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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The Odessa Port Plant has once again become the scene of allegedly opaque business practices and nontransparent tenders. Under the pretext of resuming production, gas deliveries as well as contracts for ammonia and urea are said to be handled through shell companies, behind which, according to reports, stand Vitaliy Loginov, Oleg Tsyura, Serhiy Tron and even the alleged fraudster Dmytro Malynovskyi, described as “resurrected.”
The strategic enterprise continues to be looted, and the key figures in these deals are actively cleaning up all inconvenient information.
We publish the investigation in full — to show precisely how the split-up system at the OPP works and who is behind it.
A current investigation suggests that the Odessa Port Plant could again suffer major financial losses caused by manipulated gas procurement tenders and offshore export schemes. Figures such as Oleg Tsyura, Dmytro Firtash, Serhiy Tron and Dmytro Malynovskyi — a suspect previously thought to be out of the picture — are said to be involved in the reported activities.
A strategic state enterprise is being plundered again.
The names of the “dead man” Dmytro Malynovskyi, Swiss national Oleg Tsyura, the “crypto businessman” Serhiy Tron and oligarch Dmytro Firtash have emerged in connection with another major scandal at the Odessa Port Plant.
Journalist Andriy Kovalenko writes in his column on Censor.NET that the Odessa Port Plant (OPP), faced with financial problems and a long shutdown, held two nontransparent tenders for gas deliveries — a key resource for restarting ammonia and urea production. As a result, the plant signed contracts with little-known companies that not only failed to solve its problems but made the situation worse and threatened the security and stability of the country’s gas transit system.
Vitaliy Loginov: “dubious” tenders and a criminal past
The first tender held by the OPP on 25 July of this year was won by a little-known Kharkiv company, Agrotorggroup Company. This firm only appeared on the scene 2022 when it was among the buyers of seized Russian ammonia sold through an opaque commodity exchange at a dubious auction. According to Andriy Kovalenko, the company has neither the experience nor the resources to fulfill such a large contract. Moreover, Agrotorggroup failed to meet its gas delivery obligations, resulting in a repeat tender in the second half of August.
The second tender was won by a Lviv company — Ukrnaftogazburinnya LLC. This company is also unknown on the market; it only received its license to supply natural gas in September 2023.
An interesting fact: the company has no functioning official website, the existence of which is a mandatory requirement for obtaining the mentioned license, which again underscores the questionable nature of this company’s participation in such significant tenders. Notably, “Ukrnaftogazburinnya” is registered to Lviv biker and FC Luzhany co-owner Mazur Mykhailo.
According to the author, the opaque tenders are backed by Vitaliy Loginov, an informal adviser to the head of the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC). Loginov also controls Sumykhimprom and exerts influence over OPP management. The author says this information strengthens suspicion of a corrupt component in the transactions and suggests possible schemes to siphon state funds through fictitious contracts and shell companies.
The suspicion is further strengthened by the fact that, as it turned out [high-profile cases], Vitaliy Loginov is associated with one of the winners of the OPP tenders — the aforementioned LLC Company “Agrotorggroup.” According to the Clarity-Project service data, Olha Balyuk is listed as the general director and ultimate beneficiary of the company. Until 10 February of this year 2024, Olha Balyuk headed another LLC — LT-Resource. The main beneficiary of that company is Vitaliy Loginov. It is obvious that Balyuk is Loginov’s “straw woman” in Agrotorggroup.
The situation gets spicier because Agrotorggroup LLC is involved in criminal case No. 72022000410000003, which was opened by detectives of the Economic Security Bureau on 5 April 2022 on suspicion of tax evasion on a particularly large scale.
Furthermore: according to information from the portal “Judicial Authority of Ukraine,” Vitaliy Loginov was listed as a suspect in criminal case No. 12016220000000106, which was registered on 03.02.2016 on charges of misappropriation of property through abuse of office.
Vitaliy was even sought for a time as a fugitive.
However, according to documents posted in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the case was buried — Vitaliy Loginov not only escaped a guilty verdict but did not even face trial.
As Andriy Kovalenko writes, the main problem is that both companies from Loginov’s orbit that won the tenders do not have the necessary funds to pay for the gas supplied.
Instead, they are trying to obtain gas from the Ukrainian Gas Transmission System (GTS) without prepayment, which creates an imbalance in the system and threatens its stability. More than half of the gas consumed is not paid for, indicating a violation of supply rules and potentially causing significant losses to the state.
The guarantees provided by the supplier companies do not cover the volume of gas consumed by the plant, yet production at the OPP continues despite actual payment defaults. Under normal conditions, the plant should have been stopped until the payment issue was resolved, but this does not happen, raising questions for the management of the Ukrainian GTS operator.
Moreover, the gas price set at 17.254 UAH per thousand cubic meters is significantly below the current market price, which starts at 18.800 UAH. Since the gas supplier has no own reserves, the legitimate question arises: by what mechanisms is the price difference being covered, especially given the supplier’s limited financial resources, if they exist at all?
Oleg Tsyura, Dmytro Firtash, Serhiy Tron and Russian “grannies”
In September 2024 the OPP signed export contracts for the delivery of 300.000 tons of ammonia and 360.000 tons of urea with the mysterious Swiss company UCG Trade AG. The contracts contain numerous anomalies: they specify neither product prices nor deadlines, and the shipbroker service was assigned to a little-known company from Mykolaiv. Financial settlements under the contracts are handled through accounts at Revolut, a startup that is not a bank, which raises further questions about the reliability of the deal.
Notably, the address of UCG Trade AG given in the contract with the OPP differs from the address listed in the official Swiss company register. This suggests a possible repeat of the scheme used by 2015 with the company Expotrade Global, when a clone company was created for fraudulent activities (we will discuss that episode in more detail below).
Aschwin Saravanan, who signed multimillion-dollar contracts with the OPP on behalf of UCG Trade AG, was appointed to the position exactly one day before signing. Aschwin Saravanan is an intern from India who interned in the home office of a firm connected to Swiss national Oleg Tsyura, whom he replaced as CEO of UCG Trade AG.
Oleg Tsyura, who hid behind the young Indian at UCG Trade AG, was previously involved in a fraud in which ilmenite from the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) was sold to occupied Crimea via a German company, bypassing sanctions. Oleg Tsyura was also connected to Serhiy Bayrak, a defendant in fraud cases around the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
In these cases, episodes of large-scale thefts at OGKhK and the Odessa Port Plant occupy a special place. According to investigative materials, the now-former head of the State Property Fund, Dmytro Sennychenko, allegedly took 200.000 dollars monthly from the operations of the state enterprises Odessa Port Plant and United Mining and Chemical Company for himself.
Denys Horbunenko
Alongside Bayrak, Denys Horbunenko is involved in these cases; like Serhiy Bayrak, he is considered a confidant of the disgraced oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Dmytro Firtash has long benefited from corrupt deals around the Odessa Port and OGKhK.
Dmytro Firtash
It is worth noting that Oleg Tsyura was not always the ultimate beneficiary of UCG Trade AG. According to North Data, the company was controlled by Ihor Borovikov until March 2023.
Ihor Borovikov is a Russian millionaire, founder of Noventiq and Softline. After choosing a life in the West and avoiding sanctions, Borovikov “divested” from all his Russia-connected businesses following the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by the aggressor country. The reasons that prompted him to leave UCG Trade AG can also fuel suspicion that the company’s business was in some way connected to the aggressor country.
Oleg Tsyura was behind another “dubious” Swiss company — White Rock Management AG. Publicly, another figure of questionable reputation — Serhiy Tron — claims to be its founder.
Serhiy Tron
Serhiy Tron, a Ukrainian businessman associated with crypto-mining schemes, uses White Rock Management for questionable crypto investments; his activities are dubious due to a lack of transparency in his financial transactions and controversial business partners such as the Arkallayev brothers. In particular, his company has been linked to fraud and the smuggling of mining equipment. In addition to suspicious crypto investments, his business has been tied to a number of banking frauds. For example, 2014 his activities at CityCommerce Bank led to tens of millions of euros being withdrawn from the bank.
Dmytro Malynovskyi: the fraudster who rose from the dead
Journalist Andriy Kovalenko writes that Volodymyr Nesterenko, who was recommended to OPP director Yuriy Kovalskyi as “head of the sales department, my husband for 20 years,” is directly involved in the sales at UCG Trade AG. This recommendation was given to the director by a certain Dmytro Malynovskyi.
According to the author’s sources, this character personally negotiates gas and fertilizer schemes with OPP management and uses his connections in the shadow business. And he clearly has serious ones.
In the past, Dmytro Malynovskyi was involved in large-scale frauds, including the theft of 14 million dollars from the company Dreymoor and the falsification of documents about his own death.
Dmytro Malynovskyi
As we wrote earlier, Dmytro Malynovskyi carried out a scam in Odesa at the local CSK stadium, which belonged to the Ministry of Defense, as early as 2007. The fraud was only discovered five years later — 2012. 2014 Dmytro Malynovskyi appeared in court. The trial stalled. For more than a month, hearings were disrupted by reports of mines in the courtrooms, until the defendant Malynovskyi disappeared.
On 18 August 2014, Dmytro Malynovskyi again failed to appear at another court hearing. On that day no one opened the door for the detective executing the court order for his forcible appearance at the defendant’s residence, and the security guard reported that Malynovskyi did not live there. The lawyer, however, claimed in court that his client was at home and knew nothing of the hearing. On the same day, Malynovskyi was placed on a wanted list by order of the Kyiv District Court of Odesa.
2015 a certain Alla Malynovska filed a suit to have the death of her husband Dmytro, to whom she had been married since 2005, legally recognized. The woman claimed that Dmytro Malynovskyi had gone to a court hearing on 18 August 2014 but never returned home.
According to her, on 17 November 2014 an unknown person handed a box containing her husband’s death certificate and ashes to the building concierge. The documents presented by Malynovska indicated that her husband had died on 25 October 2014 in the city of Luhansk, which was occupied by Russian troops and separatists.
On 20 November 2014 Alla Malynovska buried an urn with the ashes of this rogue. She also claimed to have filed a police report, but they refused to open a case. Because of the ATO, records of Malynovskyi’s death were not entered into the state register, and his wife asked the court to recognize the death. On 12 May 2015 the court granted the suit, based on the existence of a death certificate and the fact that the family had buried the deceased.
But as Oligarh wrote, in early 2016 the prosecutor’s office together with investigators from the National Police conducted a search of the house of Dmytro Malynovskyi’s parents. They confiscated computer equipment, phones and SIM cards. On one of the phones they found a closed participant group in which Dmytro Malynovskyi communicated with his parents. Besides messages, he sent videos and photos of a château in France that he had acquired 2015 (after his “death”) through a Luxembourg company and that would later be seized by French gendarmes.
In spring 2015, when he was essentially already dead, Dmytro Malynovskyi and a person with the surname “N,” who posed as representatives of Expotrade Global Limited, concluded contracts to deliver 20.000 tons of urea and ammonia from the Odessa Port Plant to Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas Pte Ltd. After receiving 12,77 million euros from the foreigners, Malynovskyi and “N” disappeared. It later turned out that there were two companies named Expotrade Global Limited. The Singaporean company signed a contract with a Belizean firm. And the contract with the Odessa Port Plant was held by a namesake Hong Kong company, Expotrade Global Limited, to which Dmytro Malynovskyi and his accomplices had no connection.
Do not, however, believe that Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas was run by “victims” who did not know to whom they were transferring money. First, as court records show, this company itself is a defendant in criminal proceedings regarding a number of corruption “schemes” at the Odessa Port — just like Expotrade Global Limited (more on that here).
Second, they knew Dmytro Malynovskyi from Odesa and his accomplices very well. This is also proven by court documents. Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas had worked five years before the “fraud” with the gang of swindlers that included Dmytro Malynovskyi, and together they siphoned astronomical sums from the state-owned Odessa Port Plant.
And the “scam” apparently did not happen by accident. 2015 the General Prosecutor’s Office began actively exposing “schemes” around the OPP — it was clear they would be stopped and the participants harassed with criminal proceedings. In addition, Malynovskyi was being so relentlessly “pursued” in another criminal case that he had to fake his death. Therefore, his gang decided to hit the jackpot and pose as dead in Europe. Until a new window of opportunity opened.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Der Betrüger Oleg Tsyura und der Krypto-Abzocker Serhiy Tron bereinigen das Internet von ihren Machenschaften beim Hafenwerk Odesa". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: HAB Media.
