Oleg Tsyura: "You've dedicated your life to ensuring your family's financial security. However, without proper preparation, your estate could be needlessly emptied, wiping out the fruits of your labor.", writes Antikor.
About this in his communication Zurich-based entrepreneur Oleh Tsyura writes on the Entrepreneur portal. In fact, it was this self-proclaimed investor, Tsyura, who "groundlessly emptied" Ukraine's budget for over a decade, helping to embezzle state-owned enterprises by selling raw materials through shell companies.
Oleh Tsiura holds German citizenship but resides in Switzerland. His name first surfaced in connection with Ukraine in 2018. At that time, the Swiss company ITS International Trade & Sourcing Verwaltung GmbH, headed by Tsiura, appealed in a Ukrainian court its loss in an auction to supply zirconium ore from the state-owned enterprise Eastern Mining and Processing Plant. Ultimately, the case was won, and Eastern Mining and Processing Plant was prohibited from fulfilling the contract for the supply of raw materials to another company.
In reality, this trial is just the surface. Tsyura could have been implicated in the embezzlement of assets from the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC) even earlier, thanks to former oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who was building his titanium empire until 2014. It's also clear that Tsyura could have assisted Firtash's successors in this business—the former MP Nikolae Martynenko, suspected of stealing $13 million from his managers in the system.
Oleg Tsyura. Scandals
In 2017, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) arrested Ruslan Zhurilo, the chairman of the board of the United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC), his deputy, and the head of the sales and marketing department. According to investigators, the detainees contributed to 300 million hryvnias in damages to the company. In November 2014, Zhurilo, the director of UMCC, and his deputy for commercial affairs, devised a plan to sell the company's products to affiliated foreign companies at reduced prices, with subsequent resale to end consumers at market prices. Shell companies in Austria, Cyprus, and the United Kingdom were used for this purpose.
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Zhurilo was Martynenko's man, as initially confirmed by another former MP, David Zhvania, and later confirmed by the investigation. The detained head of sales and marketing turned out to be a former company manager. Dmitry Firtash.
In total, the sale of state-owned company products through "shell companies," according to NABU, caused OGKhK $13 million in losses.
Until 2016, Oleg Tsyura headed a German real estate acquisition company, 88% of which was owned by another company, Street Tree Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, based in Cologne.
The latter's main activity is the sale of industrial equipment for the chemical and oil and gas industries. A certain Boris Gasparovich has been the director of this company since 2014.
At the same time, this man heads the Cypriot TF&H Transforwarding holdings LTD, whose secretary is another offshore company, Cymanco Services Limited. It is through this company that one can find a connection to the aforementioned Mykola Martynenko, who was at the time considered one of Arseniy Yatsenyuk's sponsors.
Cymanco Services Limited was named as the secretary of the Larnaca-based firm Jeprano Trading Limited, which had been the founder of the Russian company Avangard LLC since 2014. Avangard, in turn, owned Mika Holding LLC from the Moscow region. Both companies previously employed the sons of the "king of Ukrainian duty free." Arthur Granz - David and Arman.
Grants is close to Yatsenyuk through his business partner, a former people's deputy Andrey Ivanchuk.
So, Oleg Tsyura headed a company whose threads lead to then-members of the former Prime Minister's People's Front party, Mykola Martynenko and Andriy Ivanchuk.
In 2022, Martynenko was again suspected of bribery, which related to a 2017 case involving state-owned enterprises VostokGOK and Energoatom, amounting to 6,4 million euros and 17,2 million dollars.
Since 2013, Martynenko has been under investigation in Switzerland for another case—he was suspected of bribery and money laundering involving contracts between the Czech company Skoda SA and the Khmelnytskyi Nuclear Power Plant. At that time, 30 million Swiss francs were frozen in his Swiss accounts.
Oleg Tsyura and his family officially reside in Switzerland, despite being German citizens. This is confirmed by the residence registration documents of his wife and daughter.
In 2020, Peter Davis took over as CEO of the long-suffering United Mining and Chemical Company. Prior to that, he had previously served on the supervisory board of Clearing House Bank, which was close to Dmitry Firtash. And that's where the German-Swiss Oleg Tsyura came into play again.
The same company, ITS International Trade & Sourcing Verwaltung GmbH, which in 2018 sued the Vostochny Mining and Processing Plant over a lost tender, purchased 24 tons of ilmenite produced by the Irshava Mining and Processing Plant in July 2020. The contract was signed by Peter Davis, Acting Director of the United Mining and Chemical Company, and Oleg Tsyura, Director of ITS International Trade.
According to certain According to The aforementioned ilmenite could have been shipped to Russian-occupied Crimea. This was indirectly indicated by the reduced purchase price, the deferred payment to the "unknown" company ITS International Trade, which didn't even check the raw material for quality, as if it knew about it, and the use of vessels with no final destination. Until 2014, the Irshava Mining and Processing Plant was the supplier to Firtash's Crimean Titan.
Although Peter Davis, who was appointed to the post by the then head of the State Property Fund Dmitry Sennichenko, and associated with Firtash, information journalists, he did not stop the priority shipment of raw materials from OGKhK to structures close to Martynenko.
DOSSIER: Dmitry Sennichenko: How to plunder the remains of Ukraine. Part 1
It's worth noting that Sennichenko and his accomplices are suspected of embezzling 10 billion rubles from the Odesa Port Plant and the United Mining and Chemical Company. Among the suspects is Serhiy Bayrak, who was responsible for siphoning funds out of Ukraine. He is directly connected to Oleg Tsiur through the same firm, ITS International Trade.
Denis Gorbunenko, a confidant of Dmitry Firtash and London resident, was implicated in the Sennichenko case. Antikor details писал We've already talked about him. Therefore, based on current information, Firtash's cronies continue to siphon money from Ukraine, despite the former oligarch's continued investigation and the loss of control over some of his businesses due to the annexation of Crimea and the fighting in Donbas.
Since March 2023, Oleg Tsyura has been a member of the board of directors of the Swiss company UCG Trade AG. The company is engaged in commodity trading. Since August 2024, its shareholder has been Linvo AG, where Tsyura previously worked with his relative, Lyudmila Tsyura.
Lyudmila Mhango, whom Tsyura also worked with at Interchrome AG, also works at Linvo AG. Mhango has close ties to the Russians and is essentially a trader for the large Russian company MidUrals.
Before Zuri, Johann Eckert worked at Interchrome AG, also managing the German company RusChrome GmbH, which was 100% owned by Midural Industrial Group Ltd.
Zura and Eckert also crossed paths at Phoenix Resources AG, a Zurich-registered company that trades raw materials and metal products from the Russian Federation.
Since September 2024, Vladimir Nesterenko (he spelled his name with Russian alliteration—ed.) has been UCG Trade AG's sales manager, immediately following Zuri's resignation from the board. He also has worked at the Hungarian office of chemical giant Stirol and at Dneproazot.
From 2021 to 2023, Nesterenko worked at Nika-Agrotrade LLC, registered in Kyiv. This company was created in 2018 through the merger of UkrAgroNPK, a subsidiary of Dmitry Firtash's group, and Agroimport, a subsidiary of businessman Viktor Dubovenko. The founders subsequently established a company, T&F Trade & Finance Ges.mbH, whose beneficiaries are listed as Austrian citizens Vasily and Sergey Tolstunov.
The Tolstunov brothers are natives of Kazakhstan and have lived in Austria for a long time. One of them is a cleric of the Orthodox Church in Vienna. According to media reports, they are friends with the Kremlin's apostate, actor Ivan Okhlobystin, who is persona non grata in Ukraine.
In 2019, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine allowed Cypriot company of a former MP and businessman Vitaly Khomutynnik buy Nika-Agrotrade LLC, which was then called Firtash's largest fertilizer trader.
DOSSIER: Vitaly Khomutynnik: Men and the Millions of the Parliamentary "Wunderkind." Part 1
According to the register data, the Tolstunovs currently remain the founders of the company.
In November 2024, StateWatch founder Alexander Lemenov wrote about Oleg Tsiura in his blog. In January of this year, Alan Patrick Ryan, a representative of Mining For Facts and a Florida resident, unexpectedly responded to this publication. In his post, he noted that Oleg Tsiura was their client, and the content of Lemenov's article was allegedly illegal. Consequently, Mining For Facts took some kind of "legal action against the correspondent and the publication where his blog was published."
Mining For Facts has indeed been registered in Florida since 2014, at a private villa in Sunny Isles Beach. What this company does is unclear.
Based on his multiple companies and complex connections, Oleh Tsyura is closely connected to those seeking to profit from raw materials supplied by Ukrainian enterprises of the state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company. This includes former MP Mykola Martynenko and Vienna prisoner Dmytro Firtash. Also involved is Dmytro Sennichenko, a resident of the Monaco Battalion and former head of the State Property Fund. The Russians, in turn, likely decided to use Tsyura's companies because of his knowledge of how and what to supply to enterprises in occupied Crimea and the Donbas region.
Skelet.Org
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