Andrey Puzichuk: A Family Clan of Kyiv Construction Fraudsters. Part 1

Andrey Puzichuk

Everyone knows that apartments in Kyiv are very expensive, and buying one is fraught with the risk of being scammed. But not everyone realizes that the greatest risk comes not from fraudulent realtors, but from seemingly reputable development companies. This is especially true if they have strong protection in the Kyiv City State Administration and the Verkhovna Rada, making them immune to the law and allowing them to ignore public outrage. For example, like the Kyiv-based Fundament, owned by Andriy Puzichuk and his family. For several years, this company deceived and bribed shareholders in the Privitniy Kvartal residential complex with promises, while simultaneously carrying out large-scale scams and covering their tracks.

Andrey Puzichuk: Schemes of one deception

If you happen to be in the Bortnichi district of Moscow, you'll notice the gloomy, gray "unfinished building" located at 55 Kharchenko Street (formerly Lenin Street). This is the very same "Privitniy Kvartal" residential complex, which will never be completed! It's not even because the money paid for the future apartments has long since been squandered and funneled offshore. Completing this construction is simply physically impossible, as the factory that produced the reinforced concrete panels for it has gone bankrupt and is closed. Therefore, today there are only two questions on the agenda: will the defrauded people get their money back, and who will dismantle this "ruin"?

This sad story began back in 2005, when the Kyiv City Council by its decision No. 110/3574 transferred this land to Apteka-Biokon LLC (EDRPOU 30263519) for the expansion of the adjacent medical warehouse complex (which can be seen in the video below). A year later this site was privatized, but Apteka-Biokon decided not to use it for its intended purpose or expand the warehouse, finding a more profitable use for it in a commercial residential construction project. However, the 2008 crisis disrupted these plans, so they were postponed. And then, in 2013, by a decision of the Kyiv City Council dated October 23, 2013, signed by its secretary, Galina Gerega, The site was permitted to be used for residential construction. This was illegal, but such "minor details" were ignored—after all, Apteka-Biokon, registered to a Cypriot company, is controlled by her friend. Irene Kilchitskaya.

Construction plans were then delayed again by another crisis, but in 2018, things got moving again. Apteka-Biokon became the client for the project, and firms from the Fundament construction group became the designer and general contractor.

The media began heavily advertising the upcoming residential complex "Privitniy Kvartal," promising affordable (because it was economy class) apartments in four attractive panel high-rises. And soon, customers began to arrive—mostly ordinary and poor people who had earned their money honestly. It was they who were deceived by the construction scammers, the Puziichuks!

It must be said that the first suspicions should have been aroused by the strange payment system for the future apartments. Clients deposited the funds not into the account of the construction client, nor of Fundament, but into the account of PJSC Venture Corporate Investment Fund Hunter (38901468), owned by the Cypriot company Kotryna Holding Ltd. Moreover, according to the documents, they weren't buying apartments, but some kind of "securities" that they were then promised would be exchanged for apartments. A scam? Yes, and what a scam! But the fact is that this payment scheme through venture funds, which allows for tax evasion, has long been used by many Kyiv developers. Therefore, people have become accustomed to it—they say it's the same everywhere. Incidentally, over all these years, neither the prosecutor's office nor the NABU have shown any interest in these schemes.

The contractor was supposed to open the first phase of the residential complex in the second quarter of 2020. But by the specified deadline, only the bare walls of one building (out of four) had been built, reaching 6-8 floors—while the planned height was 18-26. Concerned residents began asking questions, and Fundament reassured them: supposedly, it was all because of the quarantine; workers at the building materials plant (DSK-3) couldn't get to work; now the quarantine was over, construction would resume. But this was a cynical lie, because, according to data, the construction Skelet.Org, stopped before the pandemic. This can be confirmed by comparing two videos: the first was filmed in August 2019, the second in June 2020 (before the project was officially suspended).

Then it became known that DSK-3 itself had shut down at the end of 2019 due to bankruptcy, as the Puziychuk brothers, who controlled it, had simply failed to transfer funds to the company, deliberately bankrupting it. They had diverted the last of the panels it had produced to complete other construction projects: the Welcome Home and La-La-Land residential complexes. Buyers of apartments in the Privitniy Kvartal residential complex were simply cheated, without even receiving a refund. All Hunter employees had gone into "remote work," and the Fundament notaries, with whom contracts were signed, simply hid from outraged clients.

Puziychuk's lie about the "quarantine" was exposed by another blatant fact: for many years, their family literally bathed in money siphoned off from Hunter. In declarations MP Andriy Puzichuk's records show that he regularly received hundreds of thousands in "income from entrepreneurial activity" and millions from real estate transactions from Hunter. His common-law wife, Yulia Radchenko, also received seven-figure sums from Hunter. What do you think? such a publication:

About this criminal case The media reported in the same 2018, and even clarified the amount of unpaid taxes: 6,6 million hryvnias. And that's just for the scheme to siphon money out of businesses through "tax minimization centers" and shell companies. But the schemes for selling apartments through the purchase and sale of "securities" evaded taxes by an order of magnitude greater! And Andriy Puzichuk and his family are swimming in these millions, stolen from the pockets of defrauded equity holders and diverted from budget payments...

How the Foundation was built

Andrey Viktorovich Puzichuk was born on June 13, 1978, in the small but ancient town of Malyn, in the Zhytomyr region. His father, Viktor Vladimirovich Puzichuk (born in 1951), uncle, Nikolai Vladimirovich Puzichuk (born in 1948), brother, Vitaliy Puzichuk (born in 1982), and cousins, Igor (born in 1971) and Sergey Puzichuk (born in 1983), were also born there.

Surprisingly, there's virtually no information about this large and close-knit family, nor are there any family photographs. Even the biography of MP Andriy Puziychuk is indecently brief. It only lists his date of birth, a supposed higher education (but doesn't specify where, when, or what he studied), and a mention that in 2001 he founded Kyivska Stroitelnaya Kompaniya LLC (EDRPOU 31413855), which he transferred to his father's name in 2005 (or his father transferred it to himself). Incidentally, the media often confuses this company, which closed in 2008, with another Puziychuk firm with a similar name: Kyivska Zhil'no-Stroitelnaya Kompaniya LLC (33631796), founded in 2006. Vitaliy Puziychuk is also referred to as the eldest brother, despite being four years younger than Andriy.

In short, this family's history is shrouded in mystery. The Puziychuks also haven't been forthcoming about how they moved from Malyn to Kyiv and started a construction business there. Perhaps these blank spots could be filled in by Alexander Petrovich Yarosh — a longtime partner, manager, and friend of the Puzichuk family, currently heading their firms, UKB KZhSK and Fundament. However, he, too, prefers to remain silent, otherwise he wouldn't be their most trusted confidant!

Alexander Yarosh

But still Skelet.Org We managed to find out the following. Viktor Puzijchuk and his son, Andriy Puzijchuk, settled in Kyiv by the late 90s, and even then they owned Subpodryad (01354450), a private joint-stock company that was involved in everything from stall trading to property exploitation. There's even unconfirmed information that this "cooperative" was founded under the auspices of one of Kyiv's organized crime groups, to which Andriy Puzijchuk allegedly had ties. But that's just rumor. But here are the facts: at the same time, the Puzijchuk family became close to a group of apartment thieves, including Vyacheslav Nepop, Mikhail Golitsa, Viktor Bilych and Nikolai Tolmachev. Having started with the MZhK, this group has developed well: with the help of the Surkis family They pushed Golitsa into the position of deputy head of the Kyiv City Executive Committee's housing department, and in 2001, they lobbied for the creation of the municipal enterprise "Zhitloinvestbud-UKB." Although this enterprise is 100% owned by the Kyiv City Council, all these years it was managed by its "eternal director" (from 2001 to 2018), Vyacheslav Nepop, who turned the municipal enterprise into his personal fiefdom. Nepop easily outlived many mayors (from Omelchenko to post-Maidan "governors"), and under Klitschko became the city's deputy mayor for architecture, construction, and land resources—in other words, the fox was effectively appointed to guard the chicken coop!

Vitali Klitschko and Vyacheslav Nepop

From its inception, Zhitloinvestbud was essentially a complete corruption scam: the company itself didn't build anything, merely serving as a client and hiring private construction firms at public expense. Who was hired and how much was "sawed off" was decided by Vyacheslav Nepop and his shadowy patrons. One of Zhitloinvestbud's very first contractors was the Puziychuk family's Kyiv Construction Company, created specifically for the job—where the aforementioned Alexander Yarosh was already the chief engineer. Then, after this company pocketed too much and brazenly, it was quietly shut down, right on the eve of the 2008 crisis. Nepop's contracts were then awarded to its subsidiary, OOO UKB KZhSK, where Alexander Yarosh also worked, first as chief engineer and then as director. And now, according to media reports, between 2008 and 2012 alone, she received contracts worth more than half a billion hryvnia (US$63 million at the then exchange rate) from Nepop's Zhitloinvestbud and Golitsa's Kyivmiskbud. By 2018, all of the Puzichuks' firms had absorbed approximately three billion hryvnias from the capital's budget through Zhitloinvestbud contracts (larger sums have been cited).

To keep as much budget money as possible in his own pockets, Andriy Puzichuk decided to acquire his own construction base and building materials production facility. During this process of "localizing production," they made two new profitable acquisitions. The first was the former Kyiv Specialized Department No. 580, which in 1993 its then-director, Genrikh Shpigel, converted into the private JSC Fundament. Initially, the company, with its Soviet-era expertise and specialists, earned a good profit, but in the 2000s, it fell out of favor in Kyiv's new construction schemes. In 2008, Fundament was on the brink of bankruptcy, and under the pretext of "saving it from a hostile takeover," Nepop took it over, re-registering it as PJSC Fundament (01416332). After which Shpigel was pushed aside to the position of advisor to the new CEO, Alexander Yarosh, and the new shareholders of the company became Nepop's relatives and partners: Viktor Bilych, Nikolai Negrich (Golitsa's son-in-law), Viktor Puzichuk and Valeriy Puzichuk, Anzhelika Kovaleva (Nepop's accountant), and later Nepop's daughter Maria. "Fundament," according to sources Skelet.Org, became the main company of the Puzichuks and the basis for the creation of subsidiaries: Fundament-Auto (35198874), Fundament-Project (38657646), Fundament-Development (38077923), DSK Fundament (40048603) and others.

Heinrich Spiegel

The Puziychuks' second valuable acquisition was PJSC "DSK-3" (04012773), also known as Kyiv House-Building Plant No. 3. Since Soviet times, the company specialized in producing panels for so-called economy-class residential buildings, which could be built quickly and affordably (without the hassle of expensive, high-strength structures). It was indispensable for construction scammers trying to foist off overpriced apartments in the capital's capitals! Until 2010, 56% of "DSK-3" belonged to Kyivmiskbud. Mykhailo Golitsa then became the head of Kyivmiskbud, and a certain Mykhailo Petrovich Puziychuk, a native of the village of Rubezhovka in the Zhytomyr region—possibly a relative of the Puziychuks—became the head of the finance and economics department. After this, another 26% of the house-building plant's shares were distributed to insiders, and its new co-owner was the Cypriot firm Roycap Trading Limited, controlled by the Puziychuk family (they later removed this information from all databases). The supervisory board of PJSC DSK-3 then included Viktor Vlasenko (Director of BK KZhSK), Nikolai Doychev (son of Evgeny Doychev, Director of PJSC Subpodryad), and Vadim Chumachenko (Director of Roycap).

The Puzichuks' "construction empire" includes another key firm: the construction company "Azur Group" (37312682). It was founded in 2010 by Marina Zapalskaya and Lyudmila Mazur, and then became the new owner of the company "KZhSK"—immediately afterward, "Azur Group" began receiving multimillion-dollar contracts from "Zhitloinvestbud."

The Puziychuk family also created temporary companies for the construction of individual projects, such as the Pozniaky Office Center LLC (EDRPOU 38077991), founded in 2012 by Vitaly Puziychuk. This company became "famous." scandalous development in Pozniaky, It has become the embodiment of the machinations perpetrated in the Kyiv City State Administration's construction sector. The site was allocated for one purpose, but now something entirely different is being built on it, with gross violations and without numerous permits, putting nearby buildings at risk.

Mikhail Shpolyansky, Skelet.Org

CONTINUED: Andrey Puzichuk: Everything will be "Fundament" and "Azur-Group"! PART 2

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