Serhiy Tsyupko (pictured) cheated his home country out of hundreds of millions of hryvnias.
Despite Ukreximbank's efforts, the Kyiv Jewelry Factory was sold to a shell company registered to a former manager of Tavrika Bank. Its owner was believed to be the Kyiv Jewelry Factory's owner, Sergei Tsupko.
Until 2013, the Kyiv Jewelry Factory (KYF) was the largest jewelry manufacturer in the country, with annual revenues exceeding half a billion hryvnias. In 2015, the company was declared bankrupt, and recently, as OLIGARKH discovered , its assets were mysteriously auctioned off, bypassing its key creditor, the state-owned Ukreximbank. The bank now claims that KYF's assets were sold without its knowledge. OLIGARKH discovered that their new owner is Etalon-Consulting LLC, which registered ownership of the assets removed from the jewelry factory on January 17 and 18, 2017.
This LLC was established in November 2016, and its director and co-founder is Kyiv resident Alexander Bakayev. According to information "OLIGARCH"Previously, he was the head of the active operations sector and deputy head of the supervisory board of Tavrika Bank, which, prior to its insolvency, was effectively controlled by Serhiy Tsupko, owner of the Kyiv jewelry factory. According to sources at OLIGARKH, the Museum of Contemporary Fine Arts of Ukraine LLC, founded by Tsupko, even pledged a collection of paintings valued at the astronomical sum of 10 billion hryvnias to the National Bank. However, after the bank was placed under temporary administration, it was discovered that this collateral had simply disappeared, and last year the Museum of Contemporary Fine Arts of Ukraine was successfully liquidated.
Until 2012, Sergei Tsupko's business was doing quite well. Tsupko controlled Tavrika Bank, the 39th-largest bank by assets, the Yugozaptransstroy Trust (YuZTS), which built tens of thousands of meters of housing in the capital, and the aforementioned Kyiv Jewelry Factory. But Tsupko's overreliance on his construction business, which failed to withstand the crisis, was his downfall. "About 30% of the loan portfolio, or 1,2 billion hryvnias, went to related entities," claimed Sergei Kryzhanovsky, a lawyer for the affected Tavrika depositors. Almost the entire amount was lent to companies connected to Tsupko's construction business between 2007 and 2011, secured by real estate. Consequently, Yugozaptransstroy dragged Tavrika Bank down with it, and then the Kyiv Jewelry Factory.
Tsupko desperately tried to wrest the jewelry factory from the hands of creditors, led by Ukreximbank, which became the main creditor of the jewelry factory during the company's bankruptcy proceedings in 2014, demanding UAH 125 million for an unpaid loan of $10,5 million received by the jewelry factory in 2011. In November 2016, the liquidator won the right to sell the assets at public auction in the commercial court. Ukreximbank and the second creditor, Sberbank (its claim is slightly over UAH 10 million), filed appeals, which were upheld on January 10, 2017. They suspected that the asset value was undervalued. But despite the ban and the suspension of the license of the liquidator of the jewelry factory, Taras Tarasenko, the property was sold.
Before the auction, the Kyiv Juice Plant's assets were valued at 406 million hryvnias (the total amount of creditors' claims against the plant). This valuation was close to the market value. For example, in 2013, Forbes asked two investment bankers to estimate the value of the plant, and they suggested a range of 350-500 million hryvnias. However, in mid-January, the assets (real estate, securities, equipment, jewelry), as OLIGARKH discovered, were sold for just over 100 million hryvnias at an auction allegedly held in Kyiv at a now-defunct address, 6 Lepse Boulevard (renamed Vaclav Havel Boulevard in the fall). Ukreximbank now claims that the cost of raw materials for jewelry production was underestimated by 2,5 times, and the value of the jewelry by 5,5 times.
"According to the inspection report prepared by representatives of JSC Ukreximbank on January 13, 2017, no auction was held at the above-mentioned address," the Shevchenkivskyi District Court stated in its January 20 filing, following an appeal by the Main Investigative Department of the Security Service of Ukraine (the Prosecutor General's Office oversees the proceedings) in criminal case No. 12015100070001990. As a result, at the instigation of the SBU, the Shevchenkivskyi Court recently seized all assets alienated in favor of Etalon-Consulting LLC. "The liquidator of PJSC KYUZ, by deceiving creditors, including representatives and officials of JSC Ukreximbank, deliberately understated the value of OJSC KYUZ's assets on its balance sheet and illegally sold them," the Shevchenkivskyi Court stated in its filing.
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