Kyiv, January 14, 2016. Businessman Dmytro Firtash and MP Serhiy Lyovochkin have undeclared property in Côte d’Azur in France and participated in the privatization of the telecommunication company “Ukrtelecom”, said Serhiy Leshchenko, MP (“Petro Poroshenko Bloc” faction) at a press briefing at Ukraine Crisis Media Center, presenting the results of his journalistic investigation. During the investigation, the MP made a lot of other revelations. According to him, Serhiy Lyovochkin and his family have undeclared real estate in Côte d’Azur (France), worth 40 million euros. “We proceed to new horizons of corruption via this finding. It is Lyovochkin’s involvement in the company RosUkrEnergo. And secondly, it is the involvement of Lyovochkin and Firtash in the privatization of ‘Ukrtelecom’ in 2010,” said Leshchenko. Firtash and Lyovochkin are neighbors in France; the latter owns the company, to which his villa belongs. Leshchenko explained that through the whole network of directors and owners one can prove a chain of interconnected people and corrupt interests.
According to Serhiy Leshchenko, Lyovochkin’s real estate is registered with the Danish company Glorietta Investments I APS. Lyovochkin’s house in Côte d’Azur makes it possible to trace a network of his interests that have always remained hidden. Disclosure of nominal directors of the company indicates the participants of fraudulent privatization of state enterprise “Ukrtelecom” in the times of Yanukovych. The same people simultaneously manage the company that owns Lyovochkin’s house in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat and that “won” privatization of Ukrtelecom in the times of Yanukovych, said Leshchenko. You can often come across the names of Georgiou sisters in the companies, leading to Lyovochkin. In addition, they are managers of companies that own the villa and bought Ukrtelecom, the sisters were also mentioned in connection with Lyovochkin’s family bank “Clearing House”, said the MP. “At present, Prosecutor General’s Office is investigating the case of Ukrtelecom and has sent a request to Cyprus asking to find out the final beneficiaries of the company “Epic Telecom Invest Ltd”, which privatized Ukrtelecom from the beginning. I think this information will be useful to them. According to the insider information, the Cypriot side has not responded to the Prosecutor General’s request yet. Consequently, the investigation of Ukrtelecom privatization has come to a standstill,” said Leshchenko.
According to the investigation author, in addition to Lyovochkin exposure as involved in Ukrtelecom privatization, his villa in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat can put us on the trail of the RosUkrEnergo gas intermediary, who for many years was the hub of corrupt payments to politicians involved in organization of gas supplies to Ukraine. Analysing names of the directors of companies owning another house in Côte d’Azur belonging to Lyovochkin, one receives grounds to assert that he has his interest in RosUkrEnergo. “Mentioned in this article Ksenia Georgiou, Director of the Danish company, who owns a house in Côte d’Azur for Lyovochkin, was also the head of the Cypriot company Prelux Holdings Limited. During the second premiership of Yanukovych, Prelux Holdings Limited was the owner of a gold mine – about 25% shares in RosUkrEnergo (Prelux held 44 percent of shares in the Austrian company Centragas), which on a par with Gazprom owned half the shares of RosUkrEnergo,” according to Serhiy Leshchenko’s investigation. According to him, another Cypriot company Grenar Enterprises held and still holds 10% of Centragas, whose director is Amal Sarout Lambrou (she is also one of the directors of Boutifour SA from Luxembourg). She is the owner of the abovementioned Danish company possess Lyovochkin’s real estate in Côte d’Azur. “So, this is like a ‘matryoshka’ (wooden doll, inside of which there is next smaller doll – UCMC note), which is very easy to open and which leads us to the extremely wide horizons of Ukrainian political corruption,” said Serhiy Leshchenko.
According to him, all the documents will be forwarded to the Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau. “I hope that my investigation will finally stop “covering-up” for Lyovochkin-Firtash clan by the current Prosecutor General Shokin,” said Serhiy Leshchenko. For all information concerning Serhiy Leshchenko’s investigation with all documents follow the link.
