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Chronicles of Narnia: Yaroslavsky in Search of Svyatash
Billionaire Oleksandr Yaroslavsky has decided to dig down to the owners of AIS. If he succeeds, the auto group’s multimillion tenders could be declared illegal. It all started last week when the AIS group accused Yaroslavsky of raider seizure. He did not leave it unanswered, saying he will sue “for defamation” and in court will try to reveal the real owners of AIS.There are some doubts about that. The Ukrainian register of owners has not worked for a month, to say nothing of all the various Panamas and Virgins. It’s like wandering through Narnia. On the other hand—who knows what resources billionaires, especially Ukrainian ones, might have. So if Oleksandr Yaroslavsky suddenly succeeds, we won’t object. And not only because there’s no such thing as too much information. There’s another nuance. It may turn out that many government tenders had participant companies with the same founder. Which, we remind you, is prohibited by law. And the sums at stake were not small.The AIS group regularly wins government tenders for vehicle purchases. The Bulletin of Public Procurement over the past five years contains data on 17 companies from this group—15 regional branches, as well as AIS AZCH Market and AIS-Citroën-Center. Together they won—either fully or for individual lots—two and a half hundred tenders worth 366 million hryvnias.That’s about the tenders. Now about Narnia.In recent years the money earned by AIS has flowed to unknown destinations. Officially, of course, it’s known—first it was the U.S., then Panama, now Cyprus. But that’s essentially the same as saying it flowed to a parallel world. Because no one in Ukraine wants to confirm that they are the owner of this structure.Traditionally, the AIS group is linked to People’s Deputy from the Party of Regions Dmytro Svyatash. Last summer bankers pointed a finger at him when they said the group did not want to repay loans of 1,77 billion hryvnias. Svyatash promptly denied involvement: he left management of the group back in 2002 when he became a People’s Deputy, and exited the founders’ list in 2009.It does not seem possible to verify this by simple means.Until recently the official owner of the companies from the AIS group was the American company Development Max LLC. No matter how proudly “American” sounds, its address spoiled the prestige—Delaware. Officially it cannot be called an “offshore,” but it is one in practice. Like Panama, Belize and the Virgins—Delaware is famed for flexible tax law and anonymity policies: owners of companies are not disclosed to third parties.Thereafter the companies on the lucky-tender list began one by one to move from Delaware to Panama. In 2010 the main owner of AIS-Citroën-Center changed—becoming Navitron Projects Corp. (Navitron Projects Corp.). A year later Navitron became the registered owner of AIS-Donetsk, and since spring 2012 the rest of the AIS firms.Panama’s sparse register only reports the company managers—typically locals or transient “ski instructors.” Sometimes this data is enough to gauge how opaque the Ukrainians hiding behind offshore masks are. So, the level of opacity at AIS corresponds to the clarity of a mountain river that a herd of bulls has been driven through and then a few rusty cars were dumped into it.Management of Navitron (from 2010 to present) is entrusted to three other Panamanian companies. Directorial functions are registered to Cascado AG, treasury functions to Integri S.A., and secretarial functions to Systemo AG.All three firms are part of a global web of “fronts” that at various times were nominally run by Stan Gorin and Erik Vanagels, the same Latvians who “sold” Boyko’s rig. According to OCCRP (Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), these Panamanian firms together with Milltown Corporate Services and Ireland & Overseas Acquisitions, which were used in the rig story, are involved in a number of export/import schemes and tax evasion.Yet AIS did not stay in Panama for long. We won’t share hypotheses about why; we’ll describe only the facts.The change happened quite recently—during the well-known Ministry of Health tender. AIS-Stolitsa is currently awaiting signature on several large contracts. One of them—the purchase of ambulances worth 48 million—was accepted a week ago. In mid-October of this year AIS-Stolitsa changed owner again. Now it is the Cypriot company Radolin Trading Limited. It was registered only at the end of March this year; its founder is another Cypriot company, Foniarium Holdings Limited. Its official owner in turn is Cypriot Maria Hadjiantonis. In other words, another “yoga teacher.”And now to the most important part. To the tender rigging and the Narnian information that Yaroslavsky hopes to obtain.A traditional competitor of AIS companies in tenders is LLC Global Autogroup. Our Money has repeatedly written that these two firms behave like “sparring partners.” In March, for example, they were the only competitors in a tender of the Social Protection Fund for the purchase of vehicles worth 32 million hryvnias. The same lineup competed in an analogous fund tender in October—the second big deal for which AIS-Stolitsa’s proposal for 31 million was accepted but the contract has not yet been signed.Global was founded in March 2012, registered on the outskirts of Vasylkiv in Kyiv region. Already about half a year later, at the end of September, the firm itself began winning government tenders. Over one and a half years it accumulated government contracts totaling 58 million hryvnias. These are 64 tenders, of which in 51 (!) cases the sole competitor to Global was the same company from the AIS group, namely the Enterprise with Foreign Investments Avtoinveststroy-Brok.The director of Global Autogroup is Viktor Vasylovych Kovalenko.In turn, a person named Viktor Kovalenko has for many years given comments to the media as commercial director of the AIS group of companies. He also recently, as a representative of a participating company—AIS-Stolitsa—commented on that same billion-hryvnia tender for the purchase of ambulances. He emphasized, by the way, that “the Ministry of Health did everything for the tender to be fair and transparent.”We won’t assert these are the same person yet, but even without that there are plenty of strange coincidences.Today the sole owner of Global is the Panamanian company Coppermax INC. The offshore with a charter capital of $10 thousand was registered in August 2012 and listed at the same mass-registration address as Navitron—50 Global Plaza Tower, office “N”. The company moved into Coppermax in October, roughly the same time it began winning government tenders.According to the Panamanian registry, signing authority on behalf of the company is held by two people: Ricardo Manuel Cambra La Duke and Fernando Enrique Montero De Gracia.The first, Ricardo Cambra La Duke, was one of the directors and an agent of Cascado AG and Systemo AG at the same time as Gorin and Vanagels. He is now director of Integri SA from that same web of front companies. Overall, the Latvians and La Duke intersected in at least six companies.The second, Fernando De Gracia, appeared in a number of firms together with another director of the “Panamanian trio,” Tatiana Saldaña.But, of course, they are not only wandering directors. Despite the change of owner, Global Autogroup kept its registration in Vasylkiv: Traktorna Street, building 13. At the same address another company is officially registered—LLC Kontakt-Autozapchastina. Its owner is the same Panamanian Coppermax, and until May its director was Oleksandr Serhiyovych Yefimov. A person with that full name until the end of last year headed AIS AZCH Market—the parts company in the AIS group that deals in auto parts.Telephone lines for Global and AIS AZCH Market appear to be the same. In the bid opening protocol for vehicles for people with disabilities, Global’s contact number is listed as (044-585-40-50). With a Kyiv code, by the way, not a Vasylkiv one. This phone number constantly appears online as the contact number for AIS AZCH Market—not only in business directories or on the site of the All-Ukrainian Motorists’ Union. It can also be found on the official site of the parts division itself—the number was listed last year for motorists to contact about environmental protection issues. And if you dig into the tender documentation AIS AZCH Market won in recent years, you’ll find this same number in several protocols—sometimes as a contact, sometimes as a fax.And a small garnish. The first owner of Global Autogroup was Oleksandr Atlanderov, the first director was Volodymyr Kress. There is an organization in the capital called the Kyiv Football Association. It runs the Kyiv Open Football Championship. Here is the report of that championship for 6 October this year. Atlanderov and Kress play for the team “AIS.” Hardly unlikely they were invited mercenaries.In short, there are plenty of charming little details. But if Yaroslavsky manages to get a guide to Narnia, of course all this will look much more interesting. And he will have grateful readers, especially those for whom reading such texts is their job. If you add up the tender gains of AIS and Global Autogroup, plus the planned 50 million of the Ministry of Health and 31 million of the Social Protection Fund, you get 503 million hryvnias. That’s enough to carry out more than one plan to “prevent offenses.”But for now we’re waiting for Yaroslavsky’s next move. To see what will be in the magical wardrobe he will try to open: a passage to a parallel world or a pile of skeletons.Lesya Ivanova
Our Money
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