You're reading: Yanukovych estate company director sentenced to five years in prison

An Austrian court on April 5 sentenced the founder and director of the firm that owns President Viktor Yanukovych’s palatial estate to five years in prison for his role in manipulating the share price in Telekom Austria.

Johann Wanovits, 54, was also ordered to
pay 10 million euros in damages. 

He was found guilty of receiving more than
1.5 million euros between 2004 and 2008 mostly in cash delivered in paper bags
and for fictional business in return for buying shares in the telecom on the
orders of the company’s three former managers, Reuters reported.

He defended his position by saying he
bought Telekom Austria shares to restore their natural value.

In Ukraine, Wanovits is better known for
establishing Viennese investment firm Euro East Beteiligungs, the founder and
majority shareholder of Tantalit, which owns the luxurious 140-hectare estate
that Yanukovych occupies in a northern Kyiv suburb. He is still the director of
Euro East.

His family business Euro Invest Bank founded and had a 65 percent stake in Euro East until October 2011. It was
through Euro Invest that Wanovits had speculated on Telekom Austria’s shares.

In October 2011, Euro Invest’s 65 percent
stake in Euro East was taken over by Blythe Europe Ltd in London. In turn,
Blythe Europe is further cloaked behind a trust in Lichtenstein.

These companies, along with Wanovits, are
believed to be part of an elaborate front to mask the real owners of
Yanukovych’s estate.

Yanukovych says he only owns a modest home inside
the estate situated on 1.76 hectares of land he purchased from the local
government. He says he doesn’t know who really owns the rest of the grand
compound which includes a horse stable, a five-story mansion, man-made ponds,
an extravagant boathouse, an 18-hole golf course, a helicopter landing pad, as
well as other amenities that is enclosed behind a 6.5-meter high perimeter
wall.

The local government in Vyshgorod sold
Yanukovych the 1.76 hectares in 2010. Yanukovych has refused to say how much he
paid. After receiving numerous responses to inquiries from various government
officials and agencies that failed to disclose the land sale price, Ukrainska
Pravda deputy editor Serhiy Leshchenko has filed a lawsuit against the Ukraine
state in the European Court of Human Rights.

Kyiv Post editor Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].