to enter into a fictitious marriage with Lyudmila. To complete the deal in July 1998, Dmitry Firtash and Lucy divorced amicably.
But while we were dealing with Lyudmila, Marina Kalinovskaya's data was already in the database of the border services. In the future, she could have serious problems with entering Germany, where at that time part of the general business was developing.
Apparently, the successful outcome of the situation with Lyudmila Firtash inspired Marina Kalinovskaya to a possible solution to the problem. In mid-1997, she turned to one of the KMIL employees, Buma Roif, for help.
“She directly suggested that I enter into a fictitious marriage in order to go to Germany for permanent residence,” says Buma. “Maybe I wanted to help her, but I refused her.” Kalinovskaya herself denies that she made such a request to anyone at all.
In mid-1999, the sons of Marina Kalinovskaya returned to Ukraine. By that time, the common business of Marina Kalinovskaya and Dmitry Firtash had stepped far beyond Chernivtsi.
The partners rented an apartment on Proreznaya Street, where they settled together with Alexander and Sergey Kalinovsky.
In the capital, Dmitry Firtash and Marina Kalinovskaya acquired new contacts and connections. The long gas path of the future monopoly began with an acquaintance with Vladimir Galazdra, director of one of the companies that collaborated with Igor Bakai's Intergaz.
In general, the "gas" story of Kalinovskaya and Firtash deserves special attention, to which Ukrayinska Pravda will devote a separate article.
Now we will just note that in May 2000, through the joint efforts of Marina Kalinovskaya, Dmitry Firtash and their new partners, the KMIL company received a license to supply natural gas at unregulated tariffs.
Further relations between partners developed according to a very strange scenario. On September 19, 2002, 46-year-old Marina Kalinovskaya and 35-year-old Dmitry Firtash entered into an official marriage.
True, later Marina will claim that by that time she and Dmitry Firtash already had a fairly close relationship. According to her, in October 1996 they got married in the church of the Russian Spiritual Mission in Jerusalem.
After insistent demands from Ukrayinska Pravda, the Kalinouskis even provided a copy of the wedding certificate. The authenticity of the document is highly questionable.
Firstly, the real certificate was lost, and the document that was at the disposal of the UE turned out to be a copy of the “replacement certificate”.
Secondly, it turned out to be the first document of this type issued by the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission, as evidenced by the registration number.
And most importantly, according to a photocopy of Dmitry Firtash's passport, in October 1996 he was still legally married to Lyusya. If the priests of the Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Jerusalem do not even check the passports of their parishioners when performing the sacrament of the wedding, their work, in principle, should be highly questionable.
Firtash's relatives and friends claim that in fact there was no wedding, and Marina's true goal at marriage was to resolve the conflict with the German authorities and simplify entry into Germany under the name of her new husband. Dmitry Firtash, according to them, "nobly helped her with this."
Supporters of Marina Kalinovskaya are sure that Firtash pursued selfish goals, which thus became a legal participant in the common business. Recall that before that, officially, he was not the founder of either KMIL or any other company that took part in the joint business.
However, the circumstances of the marriage indicate that none of the "newlyweds" pursued the goal of creating a common family. The new union was purely business in nature.
The same Galazdra and his wife Svetlana acted as witnesses at the marriage ceremony. There were no celebrations in honor of the "newlyweds".
Neither Marina Kalinovskaya nor Dmitry Firtash announced plans to tie the knot. Given the fairly close relationship between the relatives of Marina and Firtash, this would be quite logical.
Absolutely all close friends of Kalinovskaya and Firtash, in an interview with the UP, said that they learned about the marriage between business partners much later from fragments of conversations. In Bogdanovka, many are still convinced that the only legal wife of Dmitry Firtash is Lyusya. Even the uncle of the oligarch, Pyotr Firtash, learned about his marriage to Kalinovskaya from the newspapers when a scandal arose around their divorce.
One interesting fact can point to the true reason for marriage. A month after Marina and Dmitry Firtash became official spouses, in October 2002, the Eural Trans Gas company was registered, the assignee of which RosUkrEnergo became two years later.
The activity of Eural Trans Gas brought disproportionately more income to the budget of the Firtash family than the small-scale food trade. The formation of this company deserves a more detailed investigation, the results of which will be reflected in the framework of the "gas" history of the Firtash family.
In fact, a private company was allowed, on the one hand, to receive income from Ukrainian gas consumers, bypassing the state, and on the other hand, to directly take profits from the Russian Gazprom. In 2003, the company's net income amounted to $767 million.
The account went into the millions. The existing trust between the partners was no longer enough. Perhaps the seals in the passports were supposed to be an additional guarantee of the impossibility of a "kid".
By the end of 2002, Marina Firtash began to move away from doing business. Her relatives claim that her husband deliberately did not allow her to the operational management of companies.
Firtash's partners explain this by the fact that Marina Firtash, with her rude character and manners, did not fit into the format of negotiations that moved from the offices of small firms to high government offices.
But Firtash, with his characteristic pedantry, managed to reorganize. He quickly got used to the need to wear expensive suits, his speech became more intelligible and restrained.
The marriage of Marina and Dmitry Firtash broke up as quietly as it was concluded. Without warning anyone, on July 22, 2005, Dmitry Firtash filed a corresponding claim with the court. Marina Firtash, according to her, at that time was undergoing treatment in Yalta.
It should be noted that the trial took place in the best traditions of raider attacks. For some unknown reason, Firtash decided to file a divorce suit not with the Pechersky Court of Kyiv, where both he and Marina Firtash were registered, but with the Solomensky District Court of the capital.
It is noteworthy that it is not clear from the materials of the case who represented the interests of the plaintiff in court. Moreover, the minutes of the final court session indicate that the plaintiff himself is present in the courtroom. It seems that Dmitry Firtash personally collected certificates, paid receipts and stood in line.
Dmitry Firtash addressed the judge with the following text:
"For more than a year, my wife and I have not lived together, each of us has different interests. Our life together did not work out, in particular, due to differences in characters and views, in connection with which conflicts and quarrels constantly arose between us. Common children we do not have.
Reconciliation between us is impossible, as we have lost the feeling of love and mutual respect. At rare meetings, my wife tries to humiliate and offend me. For about six months, I actually live in the same family with another woman whom I love very much and with whom I want to marry.
By the way, more than two years have passed since the lawsuit was filed, and, as far as is known, Dmitry Firtash has not yet tied the knot with any woman. He continues to live in a civil marriage with Vlad - according to some information, she worked in one of the firms of Igor Bakai.
However, this is the most innocuous flaw in the lawsuit filed. Gross inaccuracies in the case file indicate that the court's decision was clearly prepared hastily.
In the case, the numbers and dates simply do not match. Appealing to the court on April 22, 2005, Dmitry Firtash encloses a state tax receipt dated September 9 of the same year.
Without specifying the reasons, the judges change in the case - Judge L.M. Mazur accepts the claim for consideration, and the decision on the case is made by Judge L.G. Sitaylo.
Errors in the materials of the case reach the point of absurdity - in some places the judge who considered the case indicates "FILTASH" instead of the surname "FIRTASH".
Complete confusion with the signatures of Dmitry Firtash. In the case file there are about ten autographs of the gas magnate, differing from each other in various details. And none of them completely matches the signature in the copy of his passport.
In an appeal to the court, Dmitry Firtash indicates that he lives at st. Shelkovichnaya 23-10. In the minutes of the court session, he also testifies: "Family life did not work out. At the moment we live together ...".
It would be quite logical if court summonses for Marina Firtash were sent to Shelkovichnaya. But in the course of the entire consideration of the case, notices were received at a completely different address, indicated by Dmitry Firtash in his first appeal to the court - on the street. Tutkovsky, 39.
Marina Firtash claims that she never lived at this address and found out about the beginning of the trial much later.
Indeed, there is not a single documentary evidence in the case file that Marina Firtash was notified of the lawsuit. Except for the only subpoena dated the day of the last court session, which was signed by... Dmitry Firtash himself.
As a result, the final court session was held in the absence of Marina Firtash. On August 12, 2005, the court decided to dissolve the marriage between Marina and Dmitry Firtash.
The agreement on the division of joint property and the provision of maintenance to Marina Firtash was signed only six months later. For some unknown reason, Dmitry Firtash himself did not want to meet with Marina. His interests, as already reported by the UE, were represented by the current Minister of Fuel and Energy, Yuriy Boyko, on the basis of a general power of attorney.
According to the signed documents, Dmitry Firtash, represented by Yuriy Boyko, undertook to pay his ex-wife a total amount of maintenance (alimony) in the amount of $36 million, of which 14 million were transferred back in 2005, and the remaining 22 million were to go to Marina Firtash's accounts no later than 6 March 2006.
According to the property division agreement, Marina Firtash gets two apartments at 33 Patorzhinsky Street (213 sq.m.) 33-a (279 sq.m.) and one apartment at 23 Shelkovichnaya Street with an area of 213 sq.m. All three apartments come with parking spaces. Rinat Akhmetov's apartment is located next door in the Patorzhinsky street.
The gas magnate left a black 2001 Cadillac Escalade to his ex-wife.
The list of property that passed to Dmitry Firtash can cause sincere pity for the billionaire.
In a small paragraph, 80% of the authorized capital of TOV "Basketball Club Kyiv" worth 800 thousand hryvnias and a little more than half a million dollars are indicated on three accounts with JSB "Clearing House".
The secret of the modesty of the co-owner of RosUkrEnergo lies in the last, fifth paragraph of the list. Party 2 (Dmitry Firtash) becomes the owner of "other property, in particular, securities, property, non-property and corporate rights acquired by the Parties during the marriage, and belong to them on the basis of joint ownership." Twenty-five words worth 4.6 billion.
Ordinary billionaires in the US and Europe could only dream of such a line in a property division agreement with their ex-wives.
According to the legislation of most Western countries, when signing divorce contracts and agreements, such wording is unacceptable by definition. The principle applies there: all property to be divided between spouses must be valued. It is impossible to evaluate "all other property".
Nevertheless, Marina Firtash signed the contract. And for almost a year she was satisfied with all the wording of the document. According to her, she was pushed to revise the agreements by the fact that Dmitry Firtash has not yet transferred the remaining $22 million of alimony to her accounts.
And now Marina Firtash is doing everything to get into the company of the owners of RosUkrEnergo. In the Pechersk Court, she had already been denied satisfaction of the claim by which she wanted to invalidate the property agreement. However, Marina Firtash intends to continue litigation in Austria and the UK.
Although Group DF representatives demonstrate that the lawsuits are not a serious threat to Dmitry Firtash's business, during a recent trial in the High Court of Justice of the British Virgin Islands, the interests of the co-owner of RosUkrEnergo were defended by 22 lawyers.
Obviously, Marina herself at the moment does not have the resources - neither financial nor administrative - to bring this matter to an end.
However, Dmitry Firtash's position may worsen significantly if one of the opponents in Ukraine or Russia believes in the reality of the successful completion of the lawsuit between former partners. For a small share of half of the shares of Crimean Titan, Krymsoda, Rivneazot and the Hungarian Emfesz Marina Firtash can provide invaluable assistance.
If we assume that the billionaire officially made the main acquisitions after the divorce, his agility can only be envied - Ukrainian businessmen have not yet been able to create a group of companies with total assets of about 5 billion in two years.
The fact is that Marina Firtash had doubts about the fair division of property two years after the divorce, in early 2007 - around the same time, the information that Dmitry Firtash was the owner of RosUkrEnergo finally received official confirmation. And at the same time, the process of consolidating Group DF assets began.
Marina Firtash waited a long time for publicity about her ex-husband's involvement in the gas monopoly. When this happened, she pretended to be surprised by the fabulous assets of her ex-husband.
It can be said with confidence that while the whole country was knocking down, trying to establish the true co-owners of RosUkrEnergo, it was only waiting for the right moment to sue and receive part of the capital of the former spouse.