INTERPOL under a request of judicial agencies of Israel has issued a red notice against Ukrainian businessman Oleksandr Hranovsky (Granovskyi), who has business assets in hospitality, publishing and financial areas.
According to information on the website of INTERPOL, Hranovsky is charged with obtaining anything by deceit, money laundering, performing a prohibited transaction with property and false entry in documents of a body corporate.
According to information from Israel’s G. Willi-Food International Ltd., Hranovsky and Hryhoriy Hurtovy (Gregory Gurtovoy), former controlling shareholders and officers of the company, transferred from subsidiaries of Willi Food approximately $60 million to foreign banks as pretended foreign deposits, while pledging such funds to secure loans to private foreign companies related to them.
During January 2016, these persons transferred $3 million from a company controlled by Willi Food, for an investment registered in the company’s books as an investment in bonds of a hotel in the Czech Republic, while in fact such investment served as a collateral for repayment of a loan of a company affiliated to Hranovsky and Hurtovy.
Willi Food said that on January 7, 2019, Hurtovy and Joseph Schneerson (former director of Willi Food Investments Ltd. implicated in the case) signed a plea bargain.
Hranovsky held a controlling stake in Willi Food via Ukraine’s Vertex United Ltd., which provided services in the hotel management sphere. In December 2014, he was appointed a member of the board of directors of Willi Food.
Vertex United also had assets in investment and development, hospitality, and financial (PJSC Finbank, declared insolvent in April 2017 and liquidated in January 2019) and the media business (Focus magazine).
