Alexei Chernyshev
In just one year, the Kyiv Regional State Administration has seen three new chairmen! This speaks volumes about the intensity of the struggle for the region and its resources waged by various influence groups. No one knows how long the current governor, Oleksiy Chernyshev, will remain in office. But it's not hard to guess what exactly he's doing there. After all, if we take a closer look at Chernyshev's real, rather than official, biography, we'll see not a "world-class professional" in investment, but yet another corrupt official specializing in shady financial schemes and dubious mega-development projects.
Kolomoisky, Fuchs Or Feldman? Journalists spent a month arguing over whose protégé Chernyshev was, but couldn't reach a consensus. This seems odd, since it's well known that he was Feldman's business partner for 15 years. However, few can believe that Feldman, who until then had little influence in Kyiv, managed to score the winning goal. Perhaps he had some help. Avakov? It's not out of the question. But it's also known that Feldman and Kolomoisky have a direct connection through Chabad—the same as between other very well-known and influential oligarchs and politicians in Ukraine. Could that be the secret?
Alexey Chernyshev. Three higher education diplomas
Alexey Mikhailovich Chernyshev was born on September 4, 1977, in Kharkiv, to Mikhail Anatolyevich and Irina Vladimirovna Chernyshev (both born in 1955). He has a younger sister, Evgeniya, born in 1981. Although his parents lived in an apartment on Kholodnaya Gora, in the 90s, Alexey was not registered with them, but with his grandparents, who lived in their own house on Vladimirskaya Street (in the Moskalivka district, a private sector neighborhood). Overall, theirs was a large family, not limited by housing. Most importantly, his father worked as an engineer at Khartron, one of Kharkiv's leading defense industry enterprises, developing and manufacturing control systems for strategic assets (ballistic missiles, spacecraft, and nuclear power plants).
Mikhail Anatolyevich Chernyshev
Naturally, this enterprise attracted enormous interest from the United States. The Americans gained full access to it in the early 90s, and at the same time, the Ukrainian government included it in the list of enterprises slated for privatization. In 1994, Hartron and the American corporation Westinghouse (its British subsidiary), with the participation of former US Air Force commander Thomas Reed, created a joint venture, Westron (EDRPOU 22708202), into which the automated nuclear power plant control systems department was transferred from Hartron. Under the terms of this joint venture, the Americans soon acquired a controlling stake in Westron (51%, now 60%). This was enthusiastically reported in September 1995 by "Vizvolniy Shlyakh," a publication by the local OUN organization in the Ukrainian diaspora in Great Britain.
Thus, Westinghouse gained control of the manufacturer of control systems for Ukrainian nuclear power plants, allowing the corporation to continue its slow takeover of the Ukrainian nuclear energy sector. From the very beginning to the present, Mikhail Chernyshev has been Westron's permanent CEO. Clearly, only someone with a very good relationship with the main owner, the Americans, could have held on to the helm of this company for a quarter of a century. With such protection, Chernyshev is a significant figure not only in Kharkiv but throughout Ukraine. Of course, he didn't neglect his opportunities, but he didn't get involved in the business himself, instead promoting his son, Alexei.
However, Alexey Chernyshev's start seemed somewhat bleak. After finishing school, and tarnished by his military service, he entered the Kharkiv Humanitarian University "Ukrainian People's Academy" in 1994. This was the name of one of Kharkiv's first private universities, operating since 1991: it began as a public organization, then re-registered as an LLC, spent three years moving from one location to another, and then, in 1994, moved into the building of the design institute. There, Alexey Chernyshev studied for five years, majoring in business economics. But apparently he had doubts about his diploma from this university, and so, from 1996 to 2002, he simultaneously (and part-time) studied at the Kharkiv Law Institute (now the National Law University), majoring in jurisprudence. This simultaneous study here and there was possible because the first rector of the Ukrainian People's Academy, Valentina Astakhova, was also the head of a department (and later a member of the Specialized Dissertation Defense Council) at the Kharkiv Law Institute. It's possible that the Chernyshev family and Astakhova are close acquaintances or even longtime friends.
To give his son's education a more comprehensive appearance, Mikhail Chernyshev sent him to the United States in 1999 to attend a three-month Project Management course at the Pittsburgh Project Management Institute, organized by Westinghouse. In short, Alexey Chernyshev's three high-profile degrees, earned literally through connections, are practically unremarkable.
IT cooperators
Alexey Chernyshev's father also helped him find his first job: back in 1998, he got his son a job at the firm of his friend Eduard Rubin, a well-known Kharkiv "IT businessman." Rubin had started out back in 1987 with the Sintez cooperative, which assembled clones of the Spectrum computer, popular in the West (there were about fifty other such cooperatives in the USSR at the time). In modern terms, they produced something between counterfeit and "Abibas." Through some intricate schemes (possibly through Hartron), Rubin's cooperative obtained key components from Europe (the British Zilog Z80 processor, since Soviet equivalents weren't yet in production), and they installed them on circuit boards soldered in-house—the result was practically a "brand."
Eduard Rubin
In 1991, Soviet factories began industrial production of their own Spectrum equivalents, and Rubin's cooperative was left out of business. He then went to Germany, where he opened several commercial companies that imported office equipment and consumer electronics into Ukraine. According to Skelet.OrgRubin wasn't speaking alone, but as the representative of an entire "merchant company" of Kharkiv electronics cooperatives, including Mikhail Chernyshev, a "Khartron" employee. Basically, the guys were "stirring up" a joint venture using a typical post-Soviet scheme: someone travels to Europe or the US, opens a company there (either under their own name or under a front man), and then this company comes to Ukraine as a "Western investor" and creates a joint venture (enjoying a host of benefits) with some factory or research institute—which was used either for direct money laundering or as a stepping stone in commercial transactions.
In 1998, Rubin founded Telesens GmbH in Germany, which was directly related to Telesens KSCL AG, founded in 1995 by Soviet émigré Gennady Man (born 1958 in Gorki, Moscow, the son of jeweler Moshe Man and chemical engineer Ida Man), who had moved from Israel to Germany in the 80s. In the 90s, Gennady Man decided to invest in the telecommunications business, aiming to inflate the stock market value of Telesens KSCL AG, which was acquiring local telecommunications companies in Germany and Scotland.
Having essentially become Mann's "junior partner," Rubin opened a subsidiary, Telesens LLC (EDRPOU 30233931), in Kharkiv in 1998, and became its director. Telesens offered software, and its first clients were, naturally, Hartron and Westron, according to sources. Skelet.OrgTelesens was created precisely for these enterprises. That same year, 1998, Mikhail Chernyshev, CEO of Westron, hired his son Alyosha to work at Telesens. What the "double student," who studied simultaneously at the Ukrainian People's Academy and the Kharkiv Law Institute, did there remains unknown—perhaps nothing at all, and merely received a very large salary, which was a sort of official "kickback" from Rubin to the Westron director.
In 2002, Gennady Mann's stock market bubble, which had reached €1,6 billion, burst, and the Royal Bank of Scotland froze the accounts of Telesens KSCL AG. Consequently, all of the fraudsters' subsidiaries collapsed. Ruban, in this situation, pulled off a new scheme: he decided to preserve the Ukrainian Telesens, but transfer all of its debts and obligations to the German parent company (his own Telesens GmbH), which he bankrupted and closed. All the details of this story were carefully swept under the rug, but rumors suggest several million euros were involved. Ruban then carried out a cunning scam involving a sham reorganization, resulting in Telesens GmbH's share in Telesens's authorized capital, for a symbolic sum, being transferred to a group of individuals, including Alexey Chernyshev. Thus, he became a co-owner and entrepreneur, and his official biography pompously states, "...together with partners, he bought out the Ukrainian portion of the company, which became independent." And not a word about the massive fraud that preceded this buyout!
Incidentally, the current owners of Telesens are Rubin (90%) and a certain Natalya Gnesina (10%). It's still unknown to which of them Alexey Chernyshev transferred his stake in the company.
Rubin remained director of Telesens until 2008, and then began managing Telesens International Ltd., a London-based company (apparently deciding to continue Gennady Man's legacy). In 2014, he re-established the company in Germany, under the name Telesens Deutschland GmbH. In 2015, Rubin became a member of the Kharkiv Regional Council from Samopomich and was embroiled in a scandal surrounding his near-death experience. raider takeover of Kharkiv University of Radio Electronicsand, where he took up the position of acting rector.
And another interesting fact: in 2003, a group of "leading specialists" resigned from Hartron, though they were primarily commercial specialists. Among them was Hartron's former marketing director, Alexander Bek, who, along with several colleagues, immediately found work at Investor JSC, which is owned by To Arsen AvakovThey were far from ordinary managers: Alexander Bek and Alexander Motylevsky became deputy chairmen of Investor's board. It's worth remembering that during Avakov's flight to Italy in 2011, Motylevsky, left as acting head of Investor, was framed and committed suicide, leaving behind a note incriminating Avakov. Thus, this transfer of the Khartron people to Investor indicated that Avakov and Khartron's IT cooperators had long-standing, strong business ties. This means that such a connection has likely existed between Avakov and the Chernyshev family since the 90s.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Alexey Chernyshov: From the Past Life of Kyiv's New Governor. Part 2
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