In the early 2000s, an unknown Donetsk businessman, Vladimir Vagorovsky, who by then had already amassed a fortune in the distribution of alcohol and tobacco, opened the first store under the Amstor brand in the capital of Donbass.
Not long ago, the media widely reported that "the Ministry of Internal Affairs has established evidence of terrorist financing by the former managers of the Amstor retail chain." Moreover, this is not the first time the former managers have been mentioned as financiers of the terrorists who unleashed the military conflict in eastern Ukraine. The group "Deputy Control" has already asked the Prosecutor General's Office to look into their activities.
The case concerns two brothers, Vladimir and Alexander Vagorovsky. The latter is of little interest to journalists, as, according to family friends and former employees of the Amstor retail chain, he is completely subservient to his older brother and is nothing more than an executor of his will. Vladimir, however, is a more interesting character, being a dark horse in Ukrainian business. His name was previously rarely mentioned in the media, but recently he has become a frequent subject of publications. Almost all of them are devoted to the corporate conflict surrounding the Amstor retail chain, during which armed men seized the chain's stores on New Year's Eve.
Even in the investigation by the resource "Nashi Groshi" about who lives in the scandalous building on Grushevsky Street 9A (later we will tell how Vagorovsky acquired this apartment), he is mentioned as "a Donetsk businessman, being a minority owner of the Amstor retail chain, who managed to take over a number of stores in the ATO zone from the majority shareholder Vadym Novinsky (a Verkhovna Rada deputy from the Opposition Bloc).
We attempted to understand how Vladimir Vagorovsky managed to earn the status of "offender" of Rinat Akhmetov's partner, and what prompted law enforcement to take notice of his activities. To do this, we need to delve into history.
In search of "moneybags"
According to an investigation by Forbes (Ukraine) and stories from former Amstor employees, in the early 2000s, a then-unknown Donetsk businessman and, concurrently, our protagonist, Vladimir Vagorovsky, who by then had already amassed a small fortune distributing licensed alcohol and tobacco, opened the first Amstor-branded store in the capital of Donbass.
Back then (in 2003), stores of this format were a novelty in Donetsk. Amstor's only serious competitor in the regional market at the time was Vyacheslav Sobolev's Obzhora chain. Major players would arrive much later. Much to the surprise of Vagorovsky and his junior partners in the alcohol and tobacco distribution business, the newly opened store was quite successful.
Buoyed by this success, the businessman decided to scale the project, at least to the level of a regional retail chain. However, the financial resources to implement these ambitious plans were insufficient. Vagorovsky began actively searching for a business partner, or, more simply, a "moneybag," who could invest in the chain's development. Vagorovsky then turned to his old acquaintance, Eduard Shifrin, then co-owner of Zaporizhstal, whom he had met in the late 1990s at a resort in Greece. The early 2000s, as we recall, coincided with the "golden age" of Ukrainian metallurgy.
In short, Eduard Vladimirovich undoubtedly had available funds at the time, and the project seemed interesting to him. The parties agreed to cooperate on a 60%-40% basis. Shifrin became the majority shareholder. From that point on, the chain began to develop at an accelerated pace. Amstor entered the Zaporizhzhia and Luhansk regions. The Amstor chain's peak growth occurred in 2006-2008, when the chain expanded from 5 to 23 stores. The construction of shopping centers, the purchase of store equipment, and the leasing of retail space were financed primarily through bank loans.
But Shifrin also poured considerable sums into the company. The company's retail space grew by leaps and bounds. By the end of 2007, Amstor already had 19 stores in the east of the country. The company was building and designing 22 more shopping centers there. At the same time, Amstor's management never had strong financial experts who could estimate the "ceiling" at which the company should stop borrowing. The company's structure remained opaque, its accounting systems remained at the level of the 90s, and funds were mostly withdrawn into cash.
This was bound to lead to a tragic end, but during a period of overall consumer growth in Ukraine, retailers became the blue chips of the Ukrainian market, and Vagorovsky gave little thought to the future. He never allowed his majority partner into the sales department, always assuring him that he had nothing to worry about and that he knew how it all should work. Although he held a smaller stake in the business, Vagorovsky always acted like its owner. Shifrin, of course, wasn't particularly happy with this, but he was likely more focused at the time on the metallurgy business, which generated his main income.
This continued until the end of 2008. The economic crisis hit. The hryvnia devalued, and with it, the purchasing power of the population in the network's core regions. But the devaluation hit the company's loan portfolio even harder, as most of the loans raised for development were denominated in dollars. Shifrin was no longer able to salvage the situation, as the Ukrainian metallurgy industry had also suffered a significant decline during this period. Shifrin, who had invested approximately $77 million in the company, by conservative estimates, clearly no longer wanted to continue the partnership. He wanted to exit the business or at least minimize the debt burden incurred due to his partner's "effective" sole management. Therefore, he decided to bring the Vagorovskys together with his longtime acquaintance from the metallurgy business, Vadim Novinsky, the founder of Smart Group. The Vagorovskys desperately cling to this saving grace. As Novinsky himself later recalled, Vladimir Vagorovsky literally "spent the night" in his reception room, persuading him to enter the business.
The Amstor Group of Companies' debts at that time reached $300 million, 85% of which were U.S. dollar-denominated loans. Vagorovsky himself was under investigation for smuggling and document forgery, a logical conclusion to his attempts to conduct business illegally. Understandably, Novinsky was reluctant to acquire such a dubious asset. Nevertheless, the senior Vagorovsky's persistence, coupled with Shifrin's assurances, ultimately paid off, and in December 2009, the oligarch agreed to become a partner in the network.
In fact, the deal itself, formalized by the corresponding memorandum, stipulated that Smart-Holding would provide significant support for replenishing working capital, as well as loan guarantees, in exchange for a 70% stake (Shifrin and the Vagorovskys transferred 45% and 25% of the shares, respectively, to Smart-Holding, while retaining 15% of the group each). Today, in interviews, the younger Vagorovsky claims that Novinsky failed to fulfill his obligations under the agreement, allegedly promising the brothers $110 million. But journalists have unearthed the agreement between the future partners.
These colossal sums (in terms of market conditions and the negative value of the company) naturally do not appear there, and taking into account the text of the contract, the buyer even exceeded his obligations, as evidenced by the information below.
Rapid development
According to sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which is investigating the conflict between shareholders and has collected a broad evidence base, between 2009 and 2011, Novinsky injected approximately $30,5 million in cash into the network, and this does not include $50 million in guarantees from Smart Holding companies to banks (i.e., a total of more than $80 million).
These funds were provided to Amstor on both a non-repayable and repayable basis and were regarded by the majority shareholder as a necessary shareholder loan for the group's development. At the same time, retained earnings, the lion's share of which went to the same majority partner, were reinvested in the chain's development. Smart-Holding never distributed Amstor dividends.
Thanks to this support, by 2011 the network's financial position had become stable, the main loan portfolio was restructured, and the size of debt obligations, denominated primarily in dollars, was reduced by $55 million over the period 2010-2013. Since 2010, the network, previously a purely regional operator, based primarily in the Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia regions, with the support of the majority shareholder, began expanding into other regions of Ukraine.
The opening of its first store in the capital in 2012 earned the company the right to position itself as a national operator. By 2012, Amstor had firmly established itself among the top 10 Ukrainian retailers in terms of profitability and retail space. Between 2009 and 2013, the number of Amstor-branded stores increased from 23 to 38. Further expansion into Western Ukraine was planned. The company's total assets were valued at approximately $200 million at the beginning of 2014 (at an exchange rate of 8).
Characteristically, throughout their partnership with Smart, the Vagorovskys, while receiving substantial financial support from the majority shareholder, effectively continued to manage the network single-handedly. The brothers' stance in dealing with the holding, as with Shifrin, was simple: "We created this network and know how it works." Managers appointed to the company by Smart Holding and charged with business oversight were insulated from financial and legal information in various ways.
This was partly made possible by the elder Vagorovsky's trusting relationship with Vadim Novinsky. He even became Vladimir's godfather. It must be said that the Vagorovskys exploited this trust quite skillfully.
Napoleonic plans
This continued until 2013. But at some point, Vladimir Vagorovsky came up with the "brilliant" idea of establishing complete control over the burgeoning business, leaving the meddlesome majority shareholder with nothing.
Vagorovsky apparently found it very difficult to accept his role as a junior partner in a company he had developed, deftly exploiting the trust and, most importantly, considerable wealth of his partners. In all likelihood, sometime around the end of 2013, the brothers developed a clear plan to transfer all of Amstor Group's operations (retail, distribution, real estate (shopping centers), and construction (specialized equipment) to their own companies. They began systematically implementing it. The idea was simple: transfer the business to new structures, fully controlled by the Vagorovskys, while maintaining the debt burden of the old companies, in which Smart-Holding was listed as the majority shareholder. Incidentally, the interests of Shifrin, with his 15% stake and the $77 million he had spent, were clearly not considered in this scenario. This is evidenced by the fact that at the height of the conflict, Shifrin sided with Novinsky.
Scam history
Around March 2014, without notifying the senior partner, the Vagorovskys created OOO Amstor Trade, which, according to their plan, would become the chain's new parent company, gradually absorbing not only the retail business but also all of the group's real estate and transportation assets. The trick was that the name of the new company was virtually identical to the one approved by the majority shareholder's supervisory board six months earlier. The name was missing only a small hyphen. The approved legal entity was called OOO Amstor-Trade. This lulled the majority shareholder's vigilance and significantly simplified the task of explaining their subsequent actions to him. This was the case, for example, with the long-term lease of five stores from the Sarepta chain. Vagorovsky received permission from the holding's supervisory board for this transaction, valued at 35 million hryvnias. This money was taken from the turnover of OOO Trading House Amstor.
The buyer was supposed to be Amstor-Trade, but the actual counterparty in this deal was a "hyphenless" clone of Vagorovsky. To replenish the capital of this shell company, the Vagorovskys subsequently carried out a series of legally dubious financial transactions. One such transaction, for example, was the purchase by Amstor Trading House, at Vagorovsky's direction, of junk securities from a certain company, Lancelot LLC, for 15 million hryvnias. These funds, after a series of pseudo-transactions conducted in a single day, ultimately ended up as a loan to the accounts of the newly created Amstor Trade.
This served as a kind of seed capital, used to institutionalize the clone (obtaining licenses, permits, etc.). During this same period, the Vagorovskys created an artificial debt from Amstor LLC to their Amstor Trade. Amstor LLC owned all the real estate owned by the group of companies (GC) (in which Vagorovsky held a minority stake), including the main assets – shopping centers. In the future, if Amstor LLC went bankrupt, the new entity could easily lay claim to all the shopping centers.
Incidentally, the Vagorovskys didn't forget about more pressing matters during this period. For example, according to media reports, throughout 2014, TD Amstor, on the Vagorovskys' instructions, transferred 24 million hryvnias in installments to a company called Foxvippayment, founded by the elder Vagorovsky's common-law wife, Valeria Bondarenko, and her mother.
These funds were then loaned to Vagorovskyi to purchase an apartment in an elite high-rise building on Hrushevsky Street in Kyiv. We already mentioned this high-rise building at the beginning of this article; it was featured on the investigative journalism website "Nashi Groshi." Vladimir Vagorovskyi also used Amstor funds to purchase a luxury Mercedes worth UAH 1,8 million for himself. Amstor then sold this car to Vagorovskyi's driver for UAH 550. This was a fictitious transaction, designed to retain the expensive vehicle for personal use.
Over time, the entire cash flow of the group of companies was transferred to Vagorovsky's Amstor Trade, and suppliers and partners were trained to work with the new counterparty. The Vagorovskys' lawyers and managers conducted confidential conversations with vigilant suppliers, assuring them that the new company was "legal," despite its authorized capital of several thousand hryvnias, and that from now on, business would be conducted exclusively through it. According to the chain's employees, during this period, goods arriving from suppliers to stores were already being recorded as Amstor Trade. In other words, a kind of parallel reality was being created for the purpose of subsequently ripping off the senior partner. To conceal their actions, the brothers disconnected Amstor Group enterprises from the 1C system. The senior Vagorovsky artificially created a situation in which companies in which he was a minority shareholder stopped paying banks on loans (since the summer of 2014) and suppliers for goods (since the fall of 2014), accumulating multimillion-dollar debts. Subsequently, he will “send” all creditors to Smart Holding, saying that all the money is there.
Deal with the devil
Meanwhile, the situation in the east of the country was deteriorating significantly. Realizing that "it's easier to fish in troubled waters," the brothers began their final selection of businesses, starting with 18 stores in the ATO zone. In October 2014, without the knowledge of the majority shareholder, they registered a company called "Premiumtorg" in Donetsk. Olga Loboda, a relative of the wife of Sergei Cherkasov, now former IT director of the Amstor Group and a close associate of the Vagorovskys, was appointed director. Although also registered under Ukrainian law, the company effectively operated within the legal framework of the DPR. This was evidenced by receipts posted on social media by ordinary customers in December 2014, as well as documents subsequently discovered by police during searches of the former Amstor managers.
It's clear that the revenue from these stores was never officially reported anywhere; to put it simply, it was misappropriated. Smart-Holding estimates that the sums involved could be around 100 million hryvnias. Journalists from Forbes (Ukraine) also wrote about the operating schemes in the occupied territory, having obtained a printout of an email from Elena Smetana, a regional manager in Zaporizhzhia, informing the directors of Amstor supermarkets that, effective immediately, all operations in the ATO zone would be transferred to Premiumtorg (established in October 2014), and in Ukraine, to Amstor Trade (established in March 2014).
Vagorovsky's longtime friend Vadim Bondarenko, a member of Viktor Yanukovych's inner circle of exiled "young reformers," became their guide and consultant through the tax law of the non-existent "DPR." Interestingly, Bondarenko, through his mother, Nina Ivanovna, was a co-founder of the shell company, PKF Rekkom LLC, whose director was once the notorious figure and one-time "separatist number one," Pavel Gubarev.
It's worth noting that Bondarenko, who headed the Donetsk tax office, had previously assisted the Vagorovskys with tax matters, receiving generous compensation for it. Back in 2012, the Vagorovskys purchased an expensive BMW 7 sedan for him using funds from Amstor Trading House LLC. Bondarenko, in turn, "evaded" them from taxes as a form of gratitude. Now, Bondarenko, who had previously served in the "high offices" of the DPR, is organizing a similar tax "roof" for the Vagorovskys, but this time in the unrecognized republic.
The transfer of stores in the ATO zone to a new company without the majority shareholder's knowledge gave the Security Service and financial controllers from Smart-Holding a reason to take a closer look at the minority shareholder's activities. Furthermore, the Vagorovskys began hastily forcing employees to submit applications for transfer to legal entities under their control. All the aforementioned instances of fraud were uncovered. Vagorovsky initially attempted to justify himself, concocting a series of arguments for his actions, and then completely disappeared. Meanwhile, he continued to implement his schemes to appropriate businesses. He became particularly active in the ATO zone.
In the summer of 2014, market participants and ordinary citizens alike were perplexed as to how the chain continued to operate and replenish its supply of products during the large-scale military operations unfolding in Donbas. How did it manage its relationships with illegal armed groups? The secret was simple.
According to testimony from a former company manager close to the Vagorovskys and located in Donetsk at the time, the matter involved direct financing of terrorists. The network's regional director, Vyacheslav Gliznutsa, acted as the direct "communicator" in this matter. He was the person mentioned in the Ministry of Internal Affairs' announcement, which was posted on the law enforcement agency's website.
It was he, on orders from the senior Vagorovsky, who supplied food and cigarettes to the militants manning checkpoints in Donetsk and Horlivka that summer. The products were taken directly from Amstor warehouses. These deliveries were not documented. Everything was written off as defective, damaged, or spoiled. According to the source, in July 2014, Vladimir Korobkov, head of the Amstor Group's construction wing, on orders from Vagorovsky, handed over a Ford Transit to the "militia" for use.
Subsequently, this vehicle, equipped with heavy small arms, was repeatedly seen in Donetsk. In gratitude for the gift of the minibus, the DPR leadership issued V.A. Gliznutsa special vehicle passes. These were used for unimpeded movement throughout the temporarily occupied territories. Some of the documents bore the signature of the current head of the terrorist "DPR," Alexander Zakharchenko. Of course, the gifts weren't limited to food, cigarettes, and transportation.
At times, terrorists were paid in cash for unimpeded passage and the inviolability of stores, according to a mid-level company manager who fled the reprisals and hid in Zaporizhzhia. A recent press release from the Ministry of Internal Affairs revealed that this "fruitful" cooperation with the militants continued in the fall and winter of 2014-1015. Gliznutsa, not without the Vagorovskys' knowledge, effectively took over the Kalmius Battalion and other units that had stormed the legendary Donetsk airport.
During this period, in addition to unimpeded passage and bargaining, the DPR authorities, as a bonus, are allowing the Vagorovskys' stores to occupy the premises of other retail chains that have temporarily ceased operations in the occupied territory.
All these facts are featured in criminal cases opened by the SBU office in the Zaporizhzhia region, and later by the Main Investigative Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. In both cases, the charges are framed as "financing terrorism." Gliznuts has been charged and placed on the wanted list. Looking ahead, it should be noted that Multitorg (founded by Ruslan Zakharov, a lawyer close to the Vagorovskys) will later become the managing company of the stores across the border.
The company allegedly had Moscow roots. But how true this is is questionable, as it could have been a defensive move by the Vagorovskys against those in the "young republic" who had already set their sights on the network.
Another interesting episode recently surfaced, revealing the Vagorovskys' close ties to the circle of people who played a significant role in the establishment of the pseudo-republics in the east of the country. During a search of the aforementioned Vagorovsky Sr.'s apartment on Hrushevsky Street in Kyiv as part of the criminal case, Interior Ministry officers discovered a SIG-Sauer P229 award pistol, the documents for which were signed by Roman Romanov, the former chief of police of the Donetsk region who effectively surrendered Donetsk to the terrorists. As a reminder, according to renowned journalist Sonya Koshkina, Romanov was the person who literally led Pavel Gubarev by the hand to the final meeting of the then-legitimate Donetsk Regional Council.
According to sources in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, this combat pistol was acquired by the elder Vagorovsky, again through an illegal scheme, from a well-known Ukrainian arms company and later legitimized with the help of Romanov as a prize pistol.
The culmination of the conflict
In the ATO zone, the majority shareholder's "hands were tied," but in Ukrainian government-controlled territory, Smart-Holding took a number of actions that allowed it to protect its business. In December 2014, at a shareholders' meeting, Vagorovsky and the managers associated with him were removed from the management of the Amstor group of companies. And on New Year's Eve, the majority shareholder's lawyers visited all Amstor shopping centers to announce the management change.
As subsequent events showed, the Vagorovskys were prepared for such a move. Armed men seized the stores and remained in the shopping center until January 9, 2015. During this time, personnel and financial records, including employees' workbooks, were stolen, proceeds were taken away, and the IT infrastructure was completely destroyed.
Moreover, shortly before the open stage of the conflict, which received widespread media coverage, the Vagorovskys succeeded in implementing several key points of their plan. In December 2014, the Amstor trademark was illegally "sold" to Tradekommerts LLC for 3 million hryvnias. During the same period, the inventory and equipment of Amstor stores were "sold" and "re-registered" to Ukrlizpostach LLC, which subsequently resold them to MDMTORG LLC and Energo-Consult LLC. Both Tradekommerts and the latter two "firms" are associated with Nestorg LLC, which is wholly controlled by Vladimir Vagorovsky.
Former Amstor lawyers and managers who remained loyal to the Vagorovskys figure in the management bodies of these companies. All these schemes were carried out by a group of lawyers and managers led by Dmitry Minaev. His name was revealed by one of the lawyers, who decided to leave the Vagorovsky group and is actively cooperating with the investigation. According to him, all these transactions were fictitious, as the companies did not receive cash from the resale transactions, and the connection between the companies themselves in the authorized capital was established through collateral arrangements. This became known later, only during the law enforcement investigation.
Similar schemes were used to siphon off vehicles and expensive specialized equipment registered to the group's companies. These "scheme" transactions, with some differences, involved the same companies, which were ultimately linked to Nestorg. The methods used were standard—backdated document forgery, corrupt officials, and so on. This, for example, was the case with 39 vehicles and specialized equipment belonging to Trans-Bud LLC (Amstor Group), discovered by police in a parking lot in Zaporizhzhia. The equipment, valued at 17 million hryvnias and allegedly sold to Consolidated Construction Company LLC (managed by the same Ruslan Zakharov), was attempted to be illegally seized and resold to third parties with the help of law enforcement agencies.
As was subsequently established, the technical passports for this special equipment were issued to the KSK company in the so-called "DPR" by the Donetsk Expert and Technical Center of the State Mining Supervision Authority after the regional office of the State Mining Supervision Authority of Ukraine had been evacuated from Donetsk. Furthermore, the seals and signatures of the licensing authority officials were forged.
But an even more amusing incident involving the Group's equipment occurred much earlier. In April 2014, at the height of the events surrounding the annexation of Crimea, the Vagorovskys, having forged decisions of the highest constituent bodies of the Amstor chain and, without the knowledge of the group's main owners, transported 54 units of specialized construction equipment from Trans-Bud LLC to Crimea. There, the equipment was transferred to the authorized capital of Krymsky Passage LLC in exchange for a 65% stake in the said company. The founder and main owner of Krymsky Passage LLC is Natalia Lapenko, the sister of Sergei Lapenko, a Simferopol city council member from the Party of Regions who ardently supported the separatists and later joined the board of the public organization Opora Rossii.
In this way, the Vagorovskys likely hoped to participate in the massive infrastructure development of Crimea following its illegal annexation by the Russian Federation. However, these plans were never realized, as Lapenko, a would-be partner, exploited his connections within the inner circle of the self-proclaimed leader of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, and simply appropriated all the equipment for himself.
Today, all the equipment, worth over $3,5 million, some of which is pledged to FUIB, is located on the occupied peninsula. Rumor has it that it is planned to be actively used in the grandiose project to build a new terminal at Simferopol Airport.
All these facts have already become known to law enforcement, so Vagorovsky is in no hurry to return from abroad, from where he has been leading his group until now.
Resolution of the conflict
What about the Amstor shopping centers and their workforces? Despite the Vagorovskys' opposition, Smart-Holding managed to restore the chain's infrastructure. All documentation, licenses, and other necessary documents were also restored. Smart-Holding CEO Alexey Timofeev noted: "We have completed a significant amount of work to restore the retail chain's infrastructure and find co-investors for its development. SMART-HOLDING retained the shopping center teams and invested over UAH 150 million in the reopening of stores."
Smart-Holding recently released a statement announcing an agreement with FOZZY GROUP to implement a joint project to fully reopen the Amstor retail chain. This includes stores located outside the ATO zone. The stores will operate under the Silpo brand, while Amstor shopping centers will retain their original name.
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