Under protect of President’s Office: how NABU defendants cаme up in scandalous arms deal
For six months now, Ukrainian journalists have been writing about how the Lviv Arsenal company received a contract worth 1.4 billion but has not delivered the weapons. However, Ukrainian law enforcement is not very interested in this. It’s a pity, otherwise, law enforcement would have found the same scammers who robbed the UMCC (United Mining and Chemical Company) and who had a "cover" in the President’s Office.
Censor.NET has found out how the defendants in the NABU and SSU cases on the withdrawal of millions from state-owned enterprises are connected to arms suppliers.
Over 126 million in margin ....
The Lviv Arsenal company was supposed to supply ammunition to the Ukrainian army last year. The company received a contract for $36.7 million. As a result, Ukraine received nothing, but clever businessmen even bought a plant in Bosnia.
As a reminder, here are the main milestones in the history of the non-delivery of weapons by Lviv Arsenal.
On October 11, 2022, the Ministry of Defense, represented by the then head of the State Military Technical Plant Oleksandr Liiev, signed a contract with the company of businessman and former presidential candidate Yurii Zbitniev for the supply of 120 mm and 82 mm mortar rounds.
The company received a 97% prepayment against the obligation to deliver the weapons to Ukraine in two months.
As everyone now knows, no supply took place.
In December 2022, Lviv Arsenal reported that the contractor, the Slovakian Sevotech, did not issue an export license to the manufacturer. It was a Croatian company. I wonder how the contract was signed without this license. After all, the weapons were in Croatia.
Many experienced specialty importers, including state-owned ones, assure me that the Defense Ministry's Department of Military and Technical Policy is very scrupulous about documents and does not sign documents without licenses.
Immediately, 97% of the funds were paid to receive the ammunition in 2 months. On December 20, 2022, the Ministry of Defense did not receive any contracted weapons. In early 2023, under the influence of the 17-egg scandal and corruption allegations, the Ministry froze the money and sued Lviv Arsenal.
Oleksandr Liiev, the head of the State Military Industrial Complex at the time, explained the contract with a company that was not a trusted supplier.
"At the beginning of the war, we had 90% of such contracts. The price was normal. If I hadn't signed this contract, I would have been accused of undermining defense capabilities," the former head of the State Military Technical Plant told Censor.NET.
"Unfortunately, not all countries agree to supply us with ammunition directly. Therefore, we signed a contract through another EU country. And it confirms the supply of goods with its license. Moreover, the military attaché, who are not subordinate to me, but to the Directorate of State Intelligence, confirmed the availability of the goods. When they failed to deliver, I stopped the flow of funds and imposed penalties on them like no one's business. Now, as far as I know, they are ready to make the first supply for the money they received," Liiev assured.
Now, Zbitniev's company is ready to bring mines not from Croatia to get a billion from the Ukrainian budget. At first, Cambodia was suggested as an option, and now Slovakia is again.
However, there is another issue: for example, 82 mines were contracted to Lviv Arsenal for UAH 10,200. This is 2,100 UAH more expensive than the prices for similar products offered by Progress in December. If this price difference is multiplied by the number of ammunition under the contract, it amounts to 126 million in margin. Even in 2023, prices for 82 mines did not reach the level offered by Lviv Arsenal.
Oleksandr Liiev told Censor.NET that it is impossible to compare prices so mechanically. "There is a price difference, depending on the year of production. And the country of manufacture. Croatian and Azerbaijani mines are always more expensive," he said.
Even though the Ministry of Defense managed to arrest some of the funds in the accounts of Lviv Arsenal, some of the money went abroad and a real detective story happened with it.
The Lviv Arsenal purchased mortar rounds worth $36.6 million through the Slovak company Sevotech and the Croatian company WDG Promet.
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After the first article about the failed delivery was published, WDG Promet launched a powerful PR campaign through local and Ukrainian media to explain why they had not fulfilled the delivery. They claimed that all the money had been stolen.
How weapons for Ukraine turned into a Croatian factory in Bosnia
According to WDG Promet, they were robbed through a Czech bank (or rather a credit union) by their treasurer Kamil Bakhbukh, who withdrew 2.2 million euros and 30 million Czech crowns (a total of 5.6 million euros) from the company.
However, there is one interesting nuance: immediately after the transfer of Ukrainian money, in December 2022, the owner of the Croatian WDG Promet, Matijas Zubak, the son of Croatian arms dealer Zvonko Zubak, purchased the Vitezit plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina. For 5.5 million euros.
According to Radio Svoboda, Zubak received the funds through WDG Promet from an account in the Czech Podnikatelská družstevní zálazna.
The Czech financial institution says that no one robbed the accounts of Zubak's company, and they withdrew the money themselves.
At the request of Radio Liberty to comment on the accusations of stealing money, a representative of the Czech credit fund, Kamil Bahbuh, said that he accused the Zagreb company of "spending Ukrainian money to buy the Vitezit plant in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
"I don't know about any other income from WDG Promet, except for advances on two contracts for the supply of ammunition to Ukraine. When enough money was accumulated, the money was misused to buy Vitezite," Bakhbukh said, although he did not provide evidence for his accusations to the RS.
However, Bosnia and Herzegovina is investigating because they were approached by Czech law enforcement. They have also opened a case.
Notably, the Ukrainian State Bureau of Investigation simply remained silent at the request of the Public Anti-Corruption Council of the Ministry of Defense. Currently, only the National Police has a case on Lviv Arsenal.
Meanwhile, the transfer of the plant to new owners in Bosnia has been suspended.
In their submissions to the bankruptcy court, the creditors also pointed out that the company that bought Vitezit is involved in the case of undelivered weapons paid for by Ukraine.
By the way, until the war years of the 1990s, Vitezit was one of the largest rocket fuel and explosives plants in Europe. The company had American and French licenses to operate, and since 2003 has been exclusively engaged in the production of commercial explosives.
It is possible that someone even sold the idea of buying such a plant to the Ukrainian side because gunpowder is the most valuable thing in the production of ammunition. But this is only a version.
By the way, despite the unfulfilled contract with Lviv Arsenal, WDG Promet signed another contract with the Ministry of Defense on December 8, 2022, for tank rounds that were to be delivered by March 2023. The contract has not been fulfilled either. Why to sign a contract with those who have not fulfilled one is not clear.
But let's get back to Lviv Arsenal - it is much more interesting to know who was involved in this story.
How Ukrainians entered a Slovak integrator company before millions of the Defense Ministry came there
Despite the arrest, Lviv Arsenal received the first tranche of 400 million hryvnias.
Hromadske journalists found out that the 3.8 million euros paid by the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense in the first tranche were partially cashed out and partially scattered in relatively small payments to various European companies. In particular, €200,000 was paid to Sevotech.
In Prague, the journalist met with one of the participants in the supply, a representative of the Slovak company Sevotech, a certain Oleksii Khoroshaiev.
Before the full-scale invasion, Khoroshaiev worked as the deputy director of the state-owned enterprise Specialized Foreign Trade Firm PROGRESS.
"I sent this money - both the first preliminary payment and the second - to WDG. And I sent another [part] under an agency agreement [to another company] - they asked for 400 thousand euros. We didn't touch a penny of that money as Sevotech. I said: we don't touch money, I feel there will be a scandal here," Khoroshaiev told the journalist.
However, according to the publication, his company actually received 200 thousand.
And now for an interesting nuance. Oleksii Khoroshaiev is not the only Ukrainian in Sevotech. Since December 9, 2022, Ukrainian Vladyslav Klishchar has also been a member of the company's supervisory board. By the way, Khoroshaiev also joined the Supervisory Board of Sevotech on November 4, 2022.
Let me remind you that the contract with Lviv Arsenal was signed on October 11. That is, the Ukrainians joined Sevotech's supervisory board after the agreement was signed. So it is highly doubtful that their goal was to "keep their hands off the money."
If Khoroshaiev is a representative of the arms business, then who is Klishchar?
Klishchar (in a white shirt)
If you just google him, he is a former assistant to Oleksandr Yedin, a member of the Party of Regions, and a trusted person in the presidential election of Serhii Taruta.
If you watched the Hromadske TV movie, Taruta is also mentioned in it, because negotiations are taking place in his office. The businessman explained to journalists that it was an accident. But, most likely, this is not the case.
Vladyslav Klishchar is involved in 6 companies in Ukraine. And they are very interesting. For example, in 2016-2018, he was the chairman of the board of Bila Tserkva Rubber Technical Products Plant, where Semen Yufa, a business partner of Semen Mohylevych, is currently the director. Klishchar was also a director of Target Group LLC and Tapsan Service LLC, founded by Volodymyr Kolot and Vadym Trunov, who is now the director of Ukrkhimtransamiak.
"Ukrkhimtransammiak supplies ammonia to the Odesa Port Plant. Under the presidency of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kolota's Agro Gas Trading became the sole supplier of raw materials to the Odesa Port Plant.
In March, the NABU announced suspicions to several people, including the head of the former State Property Fund, Dmytro Sennichenko, for embezzling funds from state-owned companies such as the Odesa Portside Plant (OPP) and the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC).
Among those who have received suspicions in the case are Kolot and his relative Andrii Hmyryn, who has been repeatedly mentioned by the media as someone who promoted the interests of Agro Gas Trading under both President Poroshenko and Zelenskyy.
Two years before the war, Hmyryn had a tremendous influence on the Presidential Administration. As Yurii Butusov wrote, he advised the leadership of the Presidential Office. He was so successful that he was able to get his candidate for the head of the Bureau of Economic Security through. Who then successfully failed in his job.
Those who stole from OPP and UMCC are now stealing from weapons
The scheme was as follows: the former head of the State Property Fund and consultant to the President's Office, Andrii Hmyryn, through the appointment of his directors to the Odesa Portside and United Mining and Chemical Corporation, was able to withdraw millions of hryvnias of profit.
According to the NABU case, representatives of Agro Gas Trading, with the help of a former consultant to the President's Office Andrii Hmyrin, negotiated with the management of the State Property Fund to exclude competitors, including Ihor Kolomoiskyi's company, from the tender and become gas suppliers to the OPP under a tolling scheme.
In the interrogation materials on the case of the State Property Fund's management, former deputy chairman Serhii Ihnatovskyi says that, according to the head of the fund, Dmytro Sennychenko, Hmyryn organized a "cover" for them on Bankova Street. He also named Serhii Shefir as one of his unspoken patrons. This surname also appears in the published materials of criminal intelligence and surveillance operations.
A similar scheme to the OPP was implemented at the UMCC.
United Mining and Chemical Company JSC has two mining and processing plants, Irshansk and Vilnohirsk, which extract raw materials (ilmenite concentrate) used for titanium production. For a long time, before the Revolution of Dignity, they were controlled by entities affiliated with Dmytro Firtash. In 2014, the Cabinet of Ministers of Arsenii Yatseniuk decided to return them to the state. A year later, the company was taken over by Mykola Martynenko's structures.
And then this scheme was adopted by the new government.
According to the NABU investigation, the acting director of UMCC JSC, under Sennychenko's instructions, deliberately entered into four contracts for the sale of ilmenite concentrate with a Czech company at reduced prices in 2020-2021. Then the goods were resold at market prices.
As the investigation established, the ilmenite concentrate was then supplied to Russian companies and the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea. This resulted in losses to the state of more than UAH 118 million. And that's not the worst of it, because titanium-containing products are used to manufacture missiles and airplanes, which are now being used by the aggressor country to destroy us.
Ilmenite was sold to the company of Sennychenko's advisor Pavlo Prysiazhniuk (also suspected by the NABU) - the Czech EPI Group - which received 472.89 thousand euros from the sale in 2020.
EPI Group s.r.o. has never conducted any production activities, but bought out the products of the UMCC through a second Czech company, Belanto, shell corporation.
So, if you open the Czech registers to see the owners of the company, you will be very surprised.
The founders of the Czech company EPI Group s.r.o. 18.02.2019 were three people: Vladyslav Klishchar (35%), Martin Sluchka (35%), and Pavlo Prysiazhniuk, a former employee of Karpatygaz (30%). On August 19, 2022, Vladyslav Klishchar resigned from the company and appointed his son Leonid to take his place. And Prysiazhniuk withdrew from co-ownership in March 2021.
Prysiazhniuk is known in the media as the managing partner of AIM GROUP. Since 2014, Pavlo Prysiazhniuk has served as an independent director of the Supervisory Board at Misen Energy AB, Sweden. This company owns Karpatgaz, which has been linked by the media to Dmytro Firtash. In 2011, Ukrgazvydobuvannya (UGV), when it was headed by Firtash's manager Yurii Borysov, signed joint venture agreements (JVAs) with Karpatygaz in the field of gas production. As a result, the company became the largest partner of UGV under the JVAs. In addition, Prysiazhniuk also had a joint business with Valentyna Zhukovska, who once headed the board of Firtash's Nadra Bank.
Censor.NET's sources named Prysiazhniuk as the informal supervisor of the former head of the State Property Fund Sennychenko in organising the UMCC schemes.
From the interrogation of Deputy Head of the State Property Fund Ihnatovskyi, we know that he asked where Prysiazhniuk came from. And Sennychenko answered that he was " provided by Serhii Shefir, an aide to the President of Ukraine." In response, Ihnatovskyi said that Shefir had no authority to manage the head of the State Property Fund, and Sennychenko said that he needed a political "cover."
So far, only Pavlo Prysiazhniuk has been mentioned in the media in the context of Belanto Trade and EPI Group.
But BELANTO trade does not have one at all - 70% of the company has been owned by Klishchar since October 12, 2023. Another 30% is owned by Czech Ivette Šilhanova.
Notably, in 2021, BELANTO even claimed to privatize the UMCC.
At that time, Belanto's Chief Development Officer Marek Špok and lawyer Oleksandr Bezzubets came to Kyiv for a briefing.
Previously, Bezzubets was a director of Target Group LLC, founded by Hmyrin's son-in-law Volodymyr Kolot.
So, Klishchar also has a joint company with Bezzubets in the Czech Republic. It's called LEO INTERNATIONAL GRUPP. The third partner in it is Oleksandr Beliaiev.
Yes, this is the same Oleksandr Beliaiev, the brother-in-law of Ivan Bakanov, the former head of the SBU.
This is the same Beliaiev about whom Oleh Kulinich, accused of high treason, said that Zelenskyy wanted to make Beliaiev his oligarch and that he had gone to Moscow for talks. This is stated in one of the files attached to Kulinich's case.
According to Czech registers, Klishchar and his family now live in Brno. This is the second city in the Czech Republic, 200 kilometers from Prague. Klishchar cannot be found on social media. Neither can his son Leonid (who, by the way, headed the company that supplied electricity to the OPP). But there is a Facebook page for Natalia Minska, Klishchar's wife. She posted family photos with her husband and son. And a photo of her own house.
Minska is a native Muscovite. Therefore, she also posts photos from the Patriarchal Ponds in 2021, Bolshoi Theater productions in 2019, and the St. George ribbon. Her last public post is dated July 2022.
Now let's get back to the Lviv Arsenal and the unsupplied weapons. Hromadske's sources in the Ministry of Defense said that the instruction to sign at least one of the contracts came from the Office of the President of Ukraine.
Initially, after the UP story about this case came out, it was thought that it was a connection at the level of Zbitniev's ex-wife Rena Nazarova, who now works with the Office as a communications specialist.
Hromadske was looking for connections through the former business partnership of Andrii Yermak and former specialized Deputy Minister of Defense Denys Sharapov, who was in charge of arms procurement.
"I don't know why the journalists wrote that, but there were no orders for Lviv Arsenal. The other contract with WDG was signed by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. But it was not the president who requested it," Liiev clarified.
However, despite this assurance, it seems that the story goes much deeper, and it is about an extensive system of money laundering. It has already worked with the OPP and the MCC, and now it has turned up in arms. The author learned from law enforcement sources that Klishchar has been working with Hmyryn for at least 15 years. Then why did Bakanov's SSU not see the ilmenite schemes that threatened national security? Or did Hmyryn have a " cover" for more than that? After all, the former employee of the Department for Combating Organized Crime was also acquainted with Oleh Tatarov in my line of work.
The author has heard more than once that the margin from ammunition is channeled through well-fed intermediary firms, then withdrawn to crypto, and then returned to Ukraine in cash.
So the question is why Ukrainian law enforcement stubbornly refuses to investigate this story.
Tatiana Nikolaienko, Censor. NET
