The treacherous change of ownership of the Chumaki agricultural enterprise in the heart of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast has left the business elite with a difficult choice: who is currently the guarantor of law enforcement in Ukraine – President Petro Poroshenko, Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema, regional governor Ihor Kolomoisky, the law, behind-the-scenes deals, a machine gun, or the predatory hyenas who are prowling for profit, undermining the country's economy from within?
Very clever guys are raking in "Chumaks"
Ostap Bender knew 400 relatively even ways to extort money from the population, but in the final stages of his pursuit of a million, he ran into even more cunning crooks at the Romanian border. It's unclear how the raiders of modern Ukraine will end up, but they went beyond the "Turkish subject" and discovered yet another mechanism for making money out of thin air.
There was no need to reinvent the wheel: to pull off the scam, simply put your man in charge of the registers and bide your time. At the right moment (during changes to the statutory documents, senior management rotations, shareholder meetings, and so on), this "preservative" kicks in, and the raiding machinery kicks into high gear. The risk is significant, but you can try to carry out the operation quietly, so that neither the victims themselves nor, most importantly, the political heavyweights, learn of the scam. If this works, the deal is in the bag. In our case, it involves land, pastures, cattle, and other agricultural implements...
Let's look at the scheme in practice. The relatively insignificant Chumaki enterprise (from what's widely known, it's part of the Unison Group, backed by Anton Klimenko, brother of former Minister of Agriculture Oleksandr Klimenko) nearly fell victim to corporate raiders. The irony of the situation is that it operated entirely legally and consistently contributed to the budgets of both Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, beloved by Governor Ihor Kolomoisky, and the rest of Ukraine! The fraud and change of ownership were discovered by the mere attentiveness of the company's employees, who happened to be at the bank on business and discovered the Chumaki management change "on paper."
How did this happen? On November 21, unknown assailants used forged documents to fire the legitimate director of Chumaki, Nikolai Kvasha, and appointed a new, illegal "director" from an unknown source, Unison Group (the agricultural enterprise's parent company), Sergei Shapotla. The minutes of the new founders' meeting were discovered publicly available online and are themselves material evidence in the case of forgery and an attempted takeover of the enterprise.
Any financier will tell you that the stock is essentially a corporate raid. They cobbled together a phony meeting of "shareholders," had it certified by notary Elena Perfilova for a small fee, slapped a fake seal on it, and while the paper was still hot, rushed to register the changes in the shareholder composition. They even attempted to transfer assets abroad: the raiders signed over an agricultural asset to the Cypriot "Horns and Hooves"—the offshore company Stellar Partners Ltd. Thus, more than a thousand cattle herds realized the dream of the Ukrainian revolution and became... European... They were helpfully assisted in this by Tatyana Abramova, registrar of the Dnipropetrovsk District Justice Department, who illegally entered information about the change in ownership of "Chumak" into the Unified State Register of Enterprises, Organizations, and Institutions.
By the time Chumaki and Yunison noticed the missing documents (read: discovered the forgery), the documents for the new owners of the agricultural enterprise had already begun their trek up the bureaucratic ladder of the Ukrainian justice system. The press was in an uproar, angry letters were sent about the deteriorating investment climate and illegal attempts to redistribute property, complaints were filed with the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and personally with the head of the Ministry of Justice, Pavlo Petrenko. Especially warm greetings were sent to the ladies – notary Perfilova and registrar Abramova… A standard set of circumstances, in fact, but a precedent nonetheless – while previous business seizures in post-Maidan Ukraine involved disputed assets and were conducted with machine guns in hand, in the Dnipropetrovsk scam, white-collar criminals were at work.
Who benefits?
The answer to this question isn't as obvious as it might seem, as the defendants in the case have held, or still hold, extremely high positions in the Olympus of power. And the risks for them as a result of this situation are even greater than the potential benefits.
The first theory is that Kolomoisky's team is behind the takeover. Over the past few months, the Dnipropetrovsk region governor has been playing a variety of roles and guises, and his deputies seem to be competing with each other to keep up with their boss. Moreover, no one in Ukraine is more skilled than Gennady Korban in scams involving charter documents.
This theory is supported by the territorial factor (not even a mouse can run across Dnipropetrovsk territory without the permission of Privat's leader), as well as the recent spat between Oleksandr Klimenko and Borisov-Filatov on Facebook. The esteemed gentlemen took turns reminding each other of their "skeletons in the closet" and, pleased with themselves, went their separate ways. Was the Privat group's personal grievance so great that they decided to squeeze out the brother of the former Minister of Revenue and Duties, "Chumaki"? As the heroine of "Pokrovskie Vorota" put it, "it's petty, Khobotov"... Especially in light of the "warriors of light" Kolomoisky's allies are positioning themselves as in the now-tired battle against Yarema and his Dnipropetrovsk henchman, Roman Fedyk.
The second theory is the most incredible: sheer tyranny. Yes, right under the nose of the all-powerful Governor Kolomoisky, next to the fiefdom of Justice Minister Petrenko, and under the nose of Poroshenko's "thief in law," Yarema, mid-level officials (registrar Abramov and notary Perfilova) have undertaken a simple scam. If the previous owners of the asset catch on, we'll blame Benya, but if not, we'll quietly secure a dignified retirement. Especially since the bailiffs will be held accountable if anything happens, and, according to a sad Ukrainian tradition, at the "E" moment, the courts either release them (and the defendants disappear) or give them time to retreat to "winter quarters" beforehand.
Judge for yourself – the regional justice department is turning a blind eye to what's happening and openly playing along with the raiders. They simply, without batting an eye, ignored the mandatory approval process for changes to the founding documents, despite the fact that the law clearly stipulates this (after all, Chumaki's authorized capital exceeds the threshold of 10 million hryvnia). Abramova, the registrar from Dnipropetrovsk, is well aware of this, yet she decided to become an accomplice to the crime. Moreover, the change of ownership of the agricultural enterprise took place right in the Dnipropetrovsk Regional State Administration building (!!!), and who is in charge of the legal affairs there, and in general, is beyond reproach. It's clear that if the scammers manage to transfer the assets to a new, "clean" company, it will be given Chumaki's land and equipment, and the enterprise will most likely simply perish due to endless legal proceedings (and Unison has already announced it is initiating such proceedings).
Time will tell which version is more plausible. For now, it's safe to say that, amidst general instability in the country and the intensifying confrontation between Kolomoisky and Poroshenko, both are losing popular support as they waste precious time squabbling (most recently, Filatov's outrageous escapade, refusing to join the President's bloc in parliament). Businesses, especially those with foreign investment, have taken note of the Chumak affair, as if the hostile takeover isn't stopped, it will be waved under Poroshenko's nose from now on. And for Kolomoisky himself, it's easier to extinguish a simmering conflict on "his own soil" than to stoke the flames.
Thus, a seemingly routine management change at an agricultural enterprise in the Dnipropetrovsk region has uncovered a long-standing abscess in Ukrainian society, which risks metastasizing throughout the country. Clumsy corporate raiding, violent and armed takeovers, document forgery, and offers of protection—a full list of arguments dating back to the early 90s—threatens to plunge the country into chaos, and forces the country's top officials to face a difficult choice: to serve as guarantors of the rule of law or to pursue parochial interests.
In this regard, Prosecutor's Truth has several questions:
— Will an objective investigation into the corporate raid on Chumak become a matter of conscience for Prosecutor General Vitaliy Yarema, or will it be relegated to the ranks of yet another "matter of honor" (a la the investigation into the shootings in central Kyiv during the Euromaidan), and then to the scrap heap?
— Did Registrar Abramova and Notary Perfilova imagine themselves to be the masters of the fates of Dnipropetrovsk farmers and put their opinions above the law at someone's kind request, or are they committing forgery solely on their own initiative?
When will President Poroshenko finally remind Prosecutor General Yarema that he was installed in the top seat on Reznitskaya Street not to rake in assets with his cronies, but to at least create the appearance of legality and crack down on lawless individuals, regardless of their importance or ostentatious patriotism?
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