Grigory Tripulsky
In times of turmoil, scoundrels and thieves act brazenly and unscrupulously, following the ironclad rule of fishing in troubled waters. Ukraine is currently at war, and the country is balancing on the brink of economic crisis—it's no surprise that crooks and swindlers of all stripes are taking center stage.
So, meet the eminence grise of Odessa's criminal underworld, Grigory Yakovlevich Tripulsky. A former drug dealer and member of the Odessa City Council, he is the managing partner of the legal consulting firm "De-Iure." He is also the de facto protector and attorney for raiders, thieves, and murderers.
G. Tripulsky started his business by distributing drugs. He is well remembered by surviving addicts who quit in time. Konstantin R. (name changed for security reasons) shared his memories of that time with us: “Zhora ran a couple of brothels and a network of dealers back then. Heroin, coke, and pills—commodities for the elite. The sons of rich kids and hard-currency prostitutes stocked up with him. He was ruthless with debtors—it was either money or their lives. If there was no money, he'd take their cars and apartments. If there was nothing else, he'd roll them in a 'can' (an iron barrel in which a debtor was filled with concrete alive). Then he got up and went out of business.”
Mentions of this dark past can also be found on social media. However, it takes a lot of digging to find them. Any comments that contain even the slightest hint of our hero's involvement in drug trafficking are mercilessly purged.
Gambling Baron
The first notable steps in G. Tripulsky's public career were connected to the gambling industry. In the 2000s, he worked as the head of the legal department at Nevada, a chain of large casinos. There, he rose to the post of head of the Association of Gambling Industry Professionals. As head of this organization, Tripulsky lobbied hard to promote the interests of the large gambling industry, which was built on the ruined lives of hundreds of thousands of gamblers, bankrupt businesses, and shattered families.
"While God spared alcoholics and drug addicts, he certainly wouldn't spare gambling addicts!" – that's how psychiatrists describe this addiction in professional circles. It's the most powerful of all addictions. And, more often than not, two other addictions are added to it. The money earned in this field is inherently dirty and foul-smelling.
However, this never stopped Tripulsky. Only an unfortunate incident halted the business's prosperity: on May 7, 2009, nine people died in a fire at the Metro Jackpot gambling establishment in Dnipropetrovsk. Then, under public pressure, parliament passed a law banning gambling establishments.
Unfortunately, legalization of the gambling business is one of the IMF's requirements. Ukraine has committed, at the government level, to draft a bill by the end of 2018 that would give the green light to gambling establishments. Behind the scenes, none other than Tripulsky is lobbying for this issue! Both the bill's developers and journalists are turning to him as an expert. Is the baron's return just around the corner? Although he never left – after the law was passed, Tripulsky openly declared his business was moving online, where casinos are not governed by any laws, and the prescribed algorithms operate in such a way that players have no chance of winning.
Tripulsky's transition from the gambling business was radical – he became a lawyer. Apparently, he concluded that gambling and drugs were not good for him. Therefore, it was more profitable to manage other people's "property." Meaning, businesses and property. "De jure," as his firm is called, is a consulting firm. De facto, it protects corporate raiders.
Moreover, to create an alibi and the image of a fighter for rights and the law, Tripulsky regularly attends Ministry of Justice events dedicated to combating this criminal enterprise. Meanwhile, the firm's lawyers regularly participate in scandalous showdowns, defending raiders, as recently happened in Mykolaiv, where thugs from Dnipro attempted to "squeeze" a cafe on one of the central streets.
Debt collectors, supported by Tripulsky's firm, recently made their presence known in Odessa's Cheryomushki district, where they literally intimidated an elderly man to death. The man, who had borrowed 3000 hryvnias for medication, was charged a penalty of approximately 50,000 hryvnias by the shady lawyers. Daily calls to him and his relatives drove the pensioner to suicide, hanging himself in his own apartment. His family told us this story after the funeral—now Tripulsky's lawyers and debt collectors are demanding repayment!
Remarkably, judging by G. Tripulsky's Facebook page and media activity, the range of his interests is steadily expanding. His company is currently preparing to introduce a land market. It's scary to think what awaits the farms in the Odesa region, which have already been terrorized by raiders. After all, they often rent land from people whose shares are such a lucrative target for lawyers like Tripulsky.
Accomplices and schemes – the seizure of apartments and businesses
Fake court decisions, corrupt notaries, and unscrupulous thugs—all it takes to extort apartments from the elderly and those with addictions. In Odesa, the number of victims runs into the thousands. People simply disappear from their apartments, which are fraudulently resold several times within a matter of days. As a result, the real buyers have no idea at what cost they're getting their square footage. Grigoriy Tripulskyi has his own people in the administration, the courts, his own notaries, and prosecutors.
One of the prominent figures in his circle is Igor Makhortov, the former head of the legal department of the Primorsky District Administration of Odessa and now Tripulsky's operative at the Municipal Enterprise "Registration Service of Odessa Oblast." With this man's help, Tripulsky's firm expanded in the Primorsky District, confiscating apartments from elderly people.
In 2012, a lonely pensioner, musician Anatoly Strelyaev, found himself on the street. One day, new owners simply appeared in his apartment and installed a security door. The criminals operated according to the following scheme: someone allegedly rents an apartment in the same building, then discovers an unsanitary, empty apartment next door. With a local district administration order signed by Makhortov, he moves into the apartment. He then legalizes his residence through the courts. Of course, there's no empty apartment—a lonely man has been living there all this time, seen by neighbors every day. But neither the court nor Makhortov notices him.
Another scheme that surfaced involved the seizure of communal apartments. Initially, they were issued to front men—janitors and plumbers who were registered with the Primorsky Housing and Utilities Service. Moreover, the issuance was illegal—most of the recipients hadn't even worked at the Housing and Utilities Service for six months! Both Makhortov and the then-chairman of the district administration were implicated in this scheme. But the criminal case was quickly hushed up... And Makhortov resurfaced again, this time as a registrar.
In this position, Tripulsky's accomplice was exposed in March of this year, assisting corporate raiders in seizing OAO Odesa House-Building Plant. With Makhortov's help, the subtenants, who had launched the violent takeover, forged documents that transformed a prefabricated structure on the plant's premises into a coherent property complex with separate premises. Under this pretext, the corporate raiders attempted to seize the plant's assets. This lawlessness was only stopped after the intervention of high-ranking officials from the Cabinet of Ministers.
Unfortunately, the facts we know are just the tip of the iceberg. Tripulsky himself and his accomplices are diligently covering their tracks, employing both criminals and programmers who scrub negative posts and comments from the internet. And today, virtually every elderly, lonely person in Odessa is under threat.
DOSSIER: Grigory Tripulsky: Lawyer for Raiders and One-Armed Bandits. PART 2
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