Oleksiy Chernyshov, the current chairman of Naftogaz, strangely avoided a search by NABU this summer, despite direct instructions from the director of the National Anti-Corruption Agency. We became interested in how a person who entered politics relatively recently - at the end of 2019, became so untouchable. There was so much information about the dubious activities of Chernyshov and his connections that this investigation will be divided into 3 parts.
The hero of the investigation was born in Kharkiv on September 4, 1977. He spent his childhood in his hometown, finished school and received two higher educations.
From 1994 to 1999, he studied at Kharkiv Humanitarian University "People's Ukrainian Academy", majoring in "enterprise economics". In parallel with this, from 1996 to 2002, he studied at the National Law University named after Yaroslav the Wise, majoring in jurisprudence.
In 1999, Chernyshov completed a professional project management course in accordance with the standards of the international Project Management Institute under the "Project Management" program organized by the "Westinghouse" company in the state of Pennsylvania, USA.
In the early 2000s, he began to deal with commercial real estate and development in Kharkiv, began cooperation with the AVEK concern, and in November 2005 assumed the position of president of the concern. From 2008 to 2013, he was the chairman of the supervisory board of the AVEK concern and group.
In 2012, Chernyshov founded the investment and development company Eastgate Development and began the implementation of large projects in the field of commercial real estate.
In 2013, one of the significant infrastructure projects of Chernyshov was the "Kyiv Business Harbor" project.
In 2014, he founded the investment company "VI2 Partners" with offices in Kyiv and Vienna. The company's main areas of activity are direct investments, formation and management of asset portfolios, as well as investment banking - mergers and acquisitions, capital raising and debt restructuring.
In November 2017, Chernyshov became the chairman of the supervisory board of the Ukrainian real estate club URE Club – a professional community that unites Ukrainian and international experts in the field of real estate and promotes investment attraction.
If you read his official biography, the reader can get the impression that Oleksiy Chernyshov is a businessman who, thanks to his desire for knowledge and hard work, first achieved the chair of the governor of the Kyiv region, then the position of the Minister of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine, and as of today - became the chairman of the board " NAK Naftogaz of Ukraine".
However, a simple search for information about Chernyshov on the Internet will immediately dispel a beautiful legend.
After Oleksiy Chernyshov graduated from the "National Academy" in 1999, his father Mykhailo Chernyshov immediately hired him in the company "Westron" as the head of the financial and economic group. However, due to the skepticism of the Americans towards the diplomas of Ukrainian universities, Mykhailo Chernyshov sent his son to the USA to take courses in project management - and all this at the expense of Westron and Westinghouse.
Thus, Oleksiy Chernyshov started working simultaneously in two companies ("Westron" and "Telesens"), and in 2004 he found a third job: in the concern "AVEK and Co" of Kharkiv oligarch Oleksandr Feldman. He was immediately hired as vice president for development, and already on October 30, 2004, the general meeting of shareholders elected Chernyshov as the president of the concern. He held this position until 2007, after which he became the chairman of the supervisory board until 2012. In addition, from 2006 to 2014, Chernyshov worked as an assistant to People's Deputy Feldman.
Oleksiy Chernyshov, becoming the president of AVEK, found himself in a structure where Feldman constantly changed managers and presidents after his election to the Verkhovna Rada in 2002. Among numerous changes in management, only Feldman's companions could hold key positions in the concern, because "AVEK" participated not only in friendly mergers, but also in aggressive takeovers of businesses. Chernyshov's father and son probably became part of this process, but how much money or what property they invested in the concern remained unknown, as this information was never disclosed.
The first place for Chernyshov's training in the "equipment" was the "Barabashovo" Market, which was owned by "AVEK". According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, only a small proportion of cases of fraud, extortion and gross violations of rights in this market reached the stage of criminal cases. Many of these violations took place with the participation or under the leadership of the AVEK concern itself and Chernyshov in the period from 2004 to 2013.
There is no confirmed information regarding the accusations of taking over private houses around the market and related cases of intimidation and even murder. Likewise, it is currently impossible to verify Chernyshov's involvement in the drug trade or the use of illegal migrant labor in the market, as well as his connections with ethnic organized criminal groups. However, it is known for certain that Chernyshov was directly involved in the organization of illegal extortions from market traders. The owners of trade pavilions, who installed them at their own expense, were forced to hand over the management of these facilities to "AVEK" structures, and then rent them back at inflated prices. These funds were transferred to the accounts of dubious firms and disappeared offshore.
In 2019, the prosecutor's office of the Kharkiv region opened two criminal cases (No. 12019220470002790 and No. 12019220490003989) based on facts of violations that took place at "Barabashovo" in the period from 2007 to 2013. Both cases directly concerned Chernyshov.
In 2014, after the Revolution of Dignity, Oleksiy Chernyshov decided to increase the scope of his activities and focus on the "European choice", because he had access to Austria. First, he organized the exhibition "Through Maidan and Beyond" in Vienna, which featured portraits of Maidan participants and a silhouette of Ukraine made of bricks. Although the Austrians did not quite understand the idea of the exhibition, Chernyshov began to be perceived as "their own" in Kyiv. Secondly, he founded the organization "Kyiv Vision Foundation" in Kyiv, which was engaged in attracting foreign investors to Ukraine. This helped him join the circle of those who supported the country's "European path" after the Maidan. And thirdly, Chernyshov founded the investment company VI2 Partners, a subsidiary registered in Vienna as VI2 Partners GmbH.
The company "VI2 Partners" declared its intentions to attract foreign investments to Ukraine, but in reality it was engaged in something else — it invested funds withdrawn from Ukraine in European real estate. The co-founders of the company were the offshore firm "Standing Assets SA" (one of the firms through which Chernyshov withdrew money from the "Barabashovo" market) and the Austrian businessman Mark-Milo Luebe, whom the media called a front man of Chernyshov and Feldman. Lübe's task was to buy commercial real estate in Germany and Austria for its owners.
VI2 Partners also invested in Ukrainian real estate. According to SKELET -info, in 2017 it acquired a stake in the Fourshet supermarket chain from the Auchan Holding company. However, the construction of the promised mega-projects never started, although they were regularly reminded about them.
To strengthen his influence, in 2017, Chernyshov became the chairman of the supervisory board of the "Ukrainian Real Estate Club", which looked quite ironic, given his reputation as a "non-builder". In 2018, he founded the "School of Commercial Real Estate Management", which raised the question of whether he was trying to share the experience of managing the Barabashovo market.
Gradually, Chernyshov found new partners, and in 2017 he officially bought out his share in AVEK. His new partners also became scandalous figures, in particular Olena Charchenko, the owner of the company "Hydrostroy of Ukraine", who was interested by the SBU due to numerous tender scams worth hundreds of millions of hryvnias.
Although Chernyshov never achieved the goals for which he moved to Kyiv, he personally settled in well. He bought an apartment in the capital (207 sq.m.) and a house near Kyiv (312 sq.m.), a new Range Rover car, and also hired his wife Svitlana as an associate professor at Kyiv National University. In 2018 alone, Chernyshov declared more than 2 million hryvnias of income from foreign companies, as well as 25 million hryvnias from the sale of securities after selling his shares in well-known companies.
He left a number of firms registered abroad, including offshore companies Galinero Holdings Limited (Cyprus), Cornicularius Limited (Cyprus) and Fashion Retail Ltd (Virgin Islands). Through these companies, money was withdrawn from "AVEK" and other projects, possibly with the participation of other oligarchs, such as Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi.
But Chernyshov's career really began in 2019 after the victories of Slug in the elections.
On October 20, 2019, after the resignation of the head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration Mykhailo Bno-Ayriyan, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine approved the appointment of Oleksiy Chernyshov as the new head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration.
The government approved the appointment of Oleksiy Chernyshov to the post of head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration. Earlier in the day, it became known that the current head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration, Mykhailo Bno-Ayriyan, submitted a statement in the name of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi with a request to support his resignation. The official is stepping down after just 100 days in office, amid criticism from parts of the ruling party.
Also, the very appointment of Chernyshov on November 11, 2019 had alarm bells that the hero of the article is a very toxic character. Gennadiy Kernes appealed to President Volodymyr Zelenskyi with a report about abuses at the Barabashovo market in Kharkiv.
Kernes noted that during Zelenskyi's visit to the Malyshev factory, he was met not by the company's employees or ordinary residents, but by "activists" and pseudo-entrepreneurs from the Barabashovo market. According to him, these people were known for the fact that they could be hired for money to participate in any protest "against everything good".
Kernes also emphasized that the management of the market was constantly engaged in robbing its entrepreneurs. He pointed out that the organization of the paid picket testified to the management's fear of the construction of a new road. This road, which was supposed to connect the Saltivsky residential massif with the center of Kharkiv, was supposed to pass through the territory of the "Barabashovo" market. The owners of the market opposed this, but Kernes claimed that the interests of the entrepreneurs would be protected - they were planned to be provided with new, modern trade pavilions with rents that were much lower than what they were paying at the time. The mayor also emphasized that the funds from renting new pavilions will go to the city budget, and not to the pockets of "thief managers of the private market."
In addition, Chernyshov was suspected of organizing tax evasion schemes during the implementation of the "Kyiv Business Harbor" investment project in the Desnyan district of Kyiv. The project provided for the creation of an industrial-production cluster with an area of 330 hectares on the territory of the Trojeshchyna under state guarantees.
At that time, the appointment of Chernyshov was unclear and there were 2 versions in the mass media on whose submission the appointment took place. The first version - the decision to appoint Chernyshov was made by oligarch Igor Kolomoiskyi. Also, one of the reasons for Kolomoisky's appointment of Chernyshov was that Oleksiy Chernyshov cooperated with Gennady Bogolyubov, a business partner of the Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg.
In 2013, Chernyshov moved to Kyiv, settling in Romankov on the Novoobukhivskaya highway. At the same time, he agreed with the then mayor of Kyiv Oleksandr Popov on the creation of a business incubator in Troyeshchyna and a large logistics complex Asia Trade & Technology Park in the Kyiv region, which was supposed to serve Chinese and Asian goods. However, after more than 5 years, these projects remained only on paper, for which funds continued to be collected.
Gennady Bogolyubov's interests were connected with residential and warehouse construction. Bogolyubov, who moved from Dnipro to Kozyn in Koncha-Zaspi, together with Viktor Vekselberg owned a share in the largest warehouse terminal "MPL-Chaika" in the Petropavlovsk Borshchagivka area. He intended to enter the Chernyshov logistics complex together with Chinese investors.
On November 8, famous Chinese businessmen, including the founder of Alibaba, arrived in Kyiv. They planned to offer to purchase "Ukrposhta" and interest in participating in the project in the Kyiv region. This was organized by Vyacheslav Lysenko, adviser to Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk, who was a major mediator in investment deals with China.
According to the telegram channel *realpolitik*, Ihor Kononenko's team believed that one of the tasks of Ihor Kolomoisky after the resignation of Mykhailo Bno-Ayriyan from the post of the head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration was to seize the Obukhiv cardboard and paper plant, one of the largest in Europe.
The plant was located on the territory of the majority constituency of former "1+1" journalist Oleksandr Dubinsky, who was close to Kolomoisky. The enterprise belonged to the former deputy of the State Duma of Russia, Volodymyr Krupchak, who fled from Russia to Ukraine in 2007. In 2017, they tried to kidnap him and take him to the Russian Federation, but this attempt failed.
One of the organizers of the kidnapping was Denys Yaroslavskyi, the head of the Obukhov District Police at the time. At that time there were rumors of a corporate war between Krupchak and Oleg Deripaska. Currently, Krupchak was in London, and Yaroslavsky appeared on the air of ZIK and NewsOne TV channels as an expert on legal issues, and often published joint photos with Oleksandr Dubinsky.
However, Chernyshov was not able to "develop" much in the post of governor in 4 months.
On March 4, 2020, Oleksiy Chernyshov was appointed Minister of Development of Communities and Territories of Ukraine. The majority of Verkhovna Rada deputies voted for the appointment of a new government. Before that, Chernyshov held the position of the head of the Kyiv regional state administration.
277 deputies voted for his appointment, 57 against, 30 abstained, and 17 deputies did not participate in the vote.
It was after this that Chernyshov's active corruption activity began.
Just as Chernyshov got into a scandal during his appointment to the post of Governor of the Kyiv region. March 15, 2020 Minister of the new Cabinet of Ministers Oleksiy Chernyshov found himself in the spotlight because of a photo with the scandalously famous businessman Lev Partskhaladze.
The joint photo was shared on social networks by the president of "Kyivmiskbud" Ihor Kushnir. He said that he was present at the meeting of the Cabinet, where the issues of development were discussed. In the picture, Chernyshov was standing next to Partskhaladze.
During Yanukovych's time, Partskhaladze had close ties with the regionals, but after the Revolution of Dignity, he quickly moved to Poroshenko's camp. However, this did not affect Chernyshov in any way, but gave a hint of his further schemes.
On April 8, 2020, it became known that the Minister of Community and Territorial Development Oleksiy Chernyshov began to delay the reform of the urban planning industry, probably for the benefit of a group of Kyiv developers Andrii Vavrysh and Dmytro Isaenko (OPZH) loyal to Medvedchuk, as well as his business partner Oleksandr Feldman ( OPZH). Not even a month has passed since his appointment.
Both developers have been partners since the time of Viktor Yanukovych's presidency. Vavrysh worked as the deputy head of the Head of Architecture of the KMDA in 2010-2015, and Isaenko was the deputy in the Ministry of Regions. Their companies jointly implemented a number of projects, and at the end of 2019 entered the fight for "Ukrbud", taking advantage of the fact that Andriy Bohdan, Vavrysh's friend, headed the President's Office.
Developers Vavrish and Isayenko also had another lesser-known partner - the Kharkiv-Kyiv developer Oleksiy Chernyshov.
Chernyshov delayed the urban planning reform, which contributed to the preservation of the old schemes. This made it possible for developers to continue their dubious projects, in particular the construction of 13 hectares of the Dnipro shoreline in Podil. Vavrish and Isaenko received a record number of building permits in 2019, many of which could be challenged.
In addition, the Ministry of Chernyshov allowed to influence the architectural control through the local self-government bodies that had authority over objects of classes SS1 and SS2. It was also a source of significant financial benefits for developers.
Due to such a sharp "approach" to the position and megalomania during the governorship, the Minister of Community and Territorial Development Oleksiy Chernyshov could lose his position due to a scandal related to the presence of an Austrian passport. This was reported by "Ukrainian News" with reference to its own sources.
Also, according to the publication, the reason for the possible resignation was that Chernyshov, as a minister, combined work for Ihor Kolomoiskyi with participation in dubious business schemes and showed arrogance towards those around him, which caused the displeasure of President Volodymyr Zelenskyi. In addition, in terms of morals, his behavior also did not meet high standards.
When Chernyshov took up his post at the Regional State Administration, he brought with him private security and completely isolated himself from the outside world. He occupied half of the seventh floor of the ODA building on Pechersk, installing a door with card access. Access to him was strictly limited, even deputies of the regional council could not freely get to the governor.
According to Ukrainian News, thanks to his business partners in Austria, Chernyshov obtained Austrian citizenship for himself and his family. His company VI2 Partners, which was officially supposed to attract investments in Ukraine, actually invested funds withdrawn from Ukraine in European real estate.
In addition, it was reported that Chernyshov sabotaged the president's order. For example, in the position of governor, he publicly opposed the transfer of the center of the Kyiv region to White Tserkva, effectively burying this idea.
As a minister, Chernyshov delayed the implementation of the president's urban planning reform, which caused outrage even among people's deputies from "Servant of the People". In addition, the minister was criticized for urging Ukrainians to pay utility bills on time, despite the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and unemployment.
However, at that time, despite Chernyshov's blatant toxicity, at the beginning of his political career, he was very "lucky" and he retained the position of minister, which only increased his appetites. In the second part, you will learn about the creation of corruption in the State Architectural and Construction Inspection of Ukraine (SABI), despite Chernysh's task - to eliminate the SABI and a larger number of corruption schemes in the post of a minister.
