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Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
The official version sounds simple. The owner of the ORD website, Stanislav Rechynskyi, demanded 3,5 thousand USDT from the head of the SHERIFF holding, Dmytro Stryzhov, to delete kompromat. After the money was transferred the negative material disappeared, and on 26 August the German police conducted a search of Rechynskyi’s apartment in Berlin.
In reality, the story revolves around a completely different person.
According to our information, the real beneficiary of the whole process was the founder of Avtostrada, Maksym Shkil. Stryzhov merely played the role of a “torpedo.” The goal was deeper — to reach the anonymous blogger Volodymyr Bondarenko, whose channel was believed to be controlled by Rechynskyi. But after the owner of ORD was detained, Bondarenko continued to go on air. And that is already a serious problem for those who set the scheme in motion.
The main figure in this story is not SHERIFF and not Avtostrada. The main figure is Andriy Rubel.
The negotiations about completely “cleaning” the information space were centered on him. All mentions of the former head of the Department of Strategic Investigations were supposed to disappear from Rechynskyi’s channels and resources. Moreover, according to reports, Rechynskyi himself was the creator of a separate channel dedicated to Rubel.
At a certain stage the negotiations stalled. Then the materials about him disappeared abruptly and almost simultaneously.
Rumor has it that Khyimprom paid for this “cleanup.” But Rubel appears to have decided not to stop halfway. Instead of simply removing inconvenient publications, he tried to shut down the source itself. Now that the Berlin police have already entered Rechynskyi’s apartment, the situation is being covered up.
A hunter who for a long time walked among the “untouchables” himself
Andriy Rubel is a police colonel, a career operative. Criminal investigation, GUBOZ, Department of Internal Security, leadership of the Kharkiv police. Since October 2022 he headed the Department of Strategic Investigations — an elite “anti-clan” structure with more than three thousand employees. In April 2026 he was removed from his post during another wave of personnel purges in the Interior Ministry.
The person who was supposed to hunt clans himself remained in the shadows for years. And not without reason.
Back in 2020, Bihus.Info showed that Rubel’s father and mother-in-law suddenly acquired millions in savings, elite real estate, several Porsche Cayennes and even a stake in a ski resort. Wealth that emphatically did not match the family’s official incomes. Rubel himself “worked for the state his whole life.” The luxury was carefully registered to relatives. In 2019 he also failed the competition for the State Bureau of Investigations.
The most delicate scheme of the chief “strategic investigator” turned out to be his own declaration.
That is why the story with Rechynskyi, the sudden disappearance of materials and the Berlin search looks completely different. This is not just an extortion episode. It is an attempt to shut down the information environment around a person who for years worked to shut others down.
And now, with Rechynskyi’s phone in the hands of the German police, Ukrainian law enforcement has a chance to see much more than just correspondence about 3,5 thousand USDT. Sometimes the most valuable things lie exactly where they are not expected.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item "Андрій Рубель у центрі скандалу: що пов’язує його з Речинським і обшуком у Берліні". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Info-Impulsi.
