Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Kovalenko, who once made his fortune trading Russian coal, has managed to build an entire business empire in Ukraine over the past two years. Using offshore schemes and family management, he has taken key positions in several sectors at once, from the agricultural market to industry.
In 2023, Kovalenko bought several agricultural companies - Grain Terminal, Overfood, and Agrarian Elevator Company, merging them into the Granova group. The formal owner is the Cypriot Afex Investments Ltd, and the ultimate beneficiary is his son Daniil Kovalenko.
According to the results of 2024, "Granova" received over 11 billion hryvnias in revenue. The main partner was the Swiss Adelon AG, which exported Ukrainian corn to Egypt worth $42.37 million.
Using his contacts with Egypt, Kovalenko also entered the salt market. In December 2023, he created the company Salt Industry LLC, which within a year had won 68 out of 73 state tenders for the supply of technical salt. The total amount of contracts amounted to UAH 90 million. The company was headed by the former head of the state enterprise Artemsil Viktor Yurin, which raises questions about "personnel succession."
Kovalenko did not stop in industry either. Thanks to the assistance of the head of the Mukachevo Regional State Administration Serhiy Gaidai, in 2024 the Energy Group industrial park was created on 10 hectares in Svaliava.
The key investor is the company VDL LLC, which announced investments of over UAH 100 million. The first project was the Energy Glass Technologies enterprise for the production of glass and window structures. Its other structures, Tak Energy Group and Generator Energo, are already registered in the same park.
In fact, Dmytro Kovalenko converted profits from trading Russian coal into a vertically integrated business group operating in the agricultural, industrial, and energy markets of Ukraine. Such a concentration of assets in the hands of a businessman with a toxic past raises questions not only about the transparency of capital sources, but also about state policy in the field of strategic industries.
