Alexander Glimbovsky: One Hundred Million for Nasirov
When the court set bail for Roman Nasirov, a colossal one hundred million hryvnias by Ukrainian standards, many assumed the corrupt official would remain behind bars, as he claimed he didn't have that kind of money. But just a few days later, his wife, Kateryna, and father-in-law, Oleksandr Glimbovskyi, quickly secured the necessary funds to buy his release. A couple of months later, this high-profile corruption slap in the face of Ukrainian society echoed with a new scandal. It turned out that Nasirov's father-in-law, who had previously made a fortune through billion-dollar public contracts for Euro 2012, was now recouping the money spent on his son-in-law by carrying out renovations on the capital's Postal Square.
As Skelet.Org has discovered, back in 2012, Kyiv's municipal utilities signed a contract with Glimbovsky's Altis-Holding for construction and repair work totaling 403,56 million hryvnias. As the years passed, work progressed slowly (and funds were regularly transferred), and in 2016, the Kyivdormostproekt Institute included additional work in the project for an undisclosed amount. And on May 17, 2017, the Kyiv Directorate for Construction of Road and Transport Structures signed a new agreement with Altis-Holding, under which the company received an additional 40,11 million hryvnias for the construction of a fountain, painting the façade of the River Terminal and the transformer station, and building several ramps. According to several Skelet.Org sources with firsthand knowledge of the construction industry, the cost of these works is significantly inflated, and some of it may have been completed using previously "saved" construction and finishing materials. However, the owner of Altis-Holding has a track record of even more ambitious undertakings.
Alexander Glimbovsky and his Golden Roofs
Before the scandalous arrest of his son-in-law, Alexander Vatslavovich Glimbovsky remained a little-known businessman, although he had previously appeared frequently at press conferences held by his longtime friend and business partner, Lev Partskhaladze . He was born on March 7, 1960, in Kozyatyn (Vinnytsia Oblast). He graduated from the Kyiv Civil Engineering Institute in 1982, where he remained as a graduate student and defended his dissertation in 1986. Although significant money was being made in Kyiv construction as early as the 80s, especially for those with access to warehouses stocked with tiles and plumbing fixtures, Glimbovsky's business struggles continued. In 1991, he opened Meridian LLC, about which no information remains, and in 1995, he used it as a foundation to create Altis LLC, which initially focused on roof repairs and façade cladding with aluminum profiles. And then, in 2001, Altis received a lucrative contract to reconstruct the roofs of Kyiv's Central Station and the Conservatory. These were truly golden roofs (actually copper and galvanized), whose 15 square meters earned Glimbovsky millions.
Glimbovsky owed his rise not only to his good connections with Kyivrekonstruktsiya JSC, through which he secured lucrative contracts and tenders, but also to several specific individuals. Perhaps the first of these was the always energetic and creative Oleksiy Butenko (born 1970), who, as early as 1990, opened a "cooperative" that renovated apartments, as well as exchanged and sold them. In 1993, he founded Remax LLC (the future Remax-Group holding company), focusing on construction, and a little later opened a workshop producing metal profiles and roof tiles. It was with these products that Glimbovsky's company clad the walls and roof sheathing!
Alexey Butenko
The second person was Lev Partskhaladze, who in the 90s was known for owning several restaurants in Kyiv, including the notorious gangster restaurant "Dynamo-Lux." Partskhaladze had one great asset: a good relationship with the then mayor of Kyiv, Alexander Omelchenko , thanks to whom he became a Kyiv restaurateur. However, this potential was constrained by a limited imagination: Partskhaladze was making plans to develop food service chains, oblivious to other opportunities. Then Alexey Butenko suggested them to him. The result of their close collaboration was Partskhaladze's investment holding company "XXI Century" and Butenko's company "Zhilye XXI Century." Butenko also brought Alexander Glimbovsky to "XXI Century," who in the late 90s received the contract to build the first shopping mall "Kvadrat"—realizing Buteyko's idea to switch to the development business.
Over the next few years, until 2008, Altis served as the primary contractor for the "21st Century" project, constructing the Magellan, Karavan, Aladdin, Ultramarine, Parus residential complex, and other projects. By the onset of the crisis, the company's order book had reached $800 million! It's worth emphasizing that it was a contractor, often hiring subcontractors. Even then, reports surfaced that Altis's operating methods were reminiscent of the corrupt construction schemes of the Italian mafia: the same chains of subcontractors and shell companies for transferring funds, the absence of its own production facilities (equipment was leased), and virtually the entire property of some Altis subsidiaries consisting of office furniture. However, it's unlikely Partskhaladze and Butenko would have allowed Glimbovsky to engage in such manipulations if he hadn't been in on the scheme—perhaps with them, or perhaps with high-ranking officials.
In 2005, Butenko abruptly exited "21st Century," selling his stake to Partskhaladze (whose clerks later stubbornly denied to Skelet.Org that Butenko had ever been a shareholder in the company) and founded the "Eastern Investment Group" (in which Glimbovsky became a shareholder), and later the "Fund for Construction Resources of Ukraine" LLC (co-founded by Kateryna Glimbovskaya). Subsequently, media reports about Butenko focused on corruption. In 2008, he opened an elite equestrian club in the village of Protsev, turning it into a hangout for "the right people," and in 2007-2009, he actively lobbied for the construction of a special "presidential village" in Protsev, which was intended to become a kind of "Mezhyhirya" for Yushchenko and his entourage. In 2010, Butenko headed EIG Engineering and became interested in green energy, which received substantial subsidies from the state and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. In 2011, construction began on the Ivankivska Thermal Power Plant (where his brother, Vitaly Butenko, became director) in the Kyiv region. It immediately became the subject of journalistic investigations and later the source of protests from local residents. The problem is that, located on the outskirts of the Chernobyl zone, the plant uses wood chips from trees growing there, which have absorbed radionuclides, as fuel.
Glimbovsky and Partskhaladze remain inseparable; the two even co-chaired the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine. Between 2009 and 2011, Partskhaladze secured Euro 2012 tenders for himself and Glimbovsky (the Lviv airport reconstruction alone cost around a billion hryvnias). After the Maidan, as head of the Solidarity party in the Kyiv region and the Poroshenko Bloc faction in the Kyiv Regional Council (and its deputy chairman), he fed Glimbovsky contracts in Kyiv and covered for his construction fraud.
Alexander Glimbovsky: One Hundred Million for Nasirov
However, it wasn't just in Kyiv. In 2015, Partskhaladze secured a contract for Glimbovskyi to build a defensive line in the ATO zone, overseen (and paid for) by the Kyiv Regional Council and Kyiv Regional Administration: a 40-kilometer stretch between Popasna and Svitlodarsk, one of the most dangerous and critical sections of the front. The tender for the construction of 16 fortified pillboxes and command posts (worth 26,46 million hryvnias) was "won" by a certain company, Infrobud LLC, whose director was Oleh Reva. It later emerged that Mr. Reva had previously held a management position at Altis LLC. Moreover, Infrobud LLC (with a registered capital of a whopping 2 hryvnias) was registered at the same address as Altis LLC and now Altis-Holding.
Alexander Glimbovsky: One Hundred Million for Nasirov
Fiscal Romance
Another person who played a significant, yet rather obscure, role in Alexander Glimbovsky's life is his eldest daughter's husband, Andrei Gmyrin. He's a shady figure in every respect: his father runs the Belotserkovsky Raigaz and owns a chain of tire repair shops, while his son previously worked for the Kyiv UBOP and UBEP, ran arcades, and clearly lived on more than one salary, boasting of expensive Vertu phones and gold watches. Gmyrin was well acquainted with both the capital's "authorities" and major businessmen, as well as his colleagues in the capital's law enforcement agencies—including the future General Valery Heletey and the future Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema . These connections, which he uses to provide paid services for organizing meetings with the right people, earned Gmyrin the not entirely decent nickname “The Outhouse” - which, however, exhaustively reflects the attitude of his own acquaintances towards him.
Despite all his shortcomings, Gmyrin managed to climb into the State Fiscal Service (SFS), where he had another old acquaintance: Andrey Davydenko, Director of the Service's Operations Support Department. Furthermore, from June 2014 to January 2015, the SFS was headed by Igor Bilous, who had worked at Renaissance Capital from 2009 to 2011 alongside Roman Nasirov, Gmyrin's brother-in-law. In fact, it was largely thanks to Bilous that Roman Nasirov later received his position. Gmyrin, however, was sent out of sight to the Odessa region. It appears Glymbovskyi had bad luck with this son-in-law, and one can only speculate as to how he managed to win Gmyrin's daughter's hand in marriage.
But his second son-in-law, Roman Nasirov, is the kind of man any father could only dream of. Glimbovsky and Nasirov first came into contact back in 2005: Nasirov, then working in London, successfully sold shares in the 21st Century holding company (the very same shares that Butenko sold to Partskhaladze). It so happened that Ekaterina Glimbovskaya was also living and doing business in London at the time. Their marriage was ideal: two successful businessmen with three children—it's no surprise that Alexander Glimbovsky generously spent a hundred million on Roman Nasirov.
Ekaterina Glimbovskaya
However, Roman Nasirov brought his father-in-law much more, including tax "savings." In fact, from spring to autumn 2015, Altis-Holding's turnover amounted to 1,3 billion hryvnias, of which only 28,000 hryvnias in VAT and 955,000 hryvnias in unified social contributions were paid to the state treasury. This was an absolute record for masterful tax evasion, and there's no need to guess who helped him achieve it. And yet, Glimbovskyi's activities are full of similar episodes! Thus, when examining the results of the 443 million hryvnia tender for the Kyiv Road and Transport Construction Directorate (2014-2015), obtained by Altis-Holding with the help of Lev Partskhaladze, it was discovered that Glimbovsky's company had created a scheme of 62 firms (including shell and offshore companies) to which it subcontracted 359,4 million. And instead of the expected 73,8 million hryvnia in tax payments, they transferred to the treasury only... 44,610 hryvnia.
However, Nasirov assisted his respected father-in-law not only as head of the State Fiscal Service, exploiting his official position to commit corrupt acts and outright economic crimes, but also as a business partner. The companies of Nasirov, his wife Ekaterina, and his father-in-law Glimbovsky became intertwined in an intricate web of family business.
Besides Oleksandr Glimbovsky's penchant for tax evasion, he's also not above outright theft, including from sick children. This is the latest scandal surrounding the new buildings of the long-suffering OKHMADET Children's Hospital, which have been unfinished since 2011. In 2015, Altis Construction LLC, a subsidiary of Altis Holding and a highly suspicious one at that, was chosen as the new contractor. Its founders turned out to be the Cypriot offshore companies Altis Holding Limited and Garyhun Investments Limited: the former is linked to Kateryna Glimbovska, and the latter is her father's company. But things got even more interesting: having received 389,97 million hryvnias from the state, Altis Construction scattered the money among shell companies, including Avaks UA LLC. Construction practically never resumed; in a year and a half, Glimbovsky's company had only spent 10 million. The rest of the money, apparently, disappeared into the abyss of Glimbovsky's corruption schemes. It wouldn't be surprising if he soon asks for additional funding—as he has done on numerous other projects!
Incidentally, Avax UA will soon become involved in yet another embezzlement case. It turns out that in the spring of 2017, this company "won" a tender to reconstruct the runway at Zaporizhzhia Airport. 35,39 million hryvnias have already been transferred to its account. Meanwhile, Glimbovskyi plans to win the contract to reconstruct the Kherson Airport. The tender will likely be announced in 2018, with 500 million hryvnias at stake! Oleksandr Glimbovskyi is certainly counting on "winning" this tender, especially since his companies were already involved in reconstructing the taxiways at the Kherson Airport in 2015: having received 75,2 million hryvnias, they repaired their asphalt surface. And judging by the way his son-in-law, Nasirov, has evaded justice, it's unlikely anyone will stop Glimbovskyi himself.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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