On March 16, in the center of the village of Lipovets in the Kagarlytsky district of the Kyiv region, an emergency occurred in the style of the “dashing 90s.”
Right at a gathering of residents of the village of Lipovets in the Kagarlytsky district near Kyiv, in front of several dozen witnesses, men calling themselves fighters from the Donbass Battalion, led by former Verkhovna Rada member Volodymyr Bortnik, unabashedly seized Ivan Kaldin, director of the agricultural enterprise Rusava-K, and drove away in a car to an unknown location. He was found only that evening, brutally beaten and robbed. They stole a large sum of money intended for spring field work, which Kaldin was taking to the bank. Most importantly, Mr. Kaldin was carrying the company's charter documents, which the attackers also took, making the primary theory of the incident an attempted corporate raid on Rusava-K LLC by the aforementioned Vladimir Bortnik and his accomplices.
This story didn't begin yesterday. Back in 2001-2002, Vladimir Bortnik, chairman of the state-owned company Agrotech, used administrative resources to obtain 25 hectares of agricultural land in the Kagarlytskyi district of the Kyiv region and started a business there, registering the company ZAT International Agro-Industrial Corporation. While he had administrative resources at his disposal, business was successful. He used Agrotech equipment for his own purposes. However, when he was left behind at the state-owned company, his business declined. Bortnik bankrupted ZAT MAK by failing to pay a significant amount of taxes to the Ukrainian budget, as well as by failing to pay a number of suppliers and owners of land shares that he leased and immediately registered a new company, PSP Rosava. However, PSP Rosava also soon declared bankruptcy. As with ZAT MAK, taxes to the Ukrainian budget were not paid in full, nor were payments made to shareholders and suppliers. In both cases, all agricultural equipment was removed from the bankrupt company's ownership before bankruptcy and registered to a new company. Following the bankruptcy of PSP Rosava, a third company, Rusava-K LLC, was registered.
In 2008, Mark Paslawsky, a well-known New York investment banker in Ukraine (a US Special Forces major and ATO volunteer who died at the front in August 2014), lent Vladimir Bortnik $1,5 million. Bortnik was supposed to repay Paslawsky a year later. But he was unable to do so. He was forced to pay the majority of the loan in shares of Rusava-K LLC, amounting to 97,3%. Bortnik retained 2,7%. Meanwhile, Bortnik continued to consider himself a full co-owner of the company in which he was "attracting investment." He did this in a rather peculiar manner. He deposited cash into Rusava-K LLC's accounts, which he immediately withdrew to the accounts of other companies. Given Bortnik's dire financial situation, one might assume that this money was not his own, but that of Mark Paslawsky, whose trust Bortnik was not shy about exploiting.
And Mark Paslavsky understood this. Having uncovered Bortnik's shady dealings, he decided to divest his stake in Rusava-K, as he no longer wanted to work with him. Bortnik was deceiving Mark, artificially bankrupting his company. For Bortnik, this was a tried and tested scheme. He had similarly bankrupted the aforementioned International Agro-Industrial Corporation, Rosava Production and Supply Company, and the Sugar Factory, in which Rusava-K was a shareholder. Currently, MAK, a company artificially bankrupted by Vladimir Bortnik, owes UAH 12.7 million to the Ukrainian budget, and UAH 24.12 million to supplier companies (including payments for State Security Service services). Rosava's debt amounts to UAH 4567000. to the country's budget, and 12800000 hryvnias to suppliers. Moreover, these amounts were in hryvnias at the time, at the exchange rate of 5,05. Today, that's a completely different amount.
Bortnik has proven himself to be a highly ineffective manager, unable to conduct business fairly and without resorting to administrative leverage. Another example is PSP Pereselenske, also owned by Bortnik. It owes 1,5 million hryvnias to the Pension Fund and has numerous tax arrears. The company is ineffective. Furthermore, Bortnik, as an individual, is burdened with enormous debts to banks. Specifically, in 2013, the Joint-Stock Commercial Bank Kyiv alone sued Vladimir Bortnik to repay $2,224,525 in accordance with Loan Agreement No. 87 dated July 7, 2006.
One can only guess how many more such contracts Bortnik has. There's no doubt that the primary goal of all his schemes was to use Mark Paslavsky to pay off his debts.
Mark Paslavsky, who had lost interest in the agricultural business after dealing with this "business partner," repeatedly offered to buy out Rusava-K from Bortnik, but Bortnik refused due to a lack of funds. Mark then asked his acquaintance, Ivan Kaldin, to help find a potential investor. Kaldin complied with Paslavsky's request and found entrepreneur Leonid Moseychuk, who expressed interest in Rusava-K. Kaldin arranged a meeting between Moseychuk and Paslavsky. The parties reached an agreement for Paslavsky to sell the company's shares to Moseychuk, after which Moseychuk transferred the funds to Paslavsky. Simultaneously, lawyers for the new shareholder, Leonid Moseychuk, discovered that Bortnik had failed to contribute the authorized capital to Rusava-K LLC within the required timeframe, corresponding to his 2,7% stake. According to Ukrainian law, Bortnik was disqualified from Rusava-K. Moseychuk, having assumed 100% ownership of the enterprise, appointed Ivan Kaldin as director, setting him the task of making the enterprise profitable.
Today, Rusava-K is operating successfully. Modernization is underway. Plans call for switching to alternative fuels in the corn drying process to minimize dependence on gas prices. The company is a lucrative target for raiders with parliamentary protection. Or perhaps former MP Volodymyr Bortnyk and his friend and business partner, current MP Volodymyr Yavorivskyi, are the raiders themselves? Bortnyk has already initiated legal proceedings, claiming to be the true owner of Rusava-K LLC, although the company was owned by a company registered in the British Virgin Islands to Mark Paslavskyi, which sold Moseychuk a stake in its own authorized capital. The two Vladimirs—Bortnyk and Yavorivskyi—are not shy about exploiting a Ukrainian hero killed in the ATO for their own ends.
Volodymyr Yavorivsky deserves special mention. A renowned author of poems about Lenin and a signatory of the infamous 1973 letter of denunciation to KGB chief Andropov against Vasyl Stus and Vyacheslav Chornovil, Yavorivsky has been actively portraying himself as the "conscience of the nation" throughout the post-Soviet years of Ukraine's independence. Even so, decent people have long since abandoned him. Now this Leninist informer, hiding behind his parliamentary mandate and speculating on the names of modern Ukrainian heroes, is engaged in banal corporate raiding. Is there a limit to human cynicism? It seems there isn't. Yavorivsky is a living illustration of this. Vladimir Yavorivsky is interested in the murdered patriot Mark Paslavsky only as a pretext to incite fighters from the Donbass Battalion against the legitimate owners of an agricultural enterprise within his "area of interest," for his own selfish ends. If Verkhovna Rada deputy Yavorivskyi openly threatens farmer Ivan Kaldin with violence on National Radio, after which dozens of heavily armed fighters in full combat gear kidnap, torture, and rob him, what is this if not an example of absolute lawlessness and the sense of impunity of a man driven mad by his own power?
How will this story end? Will it continue, or will law enforcement and the Kagarlyk prosecutor's office let it slide, allowing Bortnik and Yavorivsky's gang to seize control of the agricultural enterprise? Will the district residents who work for Rusava-K LLC live and work in peace, or will they have to wait for their fate to be decided by raiders with parliamentary mandates? I sincerely hope that justice will prevail in this attempted hostile takeover of an agricultural company, and that those responsible will receive their just deserts, regardless of their high status.
There is no power
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