The narrative focuses on a Ukrainian-Swiss businessman whose connections span Ukrainian individuals—some linked to corruption scandals, others not—as well as Russian metallurgical oligarchs who have largely avoided sanctions so far.
The story centers on a largely unknown businessman, Oleg Tsyura, who reportedly shared business interests with an individual suspected in a case involving losses of more than 700 million hryvnias. In total, the scheme connected to the state-owned Odesa Port Plant and the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) is estimated to have cost Ukraine around 10 billion hryvnias, according to investigative reports.
Vitaliy Lohinov: “shady” tenders and a criminal past
The first tender held by OPP on July 25 this year was won by a little-known Kharkiv-based company, Agrotorggroup Company. This company only came to light in 2022, when it was among the buyers of seized Russian ammonia sold at a dubious auction through an opaque commodity exchange. According to Andriy Kovalenko, the company has neither the experience nor the resources to fulfill such a large contract. Moreover, Agrotorggroup failed to fulfill its obligations to supply gas, which led to a repeat tender in the second half of August.
The second tender was won by a company from Lviv – Ukrnaftogazburinnya LLC. This company is also unknown on the market, the license for the supply of natural gas was received only in September 2023.
An interesting fact: the company does not have a working official website, the presence of which is a mandatory condition for obtaining the above-mentioned license, which once again emphasizes the dubiousness of this company’s participation in such significant tenders. It is noteworthy that “Ukrnaftogazburinnya” is registered to Lviv biker and co-owner of FC “Luzhany” Mazur Mykhailo.
According to the author, Vitaliy Lohinov, an informal adviser to the head of the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC), is behind the opaque tenders. Loginov also controls Sumykhimprom and has influence over the management of OPZ. According to the author, this information reinforces suspicions of a corrupt component in the transactions, pointing to possible schemes for withdrawing state funds through fictitious contracts and shell companies.
The suspicion is also strengthened by the fact that, as it turned out [high-profile cases] , Vitaliy Lohinov is associated with one of the winners of the tenders for the OPZ – the above-mentioned LLC “Company “Agrotorggroup”. According to the data of the Clarity Project service, Olha Balyuk is listed as the general director and ultimate beneficiary of the company. Until February 10 of this year, 2024, Olha Balyuk was the head of another LLC – “LT-Resource”. The main beneficiary of this company is Vitaliy Lohinov. It is obvious that in “Agrotorggroup” Balyuk is Vitaliy Lohinov’s “pound”.
The situation is made even more piquant by the fact that Agrotorggroup LLC is involved in criminal case No. 72022000410000003 , opened by detectives of the Bureau of Economic Security on April 5, 2022, on the fact of tax evasion on an especially large scale.
Moreover: Vitaliy Lohinov, according to information from the portal “Judicial Authority of Ukraine” , was listed as a suspect in criminal case No. 12016220000000106, registered on 03.02.2016 on the fact of seizure of property through abuse of official position .
Vitaliy was even wanted for some time as a fugitive from justice.
But, judging by the documents posted in the Unified State Register of Court Decisions, the case was buried – Vitaliy Lohinov avoided not only a guilty verdict, but a trial altogether.
As Andriy Kovalenko writes, the main problem is that both companies from Lohinov’s orbit that won the tenders do not have the necessary funds to pay for the supplied gas. Instead, they are trying to get gas from the Ukrainian gas transportation system (GTS) without advance payment, which leads to an imbalance in the system and creates a threat to its stability. More than half of the consumed gas is not paid for, which indicates a violation of the supply rules and can lead to significant losses for the state.
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The guarantees provided by the supplier companies do not cover the volume of gas consumed by the plant, but production at the OPZ continues despite the actual absence of payment. Under normal conditions, the plant should have been stopped until the payment issue was resolved, but this is not happening, which raises questions for the management of the Ukrainian GTS operator.
Moreover, the price of gas, fixed at UAH 17,254 per thousand cubic meters, is significantly lower than the current market price, which starts at UAH 18,800. However, since the gas supplier does not have its own reserves, a reasonable question arises: by what mechanisms will the price difference be covered, especially given that the supplier’s financial resources are limited, if they exist at all?
Oleg Tsyura, Dmytro Firtash, 1 and Russian “grandmas”
In September 2024, OPZ signed export contracts for the supply of 300,000 tons of ammonia and 360,000 tons of urea with the mysterious Swiss company UCG Trade AG. The contracts contain numerous anomalies: they do not specify product prices or deadlines, and the ship agency service was transferred to a little-known company from Mykolaiv. Financial settlements under the contracts are made through accounts in Revolut, a startup that is not a bank, which raises additional questions about the reliability of the deal.
It is noteworthy that the address of UCG Trade AG, indicated in the contract with OPZ, differs from the address indicated in the official register of Swiss companies. This indicates a possible repetition of the scheme used in 2015 with the company Expotrade Global, when a clone company was created for fraudulent activities (we will dwell on this episode in more detail below).
Aschwin Saravanan, who signed multi-million dollar contracts with OPZ on behalf of UCG Trade AG, was appointed to the position exactly one day before the signing. Aschwin Saravanan is an intern from India who was doing an internship at the home office of a company associated with Swiss citizen Oleg Tsyura, whom he replaced as CEO of UCG Trade AG.
Oleg Tsyura, who hid in UCG Trade AG behind the young Indian, was previously involved in a scam to sell ilmenite from the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) to occupied Crimea via a German company, bypassing sanctions. Oleg Tsyura was also linked to Serhiy Bayrak, a defendant in cases of fraud surrounding the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
In these cases, episodes of large-scale thefts at OGKhK and Odesa Port Plant occupy a special place. According to the investigation materials, the now former head of the State Property Fund, Dmytro Sennychenko, took $200,000 monthly for himself from the work of state enterprises Odesa Port Plant and United Mining and Chemical Company.
Denys Horbunenko
In addition to Bayrak, Denys Horbunenko is involved in these cases; he, like Serhiy Bayrak, is considered a trusted person of the disgraced oligarch Dmytro Firtash.
Dmytro Firtash is a long-standing beneficiary of corrupt deals around the Odesa Port and OGKhK.
Dmytro Firtash
It is worth mentioning here that Oleg Tsyura was not always the ultimate beneficiary of UCG Trade AG. According to North Data, the company was controlled by Ihor Borovikov until March 2023.
Ihor Borovikov is a Russian millionaire, founder of Noventiq and Softline. Having chosen to live in the West and to avoid sanctions, Borovikov “renounced” all his businesses connected with Russia after the large-scale invasion of the aggressor country into Ukraine. The reasons that prompted him to leave UCG Trade AG may also lead to suspicions that the business of this company is somehow connected with the aggressor country.
Oleg Tsyura was behind another “shady” Swiss company – White Rock Management AG. In the public sphere, another character with a dubious reputation – Serhiy Tron – claims to be its founder.
Serhiy Tron
Serhiy Tron, a Ukrainian businessman linked to crypto mining schemes, uses White Rock Management for questionable crypto investments; his activities are questionable due to the lack of transparency in his financial transactions and controversial business partners, such as the Arkallayev brothers. In particular, his company has been linked to fraud and the smuggling of mining equipment. In addition to suspicious crypto investments, his business has been linked to a series of banking frauds. For example, in 2014, his activities at CityCommerce Bank resulted in tens of millions of euros being siphoned off the bank.
Dmytro Malynovskyi: the fraudster who rose from the dead
Journalist Andriy Kovalenko writes that Volodymyr Nesterenko, who was recommended to OPZ director Yuriy Kovalskyi as: “head of the sales department, has been my man for the last 20 years”, is directly involved in sales at UCG Trade AG. This recommendation was given to the director by a certain Dmytro Malynovskyi.
According to the author’s sources, this character personally negotiates with the management of the OPZ regarding gas and fertilizer schemes, using his connections in the shadow business. And he clearly has serious ones.
In the past, Dmytro Malynovskyi was involved in large-scale frauds, including the theft of $14 million from the Dreymoor company, as well as forging documents about his own death.
Dmytro Malynovskyi
As we wrote earlier, back in 2007, Dmytro Malynovskyi pulled off a scam in Odesa with the local stadium “CSK”, which belonged to the Ministry of Defence. The fact of fraud was noticed only five years later – in 2012. In 2014, Dmytro Malynovskyi appeared in court. The process stalled. For more than a month, the hearings were disrupted by reports of mining of the court premises, until the accused Malynovskyi disappeared.
On August 18, 2014, Dmytro Malynovskyi again failed to show up for another court hearing. That day, no one opened the door to the detective who was carrying out the court’s decision on forced attendance at the defendant’s place of residence, and the security guard reported that Malynovskyi did not live there. The lawyer, however, claimed in court that his client was at home and did not know about the court hearing. That same day, by order of the Kyiv District Court of Odesa, Malynovskyi was declared wanted.
In 2015, a certain Alla Malynovska filed a lawsuit to establish the fact of death of her husband Dmytro, to whom she had been married since 2005. The woman claimed that on August 18, 2014, Dmyto Malynovskyi went to a court hearing, but never returned home.
According to her, on November 17, 2014, an unknown person handed over a cardboard box through the concierge of the building, which contained her husband’s death certificate and ashes. From the documents provided by Malynovska, it followed that her husband died on October 25, 2014, in the city of Luhansk, occupied by Russian troops and separatists.
On November 20, 2014, Alla Malynovska allegedly buried an urn with the alleged ashes of this scoundrel. She also claimed that she filed a complaint with the police, but they refused to open a case. Due to the ATO, the data on Malynovskyi’s death was not entered into the state register, and his wife asked to recognize the fact of death through the court. On May 12, 2015, the court satisfied the claim based on the presence of a death certificate and the fact that the family allegedly buried the deceased.
But, as Oligarh wrote, in early 2016, the prosecutor’s office, together with investigators from the National Police, conducted a search of the home of Dmytro Malynovskyi’s parents. They seized computer equipment, telephones, and SIM cards. On one of the telephones, a closed subscriber group was found, in which Dmytro Malynovskyi communicated with his parents. In addition to messages, he sent videos and photos of a castle in France, which he purchased in 2015 (after his “death”) through a Luxembourg firm and which would later be seized by French gendarmes.
In the spring of 2015, while essentially deceased, Dmytro Malynovskyi and a certain person by the last name “N”, calling themselves representatives of Expotrade Global Limited, entered into contracts for the supply of 20 thousand tons of urea and ammonia from the Odesa Port Plant to Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas Pte Ltd. Having received 12.77 million euros from foreigners, Dmytro Malynovskyi and “N” disappeared. It was later revealed that there were two companies named Expotrade Global Limited. The Singapore company entered into a contract with a firm from Belize. And the contract with the Odesa Port Plant was held by a Hong Kong company of the same name, Expotrade Global Limited, to which Dmytro Malynovskyi and his accomplices had no connection.
But don’t think that Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas is run by “suckers” who don’t know who exactly they’re transferring money to. Firstly, as follows from court documents, this company itself is a defendant in criminal proceedings for a number of episodes of corruption “schemes” at Odesa Port. Just like Expotrade Global Limited (read more here).
Secondly, they knew Dmytro Malynovskyi from Odesa and his accomplices very well. Which, again, is evidenced by court documents. Dreymoor Fertilizers Overseas worked with the gang of swindlers, which included Dmytro Malynovskyi, for five years before the “scam”, jointly “heating” the state-owned Odesa Port Plant for astronomical sums.
And the “rip-off”, apparently, happened by coincidence. In 2015, the Prosecutor General’s Office began actively spinning up “schemes” around OPZ – it was clear that they would be shut down, and those involved would be harassed in criminal proceedings. Add to this the fact that Malynovskyi was “tormented” in another criminal case so persistently that he had to pretend to be dead. Therefore, his gang decided to hit the jackpot and lie low in Europe. Until a new window of opportunity opened.
