How SKODA Auto Partner Oleg Boyarin Robbed Banks

How SKODA Auto partner Oleg Boyarin robbed banks

At the same time, the owner of Atol Holding continues to talk about the poor investment climate in Ukraine.

In 2015, the owner of the Atol Holding group of companies and the Eurocar vehicle-assembly plant, Oleg Boyarin, who is part of it, did not make the Forbes list of millionaires. Instead, he seriously tarnished his business reputation by trying to avoid paying about 200 million hryvnias on loans to Ukrainian banks, refusing to pay either directly or under guarantee agreements. That, however, does not prevent the businessman from giving interviews criticizing the government for a lack of reforms and a poor investment climate.

In particular, he was in close partnership with SKODA Auto. s.

When 14 years ago, in December 19 2001, in the village of Solomonove in Uzhhorod district of the Zakarpattia region, the management of the SKODA Autoa. s. concern together with the governor opened a new plant to assemble Skoda cars for the Ukrainian market, few could have guessed what a stain this could put on the reputation of a company with a world-famous name. The plans then looked rosy: the plant’s potential up to 100 thousand cars per year, an undersaturated developing market, an enthusiastic partner. Only the Czechs did not reckon that sooner or later the petty-bourgeois mentality of the future head of Atol Holding, Oleg Boyarin, would burst out, and the one who seemed a reliable counterparty would turn out to be an ordinary fraudster.

“With our actions we give the state optimism, we want to show that it is possible to work and succeed even in difficult conditions,” — these words of Eurocar supervisory board member Volodymyr Panov, spoken in 2014 at the launch ceremony of production of one of the new Skoda Octavia models, are today perceived by the holding’s former partners as mockery. After all, in fact as early as 2013 Oleg Boyarin chose a completely different path, adopting the principle later made famous by Ihor Kolomoisky: “only cowards repay debts.”

A subsidiary of Atol Holding, EuroLeasing LLC, was engaged in leasing operations. Loans were taken out to purchase vehicles, and all lease payments were then supposed to be transferred to the bank’s account as repayment of those loans. However, such payments never arrived.

Millions of discord

Even before the revolutionary events and military actions in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, in the autumn of 2013 the founder of Atol Holding decided to carry out a large-scale operation to avoid paying bank loans of the company he controlled, EuroLeasing. At that time the company owed a number of Ukrainian banks with Western capital about 200 million hryvnias. Key creditors included Ukrsibbank, Ukrsotsbank (UniCredit Bank Ukraine), PUMB, and Raiffeisen Bank Aval. But one day EuroLeasing’s central office suddenly moved from Kyiv to Khmelnytskyi. Later, at the suit of an affiliated company controlled by Oleg Boyarin, AutoCenter Kyiv LLC, bankruptcy proceedings were initiated: EuroLeasing allegedly owed AutoCenter about 470 thousand hryvnias.

The very fact that a company with million-hryvnia turnover (no other financier would have given 200 million hryvnias in loans) went into bankruptcy proceedings over a claim of half a million raises questions about the fictitiousness of the whole process. Orchestrated, not least, to deceive real creditors. At the same time, despite the bankruptcy, EuroLeasing continued to operate actively. For example, judging by reviews on industry sites and forums, one of the company’s main income sources was selling equipment with an inflated commission while advertising a price significantly below market.

But entering bankruptcy proceedings in itself is not illegal (despite obvious signs of fiction). If the process had followed all the rules, then at least part of the creditors could have satisfied their claims, for example by selling assets, including those pledged as collateral for loans. However, imagine the surprise of bank representatives when, one morning, arriving with a court bailiff at a warehouse, they found none of the more than 500 vehicles that had been pledged as loan collateral. All these vehicles had been on lease since 2007–2008 and had no intrinsic value. But the fact that EuroLeasing sold (!) and, beforehand, deregistered without the bank’s consent about 370 vehicles (130 remaining, on paper registered with the MREO, but in fact not present at the responsible storage warehouses) is an outrageous case of theft and fraud. If the cars were deregistered, someone forged documents, including the bank’s consent — which, of course, nobody gave. And that is already a criminal offense.

The leasing obligations, the claims on which were also pledged to the bank, are of no use to the bankers: according to entrepreneurs’ data, they have long since repaid all debts to EuroLeasing. The only “liquid” collateral remaining is the guarantee of Atol Holding.

But the owner of Eurocar ignores his obligations. He decided to deceive the court by submitting false information allegedly about the expiration of the guarantee agreement. In fact — according to the document — it remains valid until the parties have fulfilled their obligations. That is, until Atol Holding repays all the debts of the bankrupt EuroLeasing. At the same time, Boyarin’s crude lawyers decided to mislead the Kyiv Commercial Court and present everything as if the guarantee had ended 6 months after the borrower entered bankruptcy. It took judges about a year, the case passing through three instances and an instruction from the High Commercial Court of Ukraine to untangle the contractual complexities of the parties. However, when the HCCU returned the case for reconsideration by the first instance, the Kyiv Commercial Court still found a way out: by decision of 12 November 2014 in case No. 910/21245/13 Atol Holding was ordered to pay Ukrsotsbank 17,9 million hryvnias, 3,4 million USD and 166 thousand euros. In March 2015 this decision was upheld by the Kyiv Appellate Commercial Court, and in June the case was again being considered by the country’s High Commercial Court.

Svyatash-2?

However, Oleg Boyarin is in no hurry to comply with the court’s decision. Moreover, he purposely gathered the heads of the creditor banks in the conference hall of one of the capital’s five-star hotels to personally let them know how indifferent he was to their demands. Rumor has it that the verb used in the conversation was “to screw”.

The situation very much resembles another well-known dispute between “automakers” and bankers — the conflict of the AIS group of companies of Dmytro Svyatash and Vasyl Polyakov with Ukrsibbank. However, unlike the situation with EuroLeasing and Atol Holding, Svyatash and Polyakov at least did not try to move the story into legal casuistry by pretending it was a raider takeover of the enterprise. Meanwhile, Oleg Boyarin not only does not respond to creditors’ demands, he also cynically portrays himself as an honest and European businessman.

In this context, his criticism of the government looks rather amusing: Boyarin blames the government for stalling reforms, calls to lower taxes and accuses the prime minister personally of incompetence and ineptitude. Boyarin says he wants to create conditions in Ukraine for the auto market comparable to Slovakia’s. And this despite the fact that, unlike imported cars, Skoda is not subject to import duty, which makes it cheaper and more accessible — an obvious preference written into the law. What more concessions do you want? One wants to ask: what have you done for Ukraine? You have disgraced the country with petty fraud.

Given the facts, SKODA Autoa. s. management should seriously reconsider the advisability of continuing cooperation with Atol Holding, Oleg Boyarin and Eurocar, whose activities cast a shadow not only on the Czech concern but also on parent company Volkswagen Group. In Europe, it might now be called nothing less than “the company whose partner in Ukraine steals millions from bankers and their depositors.” Not a flattering label. Especially in a country vying for new investment from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia. Obviously, under these circumstances, such investments in Ukraine are unlikely.

Author: Ihor Stepashin

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