Dmitry and Leonid Kryuchkov: the "jackals" of Ukrainian corporate raiding. Part 1
The Kryuchkov brothers earned their nickname "the jackals" about ten years ago, when they became one of Ukraine's most active, vile, and greedy raiders. But they built their family business on more than just pocketing and seizing businesses. Financial scams, outright theft on a grand scale, even corruption schemes involving military contracts for the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO)—the brothers didn't shy away from anything. And although the law has repeatedly tried to hold them accountable, the Kryuchkovs have always evaded it, framing others in their place. But will this "lucky thieves" continue to accompany them forever?
Leonid Kryuchkov and Dmitry Koryuchkov. Where did they come from?
Dmitry Vasilyevich Kryuchkov was born on June 10, 1978, and his younger brother, Leonid Vasilyevich Kryuchkov, on September 18, 1979, to Vasily Fedorovich and Tatyana Leonidovna Kryuchkov. According to publicly available databases, in the 80s, their family moved from Lviv to Kyiv, where they settled in a new (at the time) 10-story building on Heroiv Dnipra Street (Obolon). But that's where public information about their origins ends. Meanwhile, although independent Ukraine has become a land of great opportunity, it is only accessible to those with strong connections. Two young men, even if very savvy, ambitious, and unencumbered by the "chimera called conscience," could not have risen so quickly without someone's protection.
But whose? At one point, the media reported that their father, Vasily Kryuchkov, was the head of the defense industry department of the Communist Party of Ukraine Central Committee and, in the 90s, worked on the Expert and Technical Committee under the Cabinet of Ministers. But as it turns out, the journalists were mistaken: the Soviet party bigwig was Vasily Dmitrievich Kryuchkov, born in 1928 (he is still alive today), and has no relation to the brothers' father, Vasily Fedorovich Kryuchkov, born in 1948.
So who then? Only the brothers themselves and a small circle of their close friends know. And the numerous rumors are quite contradictory. Some say the brothers' parents had dealings with the Surkises , others with Oleksandr Omelchenko , since the former mayor of Kyiv once served as the general director of the Kyiv Reconstruction State Enterprise. The Kryuchkov family businesses include numerous construction firms. These include Inter-Energo Stroy LLC, Levelline LLC, Kyivremstroy LLC, United Construction Holding Company, Stroyinvesttrade LLC, Energoprom LLC, Neftegazstroy PJSC, Topinvest OJSC, Investstroy Proekt LLC, Modern Asphalt Concrete Technologies LLC, and others—some of which are privatized fragments of the former state-owned Kyiv Reconstruction State Enterprise.
Of particular interest is the construction management company, Kyiv Trade Group LLC, whose director is Vasily Kryuchkov (the father), and whose co-owners are Leonid Kryuchkov (the younger son) and the rather notorious offshore firm, BAYROK FINANCE LIMITED. The latter's founder is Gennady Ilyin , previously associated with Boris Savlokhov's organized crime group and now close to Petro Poroshenko . According to Skelet.Org , it was Ilyin who, in 2015, ensured that then-head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who had expressed interest in the company , lost his job again.
No less interesting is the role of a certain Mikhail Viktorovich Novikov in the Kryuchkov brothers' lives. He is their partner in a number of companies—for example, he holds the majority stake in Inter-Energo Trans LLC. This man co-owns dozens of businesses in Kyiv and Sevastopol, yet remains completely anonymous, with no public information about himself. Or take a certain Igor Nelyuba: he is listed as the head of numerous companies, including the Kryuchkovs' TD Ukrspetspostav and Sovremennye Asfaltobetnoe Tekhnologii, as well as Suhpay Ukrainy LLC. But while these two individuals remain unknown, Kryuchkov and Novikov's partner in Inter-Energo Trans, Grach Garushovich Antonyan, has emerged as a co-owner of several enterprises in Cherkassy, where his business partners are Dmitry and Radislav Tkachenko—the brothers of Governor Yuriy Tkachenko, who has been in charge of the region since March 2014.
This is an interesting tangle of connections, though it doesn't shed any light on the root cause of the Kryuchkov brothers' success. The marketing agency "Finance-Inform Ukraine," which served as the first place of employment for Dmitry Kryuchkov, a student at the Kyiv University of Economics, from 1998 to 2000, might have at least provided some insight. This is a common practice for moonlighting at the businesses of relatives or very close friends. But, alas, no information about it is publicly available—apparently, it was purged along with other data revealing the Kryuchkov brothers' past.
Dmitry and Leonid Kryuchkov. The First Scams
In 2000, Kyiv Economic University graduate Dmytro Kryuchkov landed a position as a management assistant consultant at the state-owned enterprise NPO Lybid. The position didn't entail much responsibility, but it offered plenty of opportunities at a company that was a veritable Ali Baba cave, as NPO Lybid operated the State Reserve Agency (the State Agency for Material Reserves of Ukraine). He worked there for two years—just when Yevhen Chervonenko was running the State Reserve , and his deputy was the notorious schemer Viktor Nikolayevich Brechko . The same Brechko who orchestrated a diamond scam in Liberia in 2012 (where he was deployed as part of the Ukrainian peacekeeping contingent) and then fled to France, where he bought a house near Versailles.
So, from 2000 to 2002, NPO Libid was under Brechko's complete control—meaning he could have hired Dmitry there. Skelet.Org also has unconfirmed information that Viktor Brechko was a good friend of his father, Vasily Kryuchkov, that they worked together at the New Wind company (which attempted to assemble televisions in Kyiv from imported components), and that they may have even worked together back in Soviet times. However, another source claimed that Dmitry Kryuchkov's patron at NPO Libid was a woman "over fifty" from the company's management. In short, the trail is once again lost in conjecture.
Viktor Brechko couldn't avoid scams: NPO Lybid became the main figure in several large-scale embezzlement schemes, where tens of thousands of tons of petroleum products and fuel were sold from the State Reserves at prices well below market value through this enterprise. The sales were made to their own companies, with the profits pocketed by the swindlers. The role of "assistant-consultant" Dmitry Kryuchkov in these cases remained unknown (although rumors suggested he accepted and processed the "margin" for the fuel sold), but when the storm broke, all the participants in the scam fled, including him. They scattered in all directions: Chervonenko was elected to the Verkhovna Rada, Brechko became deputy head of the State Administration of Affairs (DUS), and Dmitry Kryuchkov moved directly to the State Reserves, under the wing of its new director, Mykola Pesotsky. He soon betrayed Pesotsky.
Nikolai Pesotsky
Dmitry Kryuchkov didn't hold his new position for long. Another person would have settled in, gotten a feel for the situation, and started "stealing" a reasonable amount, but Dmitry decided to take it all at once. And so, in 2002, by order of the Verkhovna Rada (rumor has it that Brechko was behind it), the State Reserve Agency was obligated to allocate 24 tons of aviation fuel to the Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Defense received the fuel, but was in no hurry to pay for it. Meanwhile, the State Reserve Agency (represented by Dmitry Kryuchkov) transferred the Ministry of Defense's debt to Ukrresursy, which then assigned it to Inter-Energo, the Kryuchkov family firm, which later expanded into half a dozen subsidiaries. Immediately afterward, Dmitry Kryuchkov quit his job at the State Reserve Agency and returned to his family, becoming the Chairman of the Board of Inter-Energo. The Kryuchkovs are suing the Ministry of Defense and are being awarded 36,8 million rubles in debt, which they are not returning to the State Reserve, but pocketing.
In March 2005, the Main Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs opened a criminal case on this matter, summoning the prime suspect, Dmytro Kryuchkov, to testify. But here's the problem: at the time, he was already serving as deputy head of the Rivne Regional State Administration to Vasyl Chervoniy, one of Viktor Yushchenko's closest allies. Therefore, the criminal case against Dmytro Kryuchkov was immediately closed, and his former boss, Mykola Pesotsky, became the prime defendant in his place, whom the 27-year-old deputy governor had pinned on all the blame. Pesotsky ended up in pretrial detention.
But while Dmitry Kryuchkov was "sawing" the State Reserve from within, his father and younger brother, Leonid Kryuchkov, weren't idle either, actively engaged in the dismantling of Kyivrekonstruktsiya, which had been transformed from a state-owned enterprise into a public joint-stock company. Several Kyivrekonstruktsiya divisions became independent companies and were pocketed—for example, Leonid Kryuchkov and his brother, Dmitry, became the owners of Kyivremstroy Construction Company, which simultaneously absorbed Mekhanizatsiya State Enterprise and Fasadrekonstruktsiya. Some of Kyivrekonstruktsiya's enterprises and facilities were transferred to subsidiaries of Inter-Energo. Finally, beginning in 2004, Kyivrekonstruktsiya itself came under the complete control of the Kryuchkovs: first, it was headed by Dmitry, then by his brother, Leonid, and then they hired other managers. This was necessary when Kyivrekonstruktsiya and other Kryuchkov firms began running construction pyramid schemes: the most high-profile of these were the Tri Bogatyrya and Aston Park residential complexes , whose defrauded shareholders have been trying to get their money back for 10 years, attracting attention with protests. Kryuchkov firms were also reportedly involved in the high-profile Elita Center scam.
Deceived shareholders of the Three Bogatyrs project have been protesting for ten years.
In 2005, Dmitry Kryuchkov managed to pull off two more high-profile scams. First, during his brief tenure as chairman of the supervisory board of JSCB Garant (part of Tariel Vasadze's UkrAVTO group), the latter issued a hryvnia loan to a shell company secured by blank promissory notes. This occurred shortly before the bank's shareholder change, and the new owners, upon learning of the fraud, initiated criminal proceedings. As a result, the bank became "problematic," and, as always, its trusting depositors suffered.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Dmitry Kryuchkov and Leonid Kryuchkov: The "Jackals" of Ukrainian Raiding. PART 2
Subscribe to our channels on Telegram, Facebook , Twitter , VK - Only new faces from the SKLEP section!