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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 and contracts for ammonia and urea are said to be handled through shell companies, behind which, according to reports, are Vitaliy Loginov, Oleg Tsyura, Serhiy Tron and even the alleged fraudster Dmytro Malynovskyi, described as “resurrected.”
The strategic enterprise continues to be plundered, and the key figures in these deals are actively cleaning up any inconvenient information.
We publish the investigation in full — to show exactly how the division system at OPP works and who is behind it.
A recent 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 fraud 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 citizen Oleg Tsyura, the “crypto businessman” Serhiy Tron and oligarch Dmytro Firtash have surfaced 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), facing financial problems and a prolonged 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 worsened the situation and threatened the security and stability of the country’s gas transmission system.
Vitaliy Lohinov: “dubious” tenders and a criminal past
The first tender that OPP held on 25 July of this year was won by a little-known Kharkiv company, Agrotorggroup Company. This firm only came to light 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 neither has the experience nor the resources to fulfill such a large contract. Moreover, Agrotorggroup failed to meet its gas delivery obligations, leading to 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 obtained a 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 co-owner of FC Luzhany, Mazur Mykhailo.
According to the author, the opaque tenders are backed by Vitaliy Lohinov, an informal advisor to the head of the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC). Loginov also controls Sumykhimprom and has influence over OPP’s management. According to the author, this information strengthens suspicion of a corrupt component in the transactions and points to possible schemes to siphon state funds through fictitious contracts and shell companies.
The suspicion is strengthened by the fact that, as it turned out [high-profile cases], Vitaliy Lohinov is connected to one of the winners of the OPP tenders — the aforementioned LLC “Company Agrotorggroup.” According to 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 Lohinov. It is obvious that Balyuk is a “strawwoman” for Vitaliy Lohinov in Agrotorggroup.
The situation becomes even spicier because Agrotorggroup LLC is involved in criminal proceeding No. 72022000410000003, opened by detectives of the Economic Security Bureau on 5 April 2022 on suspicion of large-scale tax evasion.
Furthermore: according to the Judicial Authority of Ukraine portal, Vitaliy Lohinov was listed as a suspect in criminal proceeding No. 12016220000000106, registered on 03.02.2016 on charges of misappropriation of property through abuse of office.
Vitaliy was even wanted for a time as a fugitive criminal.
However, according to documents posted in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the case was buried — Vitaliy Lohinov avoided not only a conviction but any trial at all.
As Andriy Kovalenko writes, the main problem is that both companies from Lohinov’s orbit that won the tenders do not have the necessary funds to pay for the gas supplied.
Instead, they are trying to take gas from the Ukrainian gas transmission system (GTS) without prepayment, causing an imbalance in the system and posing a threat to its stability. More than half of the consumed gas is not paid for, which indicates a violation of delivery rules and could lead to significant losses for the state.
The guarantees provided by the supplying companies do not cover the volume of gas consumed by the plant, yet production at OPP continues despite actual payment failures. Under normal conditions, the plant should have been stopped until the payment issue was resolved, but that does not happen, raising questions for the management of the Ukrainian GTS operator.
Furthermore, the gas price fixed 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, a legitimate question arises: by what mechanisms is the price difference covered, especially given the supplier’s limited financial means, if they exist at all?
Oleg Tsyura, Dmytro Firtash, Serhiy Tron and Russian “grannies”
In September 2024, 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 services were assigned to a little-known company from Mykolaiv. Financial settlements under the contracts are made through accounts at Revolut, a startup that is not a bank, which raises additional questions about the deal’s reliability.
Notably, the address of UCG Trade AG given in the contract with OPP differs from the address listed in the official Swiss company register. This indicates 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 go into this episode in more detail below).
Aschwin Saravanan, who signed multimillion-dollar contracts with 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 completed an internship in the home office of a company associated with Swiss citizen 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 theft at OGKhK and the Odessa Port Plant take a special place. According to the investigation materials, the now-former head of the State Property Fund, Dmytro Sennychenko, took 200.000 dollars monthly from the operations of state enterprises Odessa Port Plant and United Mining and Chemical Company for himself.
Denys Horbunenko
In addition to Bayrak, Denys Horbunenko is involved in these cases; he is considered, like Serhiy Bayrak, a trusted associate of the disgraced oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Dmytro Firtash is a long-time beneficiary of 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 to live in the West and avoid sanctions, Borovikov “abandoned” all his Russia-linked businesses after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. The reasons that led him to leave UCG Trade AG can also fuel suspicion that the company’s business was somehow connected to the aggressor country.
Oleg Tsyura was behind another “dubious” Swiss company — White Rock Management AG. In public, 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 like 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 bank 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,” was directly involved in sales at UCG Trade AG. This recommendation came to the director from a certain Dmytro Malynovskyi.
According to the author’s sources, this character personally negotiates gas and fertilizer schemes with OPZ 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 fraud in Odessa as early as 2007 involving the local stadium “CSK,” which belonged to the Ministry of Defense. The fraud was only discovered five years later — 2012. 2014 Dmytro Malynovskyi appeared in court. The trial stalled. For more than a month the hearings were disrupted by bomb threat notices at the courtrooms, until the defendant Malynovskyi disappeared.
On 18 August 2014, Dmytro Malynovskyi again failed to appear at another court hearing. That day no one opened the door for the detective executing the court order for forced attendance at the defendant’s residence, and the security guard reported that Malynovskyi did not live there. The lawyer nevertheless claimed in court that his client was at home and knew nothing of the hearing. On the same day, the Kyiv District Court of Odessa issued a warrant for Malynovskyi’s arrest.
2015 a certain Alla Malynovska filed a suit to establish the death of her husband Dmytro, to whom she had been married since 2005. 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 via the building concierge containing her husband’s death certificate and ashes. The documents provided by Malynovska indicated that her husband had died on 25 October 2014 in the city of Luhansk, occupied by Russian troops and separatists.
On 20 November 2014, Alla Malynovska buried an urn with the ashes of this scoundrel. She also said she filed a police report, but that the police refused to open a case. Due to the ATO, data about Malynovskyi’s death was 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, citing 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 searched the house of Dmytro Malynovskyi’s parents. They seized computer equipment, phones and SIM cards. On one of the phones a closed participant group was found in which Dmytro Malynovskyi communicated with his parents. In addition to messages, he sent videos and photos of a chateau in France that he had purchased 2015 (after his “death”) through a Luxembourg company and which was later to be seized by French gendarmes.
In spring 2015, when he was essentially already dead, Dmytro Malynovskyi and a certain person with the surname “N”, posing as representatives of Expotrade Global Limited, concluded contracts for the delivery of 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, Dmytro Malynovskyi and “N” disappeared. Later it turned out that there were two companies called Expotrade Global Limited. The Singaporean firm had a contract with a Belize company. And the contract with the Odessa Port Plant was held by a namesake Hong Kong company, Expotrade Global Limited, with which Dmytro Malynovskyi and his accomplices had no connection.
But do not believe that Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas is run by “victims” who do not know exactly to whom they transfer money. First, this company, as court documents show, is itself a defendant in criminal cases over a series of corruption “schemes” at the Odessa Port. Just like Expotrade Global Limited (more on that here).
Second, they knew Dmytro Malynovskyi from Odessa and his accomplices very well. Which is also confirmed by court records. Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas worked five years before the “fraud” with the gang of conmen that included Dmytro Malynovskyi and together they siphoned astronomical sums from the state Odessa Port Plant.
And the “rip-off” apparently did not happen by accident. 2015 the Prosecutor General’s Office began actively unraveling the “schemes” around OPP — it was clear they would be stopped and the participants would be harassed in criminal cases. In addition, Malynovskyi was being so persistently “pursued” in another criminal case that he had to fake his own death. Therefore his gang decided to hit the jackpot and play dead in Europe. Until a new window of opportunity opened.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Der Schwindler Oleg Tsyura und der Krypto-Betrüger Serhiy Tron säubern das Internet von Hinweisen auf ihre Machenschaften im Hafenwerk Odessa". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Rozsliduvach.
