Lawmaker and former journalist Serhiy Leshchenko has made new corruption
accusations against his parliamentary colleague Serhiy Lyovochkin and
his ally, exiled tycoon Dmytro Firtash.
Firtash, who is wanted by
the U.S. on bribery charges, and Lyovochkin, ex-President Viktor
Yanukovych’s former chief of staff, have faced accusations of criminal
activities before and have denied the allegations.
French villa
One of Leshchenko’s accusations, outlined in an Ukrainska Pravda investigation earlier this month, is that Lyovochkin owns an undeclared €40 million villa in the town of Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat on the French Riviera.
Lyovochkin told the Kyiv Post by e-mail that he had declared all of his “property and other assets in full accordance with Ukrainian legislation.”
In 2014, Lyovochkin’s daughter Olena Lyovochkina published a photo from the alleged villa on Instagram, which subsequently allowed the former journalist to locate the beachfront property.
Leshchenko also examined French, Danish, Luxembourgish and Cypriot company registers to trace the villa’s ownership structure and published scanned copies of the documents involved.
The villa is owned by Glorietta Investments I IPS, a Danish-registered firm owned by Luxembourg’s Boutifour SA, according to the registers.
Boutifur’s directors include Cypriots Audriana Pias and Xenia Georgiou.
Georgia Georgiou, the sister of Xenia Georgiou, is also the secretary of Utelo Holdings Ltd, a company owned by Lyovochkin’s sister Yulia Lyovochkina.
Another link to Lyovochkin is that Maria Shufta, a director of Lyovochkin’s Oskaro Investments Ltd, also works at Utelo Holdings Ltd.
Lawmaker Serhiy Lyovochkin speaks during the 12th annual Yalta European Strategy meeting on Sept. 12 in Kyiv. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Telephones, gas
Leshchenko says his research on the villa has also allowed him to trace alleged links between Lyovochkin and several corruption schemes.
Audriana Pias and Georgia Georgiou, the sister of Xenia Georgiou, are directors of Epic Telecom Invest Ltd, also known as Raga Establishment Ltd. – the owner of Ukraine-registered ESU, the firm that bought state-owned fixed-line operator Ukrtelecom in 2011.
The auction triggered a controversy because ESU was the only bidder and its owners were unknown at the time. Opposition lawmakers, like former State Property Fund head Oleksandr Bondar, said then that people close to Yanukovych were behind the deal, possibly Lyovochkin, Firtash or billionaire Rinat Akhmetov.
Lyovochkin and Akhmetov denied involvement in Ukrtelecom’s privatization in their response to a Kyiv Post inquiry. Firtash didn’t respond to a Kyiv Post request for comment through spokesman Yevhen Smaglyuk.
Lyovochkin is also accused of ties to RosUkrEnergo, a natural gas trader.
RosUkrEnergo existed in 2004 to 2014 and supplied Russian and Central Asian gas to Ukraine and Europe. It was frequently accused of being a corrupt vehicle for skimming profits off the gas trade in the interests of people in either the Russian or Ukrainian government. Another accusation is that it was allegedly linked to Semion Mogilevich, whom the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation considers the Russian mafia’s boss of bosses.
A 25-percent stake in RosUkrEnergo used to be owned by Cyprus’ Prelux Holdings Limited. Xenia Georgiou, a director of the company that owns the villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, is also the chief executive of Prelux Holdings, according to registers cited by Leshchenko.
Meanwhile, Amal Sarout Lambrou is a director of both Boutifour, which controls the villa, and Grenar Enterprises, which held 10 percent in Centragas, a former co-owner of RosUkrEnergo.
An additional link is that Maria Shufta, a director of Lyovochkin’s Oskaro Investments Ltd, is the secretary of Grenar Enterprises.
A search in company registers such as OpenCorporates and Companies House shows that Xenia Georgiou, Georgia Georgiou, Shufta, and Labrou appear as directors, secretaries or shareholders in a number of other companies registered in the United Kingdom.
Dmytro Firtash
Lyovochkin’s ally Dmytro Firtash has also been lambasted by civic activists and investigative journalists.
Leshchenko published a French document according to which Firtash acquired shares in the company that owns a €49 million villa next to Lyovochkin’s alleged property in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat in 2008.
Firtash’s spokesman Yevhen Smaglyuk did not reply to a request for comment.
Firtash officially controlled 45 percent of RosUkrEnergo and was accused of taking part in Ukrtelecom’s privatization – a charge that he denies. Austrian authorities arrested him in March 2014 after the FBI accused him of bribing Indian officials in exchange for uranium deposits.
He was released on a €125 million bail in the same month, and last year Austrian courts rejected the U.S. extradition request and allowed him to leave the country.
In 2015 Ukraine’s Interior Ministry also opened an embezzlement case against executives of Ostchem, a chemicals holding company controlled by Firtash.
However, no notice of suspicion has been filed for Firtash in Ukraine, which prompted him to announce last November that he was returning to the country. In response, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov warned that Firtash would be arrested at the request of the United States if he returned.
Firtash and Lyovochkin own Inter Media Group, which includes Inter TV, one of the nation’s highest rated channels, according to the Objective Investigative Reporting Project.
One reason why Lyovochkin and Firtash are not being prosecuted in Ukraine is that prosecutors would never investigate such figures without “an order from above,” Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta think tank, said by phone.
For many years, there has been a consensus in the Ukrainian elite that politicians would not jail each other for corruption. Ukraine’s current leaders “grew up in this system” and are used to it, Fesenko added.
One episode that has prompted speculation on political agreements among Poroshenko, Firtash and Lyovochkin is a meeting that they had in Vienna in April 2014 in the run-up to a presidential election.
Firtash and Lyvochkin initially supported UDAR party leader Vitali Klitschko but then decided to back Poroshenko “because they understood he was the strongest candidate,” Fesenko argued.
Prosecuting them will also be difficult because Lyovochkin is a formidable adversary.
“Lyovochkin is a very careful and professional man,” Fesenko said. “He won’t do any stupid things. It will be very hard to dig something up on him.”
