Pavel Fuks: Ukrainian-Russian Billionaire or Nomadic Swindler from Kharkiv? Part 1
At the very height of the “hybrid war with the Russian aggressor,” which the president regularly broadcast to the entire world Poroshenko And then Zelensky, Moscow businessman Pavel Fuks appeared in Ukraine and began buying up its assets. He has been equally successful in his dealings with both former Donetsk gangsters and those close to the current Ukrainian president. Fuks also claims to be an old friend of Kharkiv Mayor Kernes, although their connection is far greater than he admits to journalists. But who really is this man, whom many mistakenly perceive as a successful oligarch and real estate developer, and why did he appear in Ukraine?
Gepa and his team
Pavel Fuks's childhood and youth are a dark spot in his biography, which only becomes more or less clear in the 90s, when he moved to Moscow. And what did he do before that? According to Fuks himself, he started his first business while still in Soviet school: reselling imported cigarettes to his classmates for 50 kopecks apiece, which he allegedly bought for 3 rubles a pack from the doorman at the Intourist hotel. Fuks also claims that it was then that he began his long-standing friendship with Gennady Kernes и Mikhail Dobkin.
Well, let's turn to the facts and available sources. Pavel Yakovlevich Fuks was born on October 26, 1971, in Kharkiv, to Yakov Lazarevich and Bella Iosifovna. In the 80s, they owned a private house on the outskirts of Kharkiv (on Deputatskaya Street, right near Logachivka) and an apartment in Saltovka, in a multi-story building at 11 Korchagintsev Street. The latter is located just a few hundred meters from 2a Eidemana Street, where he lived with his parents at the time. Mikhail Dobkin. And although there was a two-year difference between the boys, they could easily have gone to the same school and even been friends.
They could, if not for one “but”: in this triangle, the problematic angle was Gennady Kernes, who then lived in Novye Domy (Newton, 129). It would have been problematic for Fuchs to be friends with both Dobkin and Kernes, because back then, the two existed in parallel universes. And it wasn't a matter of age (Kernes is 10 years older than Dobkin and 12 years older than Fuchs). Misha Dobkin was simply an easy-going teenager, helping his father first at the store and then at the co-op, while Gennady Kernes was his opposite—a street scammer named Gepa, who and his gang would either scam or lie in wait for hapless suckers outside the auto shop. As the saying goes, the prince and the pauper! Therefore, the logical conclusion is that Pavlik Fuchs was hanging out with one of them at the time. According to one version (and there are varying accounts of Fuchs's youth), Pavlik first became friends with Dobkin, and only then, through him, "connected" with Gepa. He followed him, captivated by the dashing romance of the "tough guys."
And now it all fits together. After all, Fuchs was lying wildly about his highly profitable cigarette trade (he claimed to sell two packs a day). Of course, Kharkiv boys in the mid-80s had a huge appetite for imported cigarettes, but only the "special" ones could be sold for fifty kopecks apiece—and they were bought only to try or "show off," so Fuchs wouldn't have had a brisk trade among his poor classmates. And one more detail: the doormen at the Intourist restaurant back then would immediately turn away teenagers asking to sell cigarettes and gum; only insiders—very good acquaintances and regular small-scale wholesale buyers, in other words, black marketeers—could buy them there. The black marketeers "gifted" some of their merchandise to street thugs like Gepa and his crew, which included high-school students. And an important final detail: Pavlik Fuchs was a serious boxer in his youth. Thus, the following picture emerges: high school student Pavel Fuks hung out with Gepa's gang of thugs, which is how he got his hands on imported goods (cigarettes, chewing gum). Furthermore, Gepa's boys weren't exactly poor, as they regularly made a buck through a variety of means. But Pavel Fuks wisely keeps the details of their activities under wraps, so as not to compromise either himself or his friend Kernes. At the same time, he once felt the urge to publicly boast that, even as a high school student, he hadn't lived solely on his parents' lunch money but had also managed to earn his own. So he brought to light the most innocuous episode from his youth, recalling how he once sold a pack of menthol cigarettes to his classmates—turning it into a whole story about the young businessman's well-established business.
Well, if Pavel Fuks's most harmless activity in his youth was selling cigarettes to minors, then one can only guess about the assignments he carried out for Gepa...
Gennady Kernes and Pavel Fuks
Pavel Fuks and Moscow-City
Mikhail Dobkin's parents long shielded their son from Gepa's corrupting influence, and they could have also informed Pavel Fuks's parents of the unsavory company their offspring had fallen in with. Who knows how this family drama would have ended if Gepa hadn't ended up behind bars in 1989-90, accused of a number of crimes. The future Kharkiv mayor spent two years undergoing psychiatric evaluation at the notorious 15th Hospital, then in pretrial detention—and was released just in time for the criminal reorganization of Kharkiv, which significantly decimated the ranks of the "brotherhood." Gepa's clique temporarily disintegrated, which had a beneficial effect on Pavel Fuks's future: his parents enrolled him in the economics department of the Kharkiv Institute of Civil Engineering (KhISI, now the University of Construction and Architecture). In 1992, while still a student, Pavel Fuks landed his first official job: as an advisor to the general director of the joint venture "Trading House Intrada," which was undergoing a transformation at the time (the former Soviet-American joint venture was being divided between Russia and Ukraine). It is reported that Fuks was placed there by his parents, who were directly involved in the enterprise. Whether he was involved in any commercial activity there or simply on the payroll remains unknown, but Fuks proudly listed "Intrada" (a company that sold everything) in his biography.
And in 1995, a new high-profile entry appeared in Fuks's biography: advisor to the chairman of the board of Prominvestbank. But whether this was the Ukrainian Prominvestbank—one of the largest in the country—or its Moscow namesake, a rather mediocre financial institution at the time, was never specified. Well, there's no need to specify; it was the Russian Prominvest, because Pavel Fuks had just then fled to Moscow—that's what people called his sudden departure from Kharkiv, the reasons for which are practically unknown. However, according to unconfirmed information, practically rumors, received Skelet.OrgFuks fled Ukraine after swindling either a company or a government agency. Gennady Kernes was allegedly involved in this incident, helping his old friend escape and even recommending him to his Moscow contacts.
Sergei Batozsky with his father
According to information from another source Skelet.OrgPavel Fuks's departure to Moscow and subsequent "employment" in the capital was orchestrated by Sergei Batozsky (nicknamed "Baton"). This man, although the son of the respected Soviet wrestling coach Stanislav Batozsky, had pursued a criminal career as a con man since his youth. He was an old friend of Gepa's and, therefore, may have known Fuks since the 80s. By the 90s, Baton was already a major crime boss and Kernes's business partner, and even the police disagreed on which of the two was whose henchman. Baton had extensive connections, running businesses not only in Kharkiv but also in Moscow: with Silverst, the leader of the Orekhovskaya gang; with the Kuznetsov brothers, leaders of the Kemerovo gang; with Chechen organized crime groups; and with the "authorities" Maleya, General, and Alik Moskovsky. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Baton was involved in a variety of activities in Moscow, from wholesale trade to drug trafficking (cocaine). It was in Moscow that he was killed in 2001 after a conflict with the Luzhniki gang.
However, sources clarify, in Moscow, Pavel Fuks went into business under the guidance of Yuriy Dement, another mutual acquaintance and business partner of Botozsky and Kernes. This is the same Dement whose murder in Kharkiv in 2016 became a high-profile criminal incident and remains unsolved. After that tragedy, a journalist gloomily remarked that Kernes's old friends were dying one after another, and Fuks needed to be more careful.
Back in the 90s, Dement got Fuks into a legitimate business, albeit under the protection of an organized crime group, working for gangster firms. Fuks did indeed sell anything that sold well—he tells journalists the truth here, though he doesn't mention that he wasn't a lone businessman who came to Moscow to try his luck. Fuks's business flourished especially in the late 90s, when Batozsky himself fled to Moscow to escape the Kharkiv police. Immediately after Batozsky's move to Moscow, the Foreign Trade Corporation (ZAO Vneshekonomika Korporatsiya), a wholesale trade company in automobiles and motorcycles, was established, and in 1999, Pavel Fuks became its vice president. Simultaneously, Pavel Fuks graduated in absentia from the Faculty of World Economy at the Plekhanov Russian University of Economics (although malicious gossip claimed his diploma was a gift from the "brothers").
Sergei Batozsky's murder occurred just as he was beginning to develop a construction business in Moscow, and he brought Pavel Fuks into the fold—he was the only one of Batozsky's trusted confidantes who understood construction (he had, after all, graduated from KhISI, albeit in economics). Following the crime boss's murder, significant changes occurred in his bereaved circle. It was decided to use organized crime group funds to create several companies, including Techinvest LLC, of which Pavel Fuks was one of the founders. He essentially became the manager of the organized crime group's money invested in the construction business.
But criminal protection alone wasn't enough to develop the Moscow construction business, as all permits and contracts were issued by the Moscow mayor's office. And so, back in the 90s, Baton's organized crime group set its sights on the rapidly growing Engeocom corporation, owned by Mikhail Rudyak. The key to Rudyak's success was his personal acquaintance with Yuri Luzhkov, who in 1997 gave him Manezhnaya Square for reconstruction. Even then, Rudyak had acquired a partner, Alexander Shishkin—a future State Duma deputy from United Russia, known in the 90s as a criminal businessman managing the money of the Kemerovo gang.
Mikhail Rudyak
By 2000, Rudyak had a dozen and a half subsidiaries (one for each major construction project), but then he suffered a near-accident: he fell from a snowmobile and suffered a head injury. While hospitalized, his business collapsed due to a takeover attempt by certain influential individuals, but in 2002, Engeocom began to recover, thanks to a hand from members of Batozsky's former organized crime group. Given the late Batozsky's close ties to the Kemerovo gang, this shouldn't be surprising. And the most prominent figure among the Batozsky gang, practically their representative, was Pavel Fuks, who became chairman of the board of directors of Engeocom-Invest, another specially created subsidiary of Engeocom. But this collective portrait would be incomplete without another active participant in those events: the scandalous Kazakh businessman Mukhtar Ablyazov, whom President Nazarbayev pardoned in the spring of 2003. Ablyazov immediately appeared in Moscow, where he joined Rudyak and Fuchs, creating and later heading the Eurasia Investment and Industrial Group. They all decided to participate in the Russian capital's most ambitious construction project: the Moscow-City complex.
Mukhtar Ablyazov
The involvement of representatives of two organized crime groups and a world-famous swindler from Kazakhstan in the project was bound to end without scandal and a funeral, especially after Engeocom's projects generated nearly a billion dollars in 2005-2006, instantly elevating its founder to the list of Russia's richest people. And so it happened that he was the first to be buried: in May 2007, Mikhail Rudyak suddenly fell ill during a flight and died suddenly. The official cause of death was listed as a cerebral hemorrhage due to an old head injury he had sustained seven years earlier. However, his death was strange and sparked widespread speculation. Not only was it suspicious that before his death, Mikhail Rudyak had completely escalated his relationship with his wife, who demanded a divorce and division of property (the businessman enjoyed affairs with famous actresses and died in the arms of Evgenia Kryukova). Several months before Rudyak's death, his partners reorganized their companies. Specifically, Pavel Fuks merged the companies (both those wholly controlled by him and those with a shareholding in Rudyak's) involved in the Moscow City projects into the holding company MosCity Group (MCG). After Rudyak's death, Fuks easily wrested the deceased's share from his heirs (his wife, son, and daughter), who had little opportunity to object to partners with such a criminal past. This made Pavel Fuks the majority owner of MCG—but it was only the beginning of a major scam!
Big Scams: Yeltsin's Ghost and Putin's Shadow
Behind the glass walls of Moscow City, the skyscrapers intended to symbolize the new Russia of the 21st century, lie the criminal secrets of their creators and owners. From the very beginning, the project involved companies and firms owned by individuals with criminal records or created using organized crime "common funds." So, Pavel Fuks's Techinvest and Mukhtar Ablyazov's Eurasia had quite "reputable" business partners there!
Among them, the Guta Group is worth noting, which included Guta Bank (now VTB-24), Guta Insurance, Guta Development, and other divisions. From the very beginning, Guta owned 38% of the shares of OAO City, a company created for the commercial management of Moscow City. And the founders and owners of Guta were a trio of rather remarkable individuals! The first was Yuri Gushchin (born 1944), who constantly claimed to be a former Soviet "tsekhovik" (workshop worker), supposedly serving time for illegal candy production and then becoming a successful businessman in the newly free Russia. In fact, citizen Gushchin had been convicted in the USSR four times: for theft of state property, for burglary, and twice for fraud, spending a total of 22 years behind bars! His partner, Yuri Khlebnikov, was convicted of fraud twice (in 1973 and 1980), the second time in a joint case involving large-scale embezzlement of state funds in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg). According to law enforcement, a regional party official was implicated in that embezzlement: Yuri Petrov, the third secretary of the Sverdlovsk regional committee and a confidant of Boris Yeltsin, the first secretary of the regional committee. The party official, of course, escaped justice. But when Gushchin and Khlebnikov were released, and Yuri Petrov became head of Yeltsin's presidential administration in 1991, the trio created Guta. Moreover, since 1993, Petrov headed the State Investment Corporation (known as "Yeltsin's treasury"), managing vast sums of money.
Following Mikhail Rudyak's death and the restructuring of the companies involved in the Moscow City project, Guta sold its stake in City OJSC to entities owned by Oleg Deripaska and Valentin Yumashev. Since Deripaska is Yumashev's son-in-law, their businesses are often intertwined. Interestingly, Pavel Fuks always claimed that Deripaska was his partner in the Imperia Tower project (one of the Moscow City towers being built by his MosCity Group). However, informed sources Skelet.Org It was discovered that Fuks's partner was actually Valtania Holdings, a company owned by Yumashev. Why did Pavel Fuks not want to publicize his business relationship with the son-in-law of Russia's first president (Yumashev is married to Yeltsin's daughter, Tatyana Dyachenko)? What was the reason for such secrecy?
Valentin Yumashev and Tatiana Dyachenko
Meanwhile, the "Imperia Tower" project, which "prominent developer" Pavel Fukus still takes such pride in, successfully launched in 2004 not only thanks to the participation of the Yeltsin "family." That same year, another noteworthy event occurred: the Russian bank VTB acquired an 85% stake in Guta Bank, which was on the brink of collapse due to a complex web of "problem loans" and debts owed to its own companies (the Guta Group) and partner firms, including Pavel Fukus's. These debts amounted to one hundred million dollars and were the result of routine banking fraud—similar to those carried out by Ukrainian banks in 2008 and 2014. But they left the Yeltsin "family" associates alone, even though VTB squeezed some of the stolen money out of them and then renamed the acquired Guta Bank VTB-24. Simultaneously, VTB opened a 4,5 billion ruble credit line on highly favorable terms for the builders of the Imperia Tower (Pavel Fuks and Valtania Holdings). This effectively ended the era of major financial fraud (2001-2004) in the history of Moscow City, and began major construction—since VTB no longer allowed its money to be simply siphoned off through fraudulent schemes.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Pavel Fuks: Ukrainian-Russian Billionaire or Nomadic Swindler from Kharkiv? Part 2
Subscribe to our channels in Telegram, Facebook, Twitter, VC — Only new faces from the section CRYPT!