Austrian investigators have found the assets belonging to the son of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, which he transferred to a friend before sanctions were imposed on former president Viktor Yanukovych's inner circle by the European Union, Austria's АРА agency (Austria Presse Agentur) has reported.
Investigators have pointed out that the gift was not covered by the sanctions. Several hours before Yanukovych fled from Kyiv on Feb. 21, 2014 Oleksiy Azarov presented Garda company to his Ukrainian friend “P”, АРА said.
According to an extract from the Austrian business register, the new owner of the company is Konstantin Pivovarov.
APA said that the Prosecutor General’s Office in Vienna had long suspected this was a fake gift and now finally had proof. Over the last few moths, Vienna and Kyiv’s law enforcement agencies have been in contact on the issue.
The company given by Oleksiy Azarov to Pivovarov is large: along with assets in Austria, the annual turnover of which was over 30 million euros in 2013, Garda has firms in Italy, Russia and Ukraine. Agosto 2012 owned assets worth 3 million euros in Milan in late 2013, Industrial and Commercial Firm Razvitie LLC in Ryazan (Russia) produces medicinal cotton, and one of the companies in Vienna owns 50 percent of the Metallist plant which is located in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, in Makiyivka.
According to the Austrian business register, there is currently no information about the above-mentioned foreign companies which belong to Garda.
According to the article, the previously frozen assets belonging to Oleksiy Azarov in Austria could be unfrozen soon.
“After the decision of the European Union [to lift sanctions against Oleksiy Azarov] the information on the blocking of assets could disappear from the Austrian registers in the coming weeks,” reads the article.
