Eduard Stavitsky: Where's the money, Eddie?
The glitter of Yanukovych's golden loaf of bread on Kuzmin's golden shovel paled in comparison to the dozens of kilograms of gold bars and a whole stack of cash dollars confiscated from the former Minister of Fuel and Energy of Ukraine. And yet this was only a small stash of a rather mediocre official, who was merely an executor of someone else's will. Eduard Stavytskyi was always known to Ukrainians only as the man who stole Mezhhirya, but his participation in this highly controversial scheme was far from his most criminal act. Where did his wealth come from, and more importantly, where did it go?
Eduard Stavitsky. The Alexandria Family
Eduard Anatolyevich Stavytsky was born on October 4, 1972, in the small Ukrainian town of Lebedyn (Sumy Oblast). He always kept quiet about his childhood and youth, as well as his parents. Even when Stavytsky became a politician and official (a minister) and could no longer avoid journalists, he preferred to speak with them about current issues in the present, rather than dwelling on the past. He rarely mentioned his faceless and nameless relatives and friends, only when attempting to explain the origins of some of his excessive luxury items. He claimed that these were gifts from friends, while others weren't even his; relatives forgot them when they visited.
Victoria Ivanovna Stavitskaya
But here Skelet.Org was helped by the biography of Stavytsky's mother, Viktoria Ivanovna (born 1951). Unlike her son, she didn't hide her identity (when she later ran for parliament), so it can be learned that Viktoria Ivanovna was born in the mining village of Novaya Praga in the Oleksandriysky District of the Kirovohrad Region and worked at a knitwear factory in Oleksandriysky from 1974 to 1976. Therefore, it's logical to assume that after the birth of their son, Eddie, his parents left Lebedin for Oleksandriysky, where the future minister grew up.
After graduating from high school, Edik successfully dodged the military draft and enrolled in the Dnipropetrovsk Mining Institute (now the National Mining University), where his mother had also studied from 1976 to 1980. After receiving his mining engineering degree in 1994, Stavytsky avoided ending up homeless, like many students during those difficult times, and didn't go to work for a failing state-owned enterprise. His first and perhaps most important job was at the Alexandria-based JSC NPO Ecological Fuels of Ukraine.
This is a very interesting enterprise: it was never mentioned in the list of any significant manufacturing enterprises in Alexandria between 1995 and 2008, and currently has only one employee, Viktoria Ivanovna Stavitskaya, who is also its director. Therefore, it is highly likely that ZAO NPO Ecological Fuels of Ukraine is a purely commercial intermediary firm, one of tens of thousands created during the short history of Ukrainian capitalism. Its scope of activity can be guessed from its name: it is possible that ZAO Ecological Fuels traded in brown coal briquettes produced by the Alexandria factories Dmitrovskaya and Baidakovskaya, which were part of the Alexandriaugol association (which employed over 15 workers in 1991; today, all of its plants are closed).
Well, this explains how Eduard Stavytsky acquired business connections across Ukraine: he had to trade coal briquettes throughout the country, and possibly even beyond. However, any closed joint-stock company is closed for a reason—outsiders are not allowed access to such troughs. Meanwhile, the young manager Eduard Stavytsky was soon admitted as a shareholder (co-owner) of Ecological Fuels, as he was already a member of the company's board in 2002, and two years later, he became its chairman. Stavytsky's income at the time was sufficient to become a sponsor and honorary president of the Alexandria-based sports club, Crystal-Ametist.
The question arises: were Stavitsky's parents the founders of this enterprise? Or did his career advancement come about through his marriage to Elena Ushakova?
After all, many Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs rose from the very bottom thanks to successful marriages. Perhaps that's why he maintains such a deathly silence about his past, which contains many interesting details. For example, the case of the Teterev-Nafta company, which in 2002 sold "diluted" gasoline from the Lisichansk Oil Refinery and then defrauded the state by refunding fictitious VAT. In 2003, Teterev-Nafta changed its name to Eco-2003 and became known as the Stavytsky family business—perhaps actually owned by them, or perhaps merely registered in their name.
Be that as it may, even before Eduard Stavytskyi arrived in Kyiv, he was already a wealthy man. Or, at least, the husband of a wealthy wife. Interesting fact: in 2005, Elena Stavytskaya (formerly Ushakova) purchased a historic three-story building in Kyiv at 31 Shota Rustaveli Street. For 10 years, it served as offices and the registered office of numerous companies belonging to or associated with the Stavytskyi family. The purchase price was not disclosed, but during the 2015 crisis, the building was sold for 52 million hryvnias (US$2 million), though the price was widely considered undervalued and the buyer (the offshore Cypriot company "NA Welidara Limited") was a fictitious figure.
The Stavitsky House in Kyiv
By 2005, Viktoria Ivanovna Stavytska was already the director and owner of Charivnytsia LLC (formerly the Berezka atelier), director of Ukrainian Industrial Group LLC, and deputy director of Monolith-2 LLC. Her status as an Alexandria businesswoman didn't stop her from later running for parliament in the 103rd electoral district (Olexandria) as a candidate for the Communist Party of Ukraine. Moreover, for many years, Viktoria Ivanovna served as the second secretary of the Olexandria city committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine! Although she never made it into the Verkhovna Rada, she was elected secretary of the city council from 2009 to 2012.
The Stavitsky-Ushakov family "clan" also included Eduard Anatolyevich's Alexandria friends and business partners, whom he not only retained upon his departure for the capital but later brought with him to Kyiv, opening up new business horizons for them. Among them, Pavel Kleshchev, Yuriy Omelchenko, and Igor Ivanichenko are worth noting.
Come and take it apart!
In the fall of 2006, the "strong manager" from Alexandria was suddenly invited to join the government as an advisor to the Minister of Environmental Protection, Vasyl Dzharty. To this day, there's no definitive answer to the question of what and who contributed to Eduard Stavytsky's sudden career advancement. The media circulates a theory that Stavytsky was invited to Kyiv and recommended to Dzharty by the Minister of Agrarian Policy, Mykola Prysyazhnyuk, who was one of the managers of the famous Yuriy Ivanyushchenko (Yura Yenakievsky). However, no mention is made of how Stavytsky and Prysyazhnyuk first met. It is known that Prysyazhnyuk and Elena Stavytskaya jointly own Monolit-Invest LLC, but they founded this enterprise after 2006. A less common theory suggests that his communist mother had something to do with it: supposedly, Viktoria Ivanovna promoted her son to Kyiv after the "anti-crisis coalition" was formed and the Party of Regions allocated small quotas of power to the Communist Party of Ukraine.
One could only guess what advice a qualified mining engineer and professional fuel briquette trader might have given the Minister of Environmental Protection. But on January 31, 2007, Eduard Stavytsky was appointed Chairman of the Board of the National Joint-Stock Company (NAK) "Nadra Ukrayiny" (subordinate to the Ministry of Ecology)—essentially his first job in his field and his first senior government position. However, Stavytsky's role in this government strongly resembled that of a figurehead, used by more powerful political players in rather dirty dealings.
Indeed, Stavytskyi's chairmanship of the National Joint-Stock Company "Nedra Ukraine" was crowned with a major scandal. First, through "Nedra," the Party of Regions stole Mezhyhirya from the state. However, President Yushchenko was also involved in this process, having issued Decree No. 148 on July 9, 2007, transferring the government-owned "Pushcha-Vodytsia" dacha complex (which included Mezhyhirya) to the Cabinet of Ministers. Simultaneously, a presidential decree was issued calling early elections—in other words, Viktor Andreevich effectively paid the Party of Regions for their accommodating behavior with Mezhyhirya (and more). On July 11, 2007, Prime Minister Yanukovych issued Decree No. 521, by which the government transferred 137 hectares of the Mezhyhirya complex to the National Joint-Stock Company "Nedra Ukraine." Eduard Stavytsky then entered into a barter agreement with the Donetsk firm Medinvesttrade to exchange Mezhyhirya for two buildings in Kyiv (34 Volodymyrska Street and 9 Zolotovorotsky Lane). Medinvesttrade then sold Mezhyhirya to Tantalit (co-owner Sergey Klyuyev ), which was then directly registered as the owner of Yanukovych's residence and other "huts" in the complex.
There were repeated attempts to sue and expropriate Mezhyhirya, so it became the subject of scandals long before the second Maidan.
However, another operation carried out by the Party of Regions with Stavytskyi's help went virtually unnoticed—except by a small group of people who understood its purpose and cost. Specifically, in the spring and summer of 2007, the National Joint-Stock Company "Nadra of Ukraine" issued licenses for the development of oil and gas fields to 19 private companies—most of which belonged to Party of Regions oligarchs. Meanwhile, unsuspecting Ukrainians continued to dream of cheap, domestically produced gas, which the state would supply to the population at cost.
Yulia Tymoshenko was dissatisfied with the distribution of these licenses , just as she was with the privatization of Mezhyhirya. She was also one of the first to publicly hurl political stones at Stavytsky. Despite the fact that there was some sort of agreement between the Party of Regions and Yushchenko regarding Stavytsky, Yulia Tymoshenko, having become prime minister, made Stavytsky's resignation her fundamental goal—and achieved it on January 30, 2008. Stavytsky was forced to resign, not only from Nadry Ukrayiny but also from Kyiv—the Party of Regions "made" him a deputy of the Zaporizhzhia Regional Council, where he became the leader of the Party of Regions faction. Stavytsky, however, did not give up and began to seek reinstatement through the courts—this method of resolving personnel issues and labor relations was quite popular during the Yushchenko era. Moreover, this initiative came not so much from Stavytsky as from his allies in the Party of Regions: the fact is that Tymoshenko had begun revoking the licenses issued to them. And so, on August 18, 2009, the court ruled in favor of Eduard Stavytsky, who the following day, accompanied by security guards, broke into his former office as the head of the NAK Nedra Ukrayiny. Tymoshenko responded by issuing a new order dismissing Stavytsky and declaring a hostile takeover of the NAK Nedra.
Eduard Stavitsky. Zits Minister
Eduard Stavytskyi's second return to the National Joint-Stock Company "Nadra Ukrayiny" took place in March 2010. He worked there for eight months, essentially managing to hand out new licenses to companies on a list placed on his desk. He then headed the State Service for Geology of Subsoil, performing similar functions. Stavytskyi made no independent decisions at the level of "subsoil manager"; he merely "signed papers," and he knew it. However, he was allowed to "covet" those around him, which he did, along with his relatives and business partners.
The largest of the well-known companies associated with Stavytskyi during this period was Urga Airlines. Founded in 1993, it was for a long time a small private company with two or three transport aircraft based at the Kirovohrad military airfield (now Krapivnytskyi). But in 2012, Urga became one of the leaders in domestic passenger transportation, with 26 aircraft and 11 million hryvnias in net profit. If not for the large-scale crisis and conflict that began in 2014, Urga could still be operating successfully today. 94% of the company's shares were owned by Sirius-2012 (director Igor Ivanchenko), and the chairman of Urga's supervisory board was Anatoly Stavytskyi – the father of our hero.
The gas business was completely invisible to outsiders, yet always extremely profitable—and Stavytsky participated in it as much as possible. A highly dependent figure, he didn't try to carve out a piece of the gas market himself, but did so in partnership with others, primarily Mykola Prysyazhnyuk. Together, they were involved in the activities of Golden Derrick LLC, which received licenses to develop 28 wells in the Poltava and Dnipropetrovsk regions. 30% of Golden Derrick belonged to Naftogaz (only for the purpose of obtaining production licenses without an auction), and 70% to the Cypriot company Hartlog Limited, which in turn belonged to Dorgin Limited. However, both Stavytsky and Prysyazhnyuk were described as merely "overseers" of the company, from which all the profits were skimmed off by Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, who traditionally registers his companies under proxies and figureheads.
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Stavytskyi wasn't a "rat," a quality highly valued by the presidential "family." Therefore, in April 2012, Yanukovych personally appointed him Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources, and in December of that year, Minister of Fuel and Energy. Stavytskyi immediately acquired a new business: tenders surrounding Ukrtransgaz. While previously certain Donetsk firms, allegedly linked to Ruslan Tsyplakov (a friend of the presidential son, Viktor Yanukovych Jr.), had won them, after Stavytskyi's appointment, the system changed. Multi-billion-dollar tenders no longer existed; the sums were now in the tens of millions, but now the winning firms were those of the "Alexandriaites": Stavytskyi, his family, and his friends—Hermes Company, Promotion Group, and Ukrstk. Furthermore, Skelet.Org has information that, with the "family's" permission (in exchange for appropriate kickbacks and shares), Eduard Stavitsky created several companies that allowed him to profit from the transit of extracted gas through the GTS. Naturally, not everyone was charged: his own people enjoyed almost 100% "benefits" and "discounts."
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In 2013, relations between the ruling factions became strained, with even conflicts over business divisions erupting regularly within the Party of Regions itself. A particularly telling example of this was the scandal stirred up by Nestor Shufrych ( for more on him, read "Nestor Shufrych: The Transcarpathian Rascal Is Everywhere! ") on January 25th, right during a Cabinet meeting. Shufrych accused Stavytskyi of illegal actions and extortion: he had suspended the license of Naftogazvydobuvannya PJSC (owned by Nestor Shufrych and Mykola Rudkovskyi), allegedly demanding 30% of the company's shares. Shufrych appealed to Azarov and Boyko ( for more on Azarov, see the article "Mykola Azarov: The Survivor " ; for Boyko , see "Yuriy Boyko: The Untouchable" ). They continued the government meeting behind closed doors to resolve the conflict "family-wise," and its outcome remained unknown to the public. However, numerous sources reported that a major redistribution of the energy market was underway, in which Yanukovych's "family" and Yuriy Ivanyushchenko would "rob even their own." Eduard Stavytsky was assigned the role of executor in this process, whose future was in doubt, as this would put him at odds with most Ukrainian clans. Which is essentially what happened.
Eduard Stavitsky. Now I'm Nathan Rosenberg!
Eduard Stavytsky greeted the second Maidan with confidence, even yelling at the "activists" who entered his Ministry of Fuel and Energy on January 25, 2014, to make some grievances against him on behalf of the people. Stavytsky resembled Emperor Nicholas I—it seemed as if he was about to scream "on your knees!"—so the timid "Maidanists" soon retreated. He also didn't flee Kyiv in February, when all the key figures of the ousted government rushed to leave the country as quickly as possible, even taking some of their "junk" with them in advance.
It's unclear what this misplaced self-confidence was based on. Already in mid-March, the new Prosecutor General Makhnitsky ( reference: Oleg Makhnitsky: Is There a Limit to the Shamelessness of the Former "Maidan Prosecutor" ) opened a criminal case against Stavytsky under several articles of the Criminal Code, in which he was accused of the privatization of Mezhyhirya and the issuance of gas production licenses. From March 21 to 24, the Prosecutor General's Office conducted a series of searches of residential premises and offices belonging to Stavytsky and his family. A rich haul awaited them in one of them: approximately $5 million in cash, as well as 42 kilograms of gold bars and a collection of very expensive watches! Judging by the fact that the bundles were dated "February 14, 2014," and most of the bars were purchased around the same time, Stavytsky was indeed preparing for his escape by buying up foreign currency. But then for some reason he changed his mind, stayed longer, and when he finally decided to flee Ukraine, for some reason he was unable to take this “stash” with him.
Edik Stavitsky's Forgotten Stash
In April 2014, Stavitsky resurfaced in Tel Aviv. However, he was no longer Eduard Stavitsky, but an Israeli citizen, Nathan Rosenberg, and a born Jew at that! How he managed this was anyone's guess: he likely acquired an Israeli passport under his new name long ago. It's possible he had other stashes in foreign banks—the extent of which can only be guessed at. Furthermore, a significant portion of Stavitsky-Rosenberg's property remained in Ukraine, registered to his wife, Elena Stavitskaya, his parents, and his mother-in-law, Valentina Ushakova. We mentioned above the office mansion on Shota Rustaveli, sold in 2015 for 52 million hryvnia (possibly to Stavytskyi's offshore company). However, he also owns an apartment on Druzhby Narodiv Boulevard and a luxurious mansion in Pechersk, along with properties on Khreshchatyk and in the Holosiivskyi district, all registered to relatives. A 2014 BMW 645CI and a 2013 Ferrari FF are also registered to his mother-in-law. The Prosecutor General's Office attempted to confiscate them, but Valentina Ushakova recovered the cars through the courts, claiming she didn't live with her son-in-law and therefore has no connection to him.
One of Eduard Stavitsky's "huts" (in Pechersk)
The activities of BRSM-Nafta, a company known for its scandalous schemes involving "enhanced gasoline," deserve special mention from 2012 to 2016. By adding toxic methanol to the fuel instead of ethyl alcohol, the company grossly violated technological regulations and defrauded consumers and the state, "earning" up to 190 euros on each ton!
Eduard Stavitsky: Where's the money, Eddie?
The scam was carried out thanks to the direct involvement of several important figures in BRSM-Nafta: oligarch Serhiy Kurchenko, Deputy Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema (in 2014, reference: Vitaliy Yarema. "Honest cop" and godfather of Serhiy Dumchev ) , Dutch businessman Roland Pieper, and certain lawyers associated with Petro Poroshenko. In fact, the fact that BRSM-Nafta acquired new co-owners and patrons from among the post-Maidan regime after February 2014 allowed it to continue its scams until 2017—which ended in criminal cases and a "sudden" fire at the company's oil depot in Glevakha, which destroyed its stock of counterfeit fuel. So, one of the co-owners of BRSM-Nafta (albeit not the largest) is Valentina Ushakova, Eduard Stavitsky’s mother-in-law.
It turns out that the Stavitsky-Ushakov family clan continued to rip off Ukrainians even after the former minister fled to Israel! He, despite all the "efforts" of the current Ukrainian government, continues to live peacefully in Israel—and, according to rumors, is hosting important negotiators from the current president's "family," who are making him enticing offers.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
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