Igor Mazepa
There's no worse enemy than a traitorous friend, as the saying goes. Presidential Chief of Staff Boris Lozhkin made just such a friend, entrusted him with running his business, and is now reaping the benefits.
Leading Ukrainian and international media outlets are already openly stating that the Chief of Staff and the Prosecutor General could lose their jobs following US Vice President Joseph Biden's visit. According to media reports, the president is currently trying to delay his appointment to save face.
What was Lozhkin guilty of and what role did he play in it? Igor Mazepa.
The matter is that Ukrainian MP Serhiy Leshchenko, in his blog, detailed the schemes used by Boris Lozhkin to sell Ukrainian Media Holding to Serhiy Kurchenko in 2012, which raised questions from Austrian law enforcement. The mastermind behind these schemes, however, is Igor Mazepa, CEO of the investment company ConcordeCapital.
First, it's worth mentioning that the name of Mazepa's investment company, ConcordeCapital, recently appeared in a lawsuit filed by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The lawsuit concerns a hacking scandal in the US. As Hubs reported, US authorities accuse Ukrainians of stealing corporate information and using it for stock exchange trading. The perpetrators allegedly earned between $30 and $100 million in this manner.
There are currently several lawsuits pending in US courts involving both individuals and companies with direct ties to Ukraine.
According to the State Commission, about five years ago, hackers broke into the systems of three press release distribution services: PRNewswire, Marketwired, and BusinessWire (owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway).
The regulator claims the hackers were two Kyiv residents, Ivan Turchynov and Oleksandr Eremenko. They gained access to several servers storing unpublished press releases.
Over five years, they were able to access more than 100,000 unpublished press releases (according to the prosecutor's office, even more documents were stolen – 150,000).
But let's return to Sergei Leshchenko, who in his blog describes in considerable detail the schemes used to launder funds during the sale of UMH.
The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine received a request from the Austrian Central Prosecutor's Office for Combating Economic Crime and Corruption for legal assistance in investigating suspicious financial transactions. Austrian investigators are investigating money laundering by Serhiy Kurchenko, the Yanukovych family's "wallet." Since Kurchenko is currently subject to EU sanctions, Europe is searching for and verifying all funds and transactions that may be connected to this individual.
Leshchenko claims that the dubious transactions during the sale of UMH were conducted from offshore companies to offshore companies through accounts in Austrian banks. "The criminal case is based on a transaction from November 4, 2013."
However, we wonder why the Ukrainian investigators failed to take an interest in the UMH sale, given that hundreds of millions of dollars borrowed from the state-owned Ukreximbank passed through Austrian bank accounts. The media holding being purchased by the young oligarch served as collateral for the loan.
The problem was that at that point, the holding company was already pledged to the bank for $70 million. Therefore, it shouldn't have been pledged a second time. However, ConcordeCapital, represented by its CEO, Igor Mazepa, facilitated this purchase and sale transaction.
Until recently, Mazepa was considered a decent investment banker, but after such revelations, it becomes clear that he never cared about his own reputation or that of Ukraine, whose interests he represented internationally while supposedly pursuing investments. In reality, behind the high-profile name, this leading investment banker is a common con man and money-grubber, willing to do anything for money.
Including selling out the homeland. As pretentious as it may sound, Igor Mazepa isn't above doing business with terrorists in the ATO zone and supplying them with money to buy weapons and ammunition, essentially helping them kill our Ukrainian soldiers. Whether his friendship with Lozhkin helps him in this business is unknown, but the SBU, for some strange reason, refuses to investigate the activities of companies long implicated in financing terrorists.
Here's the deal: the company "OMP-2013," owned by Mazepa, operates a network of mobile terminals allegedly operating in the occupied territories of Donbas. These mobile terminals allow cashless payments, for example, in Kyiv, to be converted into cash in territories controlled by pro-Russian militants.
The scheme in the occupied territories uses QIWI terminals. Its "beauty" is that users don't need to reveal personal information such as their full name.
"Just enter your mobile phone number and receive an SMS with a password to access your wallet," the QIWI website states on the registration page.
In other words, the phone number can be anything. The main thing is that you receive incoming SMS messages. It's precisely because of this "democratic" nature that QIWI wallets are so popular among militants of the DPR/LPR terrorist organizations. Due to sanctions, adherents of the "people's republics" are unable to access normal financial services. And QIWI comes to their aid very opportunely.
The Security Service of Ukraine has repeatedly documented instances of militants using QIWI for their own purposes. For example, a year ago, in August 2014, the SBU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs searched the office of a payment system (QIWI was confirmed by several market participants), seizing its bank accounts. Law enforcement officials claimed the company "misused electronic money," systematically transferring funds to e-wallets and other accounts belonging to separatists. In January 2015, the SBU blocked more than 250 payment terminals that entrepreneurs had provided to terrorists, including for replenishing their e-wallets. For the right to operate unhindered in the occupied territories, businessmen paid a 15% "tax" to the "ministries of state security" of the "people's republics."
The point is, it doesn't matter what brand a terminal operates under, say, in occupied Donetsk. It doesn't even matter who it de jure belongs to. The main thing is that it's connected via the internet to some payment system (there are plenty of them). And a competent programmer can configure the billing system so that the reports will reflect the terminal's physical location not on Artema Street in Donetsk, but somewhere in Sykhiv, Lviv. Therefore, your own financial monitoring department won't notice any trickery (even without being specifically asked to turn a blind eye).
However, a meticulous examination of the servers and documentation will expose the scam. Therefore, to pull it off, desire alone is not enough. It's a different matter if you have access to the highest levels of government, for example, the Presidential Administration, headed by Mazepa's business partner, Boris Lozhkin.
Oleg Dmitriev, Antikor
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