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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Under Mikheil's wing: Yanukovych 'family' oligarch moved a joint business with the FSB to Odesa
The company "Megapolis-Ukraine," which is the monopolist on Ukraine's tobacco market, has been re-registered in Odesa. Thus, the joint business of the FSB and Yanukovych's Family has moved under the wing of reformist governor Mikheil Saakashvili.
As became known from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, "Trading Company Megapolis-Ukraine" moved from Ternopil to Odesa, to Shevchenko Avenue, 4. By a "strange" coincidence, at 4a Shevchenko Avenue there was the "Finbank," which is connected to well-known businessmen Borys Kaufman and Oleksandr Granovskyi. They also own the Bristol Hotel, where 6 December 2015 a Odessa Anti-Corruption Forum was held, at which Saakashvili took on high-level corruption officials.
At the building at the address mentioned above, Saakashvili, by the way, picked out a hall for the Administrative Services Center, writes ZN.UA.
But the monopolist did not change its founders — in particular, among the participants remains Megapolis Holdings Overseas Limited, registered in Cyprus but owned by the well-known Russian oligarch Igor Kesaev. Besides the tobacco monopoly business in Russia, Kesaev is involved in grocery retail and arms; he does not even hide his ties to the FSB.
The Russian "Megapolis" entered the Ukrainian market under former president Viktor Yanukovych: under him the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine allowed the distributor to buy up tobacco producers. It is completely obvious that the business was created jointly with the "Family" — the person "overseeing" the company and the market overall on the Ukrainian side was the well-known Odesa businessman Borys Kaufman — the same one who, at the height of the Maidan, begged to visit Viktor Yanukovych "to give a report and offer congratulations."
Interestingly, Kaufman together with his partner Oleksandr Granovskyi are among Mikheil Saakashvili's sponsors.
"Kaufman and Granovskyi came to an agreement with Saakashvili immediately. This is no secret," emphasized People's Deputy Maksym Polyakov (People's Front) in a comment to UNIAN.
At the end of December last year, People's Deputy Dmytro Holubov (Petro Poroshenko Bloc) accused Saakashvili's people of using funds from the charitable foundation "For the Benefit of Odesa," which were allegedly previously intended to be spent on ATO soldiers, write Our Money. Media investigation showed that the Granovskyi–Kaufman tandem also appears among the foundation's "benefactors."
Perhaps this "activity" influenced the governor of Odesa region when he reached agreements with Borys Kaufman and Oleksandr Granovskyi regarding the completion of Odesa airport. "I am ready to help even questionable businessmen if they do good things," Interfax-Ukraine quotes Saakashvili as saying.
As Obozrevatel previously reported, in mid-January 2016 several cities in Ukraine saw protests against the operation of a Russian company that sponsors the killings of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians in the east of the country.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Под крыло Михо: олигарх "семьи" Януковича перевел в Одессу совместный с ФСБ бизнес". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: ANTIKOR.
