Azariada: the slow wheel of justice – Center for Journalistic Investigations

While Mykola Azarov continues to comment on Ukrainian politics from Moscow and act as a propagandist for the war, a mosaic of his legacy is gradually taking shape in Ukraine: estates, offshore companies, a collection of cultural valuables, and criminal cases about multibillion tax schemes. Whether the state will be able, decades after the former prime minister’s flight, to convert into state revenue the assets amassed through the undue labor of the former head of the tax service and government is now being decided by several courts at once. The main battle is taking place in the High Anti-Corruption Court, whose hearings are attended in person by individuals the Ministry of Justice calls nominal owners of assets belonging to Oleksii and Mykola Azarov. Who they are and what property the fugitive premier’s family acquired in Crimea during the Russian occupation of the peninsula — in the CJI investigation.

Episode one: sanctioned

In May 2026 the Ministry of Justice filed a lawsuit with the High Anti-Corruption Court naming Mykola and Oleksii Azarov as defendants in an administrative case. Citing the Law “On Sanctions,” the ministry asks to recover as state revenue assets they directly or indirectly own or can dispose of. Mykola Azarov has been under NSDC sanctions since November 2023, Oleksii Azarov since May 2025. In both cases the sanctions provide for asset freezes for ten years.

The case involves five Ukrainian companies and one British company involved in the ownership structure of the Ukrainian LLCs. The beneficiaries of these companies entered in the state register are considered by the Ministry of Justice to be the nominal owners of the assets and high-value property they possess.

First and foremost, these are Kostiantyn Pyvovarov and Dmytro Nikitchenko, who are co-owners of three limited liability companies: Bethel, SoleilLand Development, and Intertower Ukraine. Both participate in court hearings in person, which, you will agree, is a rare occurrence here. Perhaps they are demonstrating with this that they are the real, not nominee, owners of these companies and their assets.

Court hearing at the High Anti-Corruption Court on 17 July 2026. Photo: CJI/T. Rykhtun

Kostiantyn Pyvovarov appeared in journalistic investigations as early as the Panama Papers leak as a co-owner of Farigton Holdings Limited (BVI), albeit already as a nominee; until 2014, the beneficiary was named as Oleksii Azarov, the former MP and son of Mykola Azarov.

In 2010–2011 Pyvovarov was Deputy Minister of Regional Development and Construction in Mykola Azarov’s government. After his dismissal he became vice president of the football club Metalist, which at that time Kharkiv oligarch Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi had sold to the new oligarch Serhii Kurchenko, and he gave many interviews in that capacity. Thus, as of 2014, when Azarov assets “rained down” on him, Pyvovarov had no assets of his own.

As Austrian investigators found, in February 2014 Oleksii Azarov, before leaving Ukraine, gifted to his “friend” the Austrian company Garda Handels-und Beteiligungs GmbH, on which Azarovs’ real estate in Austria and Italy and assets in Ukraine, including the Metalist factory in Makiivka, had been registered.

“The investigation points, among other things, to the gift that was not affected by sanctions which froze Azarov’s assets in Austria. A few hours before Viktor Yanukovych fled Kyiv on 21 February 2014, Oleksii Azarov gifted the company ‘Garda’ to his Ukrainian friend P.,” the APA agency reported.

Kostiantyn Pyvovarov, whom the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice considers the nominal owner of the Azarov family’s assets. 2013. Photo: REDPOST

Shares in the three Ukrainian companies that became the subject of the sanctions suit are registered to Pyvovarov. After the hearing in which the Ministry of Justice’s representative called him a “nominal owner,” Kostiantyn Pyvovarov told CJI that he “never was and is not” a nominee.

Left to right: Dmytro Nikitchenko and Kostiantyn Pyvovarov during a hearing at the High Anti-Corruption Court. Photo: CJI/T. Rykhtun

The second person the Ministry of Justice considers a nominal owner of the Azarov family’s assets is Pyvovarov’s business partner Dmytro Nikitchenko. He was not a well-known official during the Azarov years. He was allegedly brought into managing the Ukrainian portion of the assets through the trusted person of the Azarov family — Pyvovarov — in order to protect Kyiv real estate and land from sanctions and special confiscation. It is this artificial connection that the Ministry of Justice is now proving in court.

Dmytro Nikitchenko, following his lawyer’s advice, declined to comment when asked by CJI.

The company Aterna is solely owned by Yevheniia Rozumna. There is little public information about her business activities in open sources. But a notable detail: Polius-Center LLC and Konstanta Center LLC are owned by her half-and-half with the aforementioned Kostiantyn Pyvovarov. The companies are registered at the now-familiar business center address on Baseyna Street.

As CJI found, these companies control business centers and land plots in Koncha-Zaspa (Stolychne Highway, 21 and 23).

Infographic generated with the help of ChatGPT

It is worth discussing the land plots and Terra Estate LLC in more detail. From investigations a decade ago it is known that this company holds the Azarov family’s estate in Koncha-Zaspa. In May 2025 the court imposed a seizure on eight land plots owned by Terra Estate.

99% of the company belongs to Boulet Sales LP, registered in Scotland, and its beneficiary in the UK register from 2017 until May 2019 was a 38-year-old Ukrainian, Dmytro Prymak, whom the Ministry of Justice also considers a nominal owner. He is also indicated as the beneficiary of Terra Invest in the Ukrainian register since December 2021, and before that for three years the ultimate owner was listed as Volodymyr Lipara from Donetsk, who still owns 1% of the LLC and is its director.

From 2011 to 2013 Dmytro Prymak worked at the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade in Mykola Azarov’s government. And Volodymyr Lipara has a connection with Oleksii Azarov Jr. in Russia — they were co-founders of the Russian LLC REM.

The Ukrainian companies mentioned in the Ministry of Justice’s suit earned a total revenue in 2025 of more than 50 million hryvnias. Revenue data are missing from public access only for Terra Estate, because it has a different function: to hold the land plots and the Azarov family house in Koncha-Zaspa — 934,6 sq. m. at the address: Kyiv, Stolychne Highway, 23.

The Azarov family house in Koncha-Zaspa. Screenshot from TSN video

Since 2019 this property has been seized according to the ruling of the Kyiv Court of Appeal and transferred to ARMA’s management. The agency has repeatedly tried to find a manager for the house, but unsuccessfully.

It is difficult to find a manager for the estate where the Azarov family’s guard, Serhii Horlov, is registered — this same address is listed in his court summons.

By the same ruling of the Kyiv Court of Appeal, the Azarov family’s property in the village of Khlepcha in Kyiv region was seized. These are residential houses and land plots that the Ministry of Justice is also trying to recover as state revenue.

Azarov’s house in the village of Khlepcha, Kyiv region. Screenshot from the Sledstvo.info investigation, 2015

The Ministry of Justice’s list also includes assets on Crimea’s southern coast that Mykola Yanovych acquired before the peninsula’s occupation and which the Center for Journalistic Investigations has reported on multiple times. After all, improvements to resort facilities criminally appropriated through the charitable funds Professional and Garant were habitually paid for from budget funds by the Azarovs.

According to the text of the High Anti-Corruption Court ruling, these are four land plots in the settlement of Foros and a cottage of 465,9 sq. m. with terraces and a garage. This concerns real estate in the Chekhovo cooperative, of which Oleksii Azarov was initially a member, and in 2006 his father and mother also joined.

Read in detail about the Azarovs’ real estate on Crimea’s southern coast before its occupation in the CJI investigation “The family Azarov’s wild place”

After Russia’s occupation of Crimea the dacha cooperative Chekhovo was also registered under Russian jurisdiction, and its board chairman until June 2025 was Oleksii’s father‑in‑law and Mykola Azarov’s relative by marriage — Eduard Fathulin. He founded or managed several of the Azarovs’ companies in the Russian Federation, including the aforementioned LLC REM.

The Chekhovo cooperative in Sanatorne (Foros), whose members include Oleksii Azarov and his parents — Mykola and Liudmyla Azarov — and whose board chairman during the years of occupation became father‑in‑law Eduard Fathulin. 2013. Photo: CJI

The Center for Journalistic Investigations has repeatedly told the story of the brazen appropriation of two Gurzuf sanatoriums — the International Youth Center Gurzuf (formerly Sputnik) and the Pushkino sanatorium, which are located next to each other on the first line from the sea on Pushkin Embankment, which locals renamed Pushkin‑Azarov Embankment.

On 21 October 2004, that is 10 days before the first round of the presidential elections, the Supreme Council of Crimea removed the International Youth Center Gurzuf from the list of objects not subject to privatization; M. Azarov had a few years earlier transferred it to the authority of the State Tax Administration. And on the eve of the second round of the presidential elections, without competition and at a laughable price, the Supreme Council of Crimea designated the scandalous charitable fund Professional as the buyer. When Azarov headed the STA, that fund had been granted the monopoly right to dispose of confiscated or seized property and also collected “voluntary” donations from entrepreneurs.

The same scheme was used for privatizing the Pushkino sanatorium. After the Orange Revolution, Professional transferred the International Youth Center Gurzuf and the Pushkino sanatorium to another charitable fund — Garant, registered with the same managers and founders and the mass‑registration address of Azarov companies in Pechersk — Baseyna St., 9-B. The following year, 2006, the International Youth Center Gurzuf and the Pushkino sanatorium were repackaged into a new legal entity — the charitable enterprise Gurzuf Recreation and Health Complex “Perlyna Krymu”.

Even before the occupation of Crimea, much was written about Oleksii Azarov’s company’s intention to build an elite hotel “Pushkino‑Plaza” on the territory of Perlyna Krymu. The plans came true — but it is not a hotel, it is the residential complex Pushninsky, where apartment prices start from 36 million rubles.

The residential complex Pushkinsky in Gurzuf, built by the Azarovs’ companies on the territory of the unlawfully appropriated Pushkino sanatorium. 2024. Photo: Yandex

During Mykola Azarov’s premiership Gurzuf repeatedly received state subsidies. In particular, in 2010 a whopping 30 million hryvnias were allocated to “improve” the embankment. As CJI tracked, the beach cards of the privatized sanatoriums became the real prize. The beaches of Perlyna Krymu, which had been closed to free access thanks to their status as therapeutic, were covered with red pebbles and shore reinforcement works were carried out. And in the storm of 2012 another 10 million hryvnias were laundered.

After Russia’s occupation of Crimea, which the Azarov family wholeheartedly supported, Perlyna Krymu was renamed Gurzuf Center LLC and registered under Russian jurisdiction with the same Ukrainian founder — the charitable fund Garant (which, by the way, still exists).

At the beginning of 2018 that year it was changed to Muslim Arbiiev — the owner of a security firm — and in 2022 the founder is listed as the Azarovs’ familiar guard Serhii Horlov, who in Russia is registered as the owner of eight companies, half of which have already been liquidated. Horlov is the sole owner of LLC Private Security Organization Argon, registered in Ryazan region, where Oleksii Azarov’s cotton business is located — the Rusvata and Meditell factories, which are positioned as one of the market leaders in cotton products.

In October 2024 the founder of Gurzuf Center was registered as the Moscow LLC Pushkino, created only three months earlier with a meager authorized capital of 10 thousand rubles and with non‑public individual founders — Liudmyla Puzyriova (99%), who previously engaged in retail trade as an individual entrepreneur in Krasnodar Krai, and Pavlo Puzyriov.

Then, from unknown sources and by unknown means, a whole host of related companies appeared — specialized developers (SD), including the again‑renamed Gurzuf Center, and several developers that took hold in Alushta and the Ukrainian‑stolen House of Creativity “Alyustin Sanatorium” with 15 hectares of relict park. The SD name Soyuz‑Alushta is used by four numbered companies registered to Olha Puzyriova. According to the Russian Unified Register of Residential Construction, SD Soyuz‑Alushta‑2 is building on the territory of the House of Creativity and its park the residential complex Park Residence of four buildings. SD Soyuz‑Alushta‑1 is building in the same town the residential complex Krymska Residence, and in Massandra SD Gurzuf‑Pushkino is erecting the Yalta Residence. But that is a new story to which CJI will return to highlight all the sanction‑relevant links between developers and their funds.

The Azarovs’ business history on temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine and in Russia also needs significant updating, since it is conducted with shadow capital illegally taken out of Ukraine. The State Bureau of Investigations is investigating a criminal case on money laundering and a large‑scale tax evasion scheme that, according to investigators’ version, was organized by former president Viktor Yanukovych, prime minister Mykola Azarov, former head of the State Tax Service and minister of revenues and duties Oleksandr Klymenko, and their subordinates. According to law enforcement, in just five months of 2011 the “tax hole” schemes deprived the state budget of nearly three billion hryvnias in taxes.

So what happens next….