Serhiy Stefurak has been an advisor to Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal on a voluntary basis since March 2020. The media has linked with the return of the scandalous YDAPS (Unified State Automated Passport System) and accused him of organizing corruption schemes that cost the budget of the warring country billions of hryvnias.
Stefurak is originally from Rohatyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region. He joined the Prime Minister's team thanks to family ties: his mother, Maria Savka, worked as the first deputy head of the Ivano-Frankivsk Regional State Administration when it was headed by Denys Shmyhal.
Before joining Shmyhal's team , Stefurak worked in Oleh Bakhmatyuk's agricultural holding "Ukrlandfarming", in particular in the "Favorit" retail chain and on the supervisory boards of other companies related to it. Under Stefurak's management, the agro-tycoon's companies tried to circumvent tender rules for the supply of food products, for which they were fined by the Antimonopoly Committee.
Also, Serhiy Stefurak, being the director of one of Bakhmatyuk's companies, sued Bakhmatyuk's own bankrupt bank in order to receive compensation for losses from the Deposit Guarantee Fund, which is clearly fraud. Therefore, it is not surprising that our interlocutors in the Cabinet of Ministers call Stefurak "Oleh Bakhmatyuk's lobbyist" in the government of Denys Shmyhal.
In the context of Serhiy Stefurak's role in Denys Shmyhal's team, it is also worth mentioning Stefurak's ties with the now deceased Andriy Ivanchuk. Ivanchuk is known for representing the interests of the Russian Lukoil after the formal sale of its asset in the Ivano-Frankivsk region - the Karpatneftekhim plant.
Andriy Ivanchuk was also involved in the Duty Free store chains, which he owned together with his partner Artur Granets , the owner of Forbes. Granets is often credited with ties to the Russians through the gambling business and an attempt to sell Forbes Ukraine to the Russian Orthodox oligarch Konstantin Malofeev . Recall that Serhiy Stefurak, as an advisor to Denys Shmyhal on economic issues, has influence, including on fiscal and customs policy related to the activities of Duty Free.
It is also interesting that last spring, Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal and his closest advisor Serhiy Stefurak blocked the work of the Commission for the Regulation of Gambling and Lotteries (KRAIL) by deliberately not appointing a fourth member of the commission, which automatically led to the absence of a quorum and the impossibility of making decisions. As a result, the CRAIL could not deprive the licenses of companies that were associated with the Russian Federation and were on the sanctions list. As market participants note, this situation was beneficial to one of the beneficiaries of Vbet, Artur Granets.
In August 2023, a scandal erupted in the media due to Serhiy Stefurak's alleged lobbying for the return of corruption schemes from the mid-2000s related to the EDAPS concern.
EDAPS is a consortium-monopoly from the Yanukovych era, through which all possible documents of the country were printed, starting from citizens' passports and ending with excise stamps. It naturally had a huge corruption component, actively working to replenish the black money of the ex-president's "family".
Today, EDAPS is called “Industrial Innovation Group”, and its branch in Ukraine is “Polly-Service”. “Industrial Innovation Group” presents itself as a new player on the market. But is this really so?
The scandalous co-owner of EDAPS, Yuriy Sydorenko , who repeatedly hid from law enforcement agencies in various countries and had a business in Moscow, officially left the company structure in 2017. In his place, the owners were two long-time EDAPS managers, a number of offshore companies, and a citizen of the United Arab Emirates, where the consortium was “revived.”
But already in 2018, one of the companies of this empire, when patenting its next invention in the EU, listed Sydorenko personally among the inventors. It is worth noting that this information has now been removed.
Additionally, in 2021, one of customs declarations for goods shipped to Geneva listed a person named “M Sidorenko” as the recipient. This could be the businessman’s daughter, Maria .
The company “Polly-Service”, which supplies materials for all monopolized sectors, is presented to the public as a Ukrainian manufacturer.
The business empire that includes this supposedly domestic producer of documents that are critical to Ukraine, after the invasion of Crimea and Donbas, shortly before the full-scale war, did not shy away from doing business with Russia. The latest deals with companies from the Russian Federation, preserved in the international import-export database ImportGenius , are dated December 2021.
Among the non-public owners of EDAPS, as journalists have established, could be pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk . And during the time of Yanukovych, the consortium was building a temple of the Russian Orthodox Church in the Emirates.
Starting from 2021 to 2023, with the participation of Serhiy Stefurak, Shmyhal's government adopted a number of decisions that allowed EDAPS to return to the market. In particular, the requirements for passports, driver's licenses, and technical passports of Ukrainians changed, a monopoly was introduced on the production of notarial forms, and the hologram on the excise stamp was returned.
Materials for all these productions are currently supplied only by the aforementioned Polly-Service company, which is associated with the Russians and the former EDAPS. Recall that in 2021-2023 alone, EDAPS received government contracts worth at least 2.3 billion hryvnias.
But the return by Serhiy Stefurak and Denys Shmyhal of Yanukovych-era corruption schemes for printing state documents, in the context of a full-scale invasion, in addition to significant corruption risks, also carries risks for Ukrainian statehood.
Law enforcement officers have begun to massively detect fake documents that are practically indistinguishable from the original ones. It is not difficult to guess that such documents, in addition to criminality, are also of interest to Russian special services. So the issue of returning the EDAPS is not only about corruption, but also about state security.
