Roman Matsola: Putin’s favorite brewer, owner of the First Private Brewery. PART 1
With each new Ukrainian soldier killed in Donbas, the question of the moral and criminal responsibility of those financing their murderers becomes ever more pressing. It's long been known that the main sponsors of "terrorists and aggressors" are those who shout about them daily from high platforms, and for some reason, the largest number of them are in the pro-presidential faction of the Petro Poroshenko Bloc. Meet another one of them – Roman Matsola, who, along with his brother, Andriy Matsola, is known as the founders and co-owners of the First Private Brewery. They also own businesses in Russia, from which they pay billions in taxes to the Russian treasury.
Doctor Alcohol
Roman Mykolayovych Matsola was born on August 11, 1974, in the village of Hrushevo, Tyachiv district, Zakarpattia region. Their family soon moved to Lviv, where his younger brother, Andriy, was born on August 4, 1977. He and his father, Mykola Vasilyevich (born 1946), and mother, Maria Mykhaylovna (born 1952), lived in a five-story building on Nekrasov Street. This building, strikingly different from the typical Soviet buildings of the time, is rumored to have been built for the "bosses," doctors, and retail workers. However, the brothers never revealed the identity of their parents or their family's lifestyle. Of their mother, they only said that she "instilled in them a love for their native country from childhood." However, given that until 1991, the brothers' "native country" was the USSR, it's safe to assume this was merely an exaggeration.
But they made their grandfather Mikhail (on their mother's side) the subject of a beer commercial and shared a few tidbits about him with journalists. From this, we can learn that their grandfather was either a great carpenter and wood expert (in the commercial) or the organizer of an agricultural cooperative that grew and sold apples (in the press interview). What a multi-tasking grandfather!
In short, their family is the most secretive in Ukrainian business. There's no mention of the Matsolas in media archives until the mid-2000s, when they entered the mainstream with their beer business. Maria Matsola surfaced in 2006 as a volunteer assistant to MP Anatoliy Rudnyk, the former director of Ukrtransgaz. Rudnyk has long been forgotten today, but in 2003, he became the main figure in the scandal around the leak of confidential information from Lvivtransgaz to foreign companies. But, again, there's no detailed information about the connection between Maria Matsola and Anatoly Rudnyk. Skelet.Org not yet available.
And what about the rumors swirling around them? According to one theory, the brothers' mother was a simple doctor, and they allegedly got involved in Lviv's semi-criminal business in the early 90s, "fellowshipped with the mob," and were far from "suckers" themselves: they had been involved in sports since childhood, and Andriy was seriously into boxing. However, the criminal theory about the origins of the Matsola business is rather weak and unconfirmed. However, Matsola's mother does have a connection to medicine, as evidenced by the registration data of the municipal enterprise "Ambulatories of Family Practice" (EDRPOU 33839427) in the village of Tarasovka, Tyachiv district, Zakarpattia region. Maria Mikhailovna Matsola has been the director of this enterprise since August 22, 2016, and among its employees is a certain Maria Ilyinichna Matsola—apparently a relative. This is surprising, because running a clinic in a remote province, even in one's native land, is a rather odd occupation for someone who is a co-owner of a huge transnational business! Unless Maria Mikhailovna decided to transform this municipal clinic into a private one.
Incidentally, Maria Mykhaylivna successfully combines running the "hospital" in her native Transcarpathia with another business: tobacco sales through Karpattorg LLC (EDRPOU 32218473), which she founded with her husband and sons. Moreover, as is well known, the tobacco business in Transcarpathia is often linked to smuggling, protected by the local "tsymbor" mafia. But the issue isn't just the smuggling; it's also the fact that selling tobacco and alcohol is ethically contrary to a doctor's code of ethics—assuming, of course, that a doctor has one. On the other hand, the better the cigarettes, vodka, and beer sell, the longer the line to see a doctor...
But according to another, more realistic version, the Matsol family beer business grew about the same as the family business Bayadera vodka empire Nechitailo-Ridzhok, which, by the way, are also generous sponsors of the Russian budget. According to her, Maria Matsola was far from a simple doctor, and even in Soviet times she was involved in various small businesses, and later even in "cooperation." One of her cooperatives was "Konkurent," founded by Maria Matsola in partnership with a certain Ivan Ivanovich Ivasko (born 1946), and in the early 90s re-registered as the LLC "Production and Commercial Firm Konkurent." At that point, the company no longer manufactured anything, but was engaged only in small-scale wholesale trade of alcohol, distributing it to stores and kiosks. It was at this company that Roman Matsola began his career after graduating from school: instead of serving in the army, he got a job at "Konkurent" as a merchandiser.
It should be emphasized here: wholesale trade in alcohol in the 90s was one of the main “gangster themes”, especially in a gangster city like LvivTo successfully engage in this business, you had to have either strong connections in government or very close ties to criminal organizations—or preferably both. Things weren't exactly smooth sailing for the Matsols in the 90s: after every gangland takeover of the city, their cars were torched, and they were unable to expand their operations for a long time. Yet, they didn't go bankrupt, and by the turn of the century, they had amassed a substantial fortune.
His younger brother, Andriy Matsola, is considered the "academic" in the family: he holds three degrees! However, the "Lviv Finance and Credit College," mentioned in his biography and supposedly graduating in 1996, doesn't exist. During Soviet times, Lviv had a finance and credit technical school, which was later renamed the Lviv Banking College, and then the Lviv Banking Institute. Couldn't Andriy Matsola have remembered the correct name of his original educational institution? He received his second degree by correspondence from the Ternopil Academy of National Economy (1996-2001), now renamed a university, and his third, also by correspondence, from the Kyiv Orthodox Theological Academy of the Kyiv Patriarchate (2012). This explains Andriy Matsola's generous sponsorship of the UOC-KP, which he has been rewarded with church orders from Patriarch Filaret.
Andrey Matsola
In 1997, their mother founded Olmar LLC (EDRPOU 22411887), with a fairly impressive authorized capital for the time (over $100), which a year later became their main family business. It was also Roman Matsola's primary place of work: in 1998, he became the company's director, then ceded the position to his younger brother and, from 1999 to 2012, served as deputy director of commerce. From 2012 to 2014, he again headed Olmar (apparently while Andrei was enrolled as a student at the theological academy). After becoming a member of the Verkhovna Rada, he resigned and pretended to have only a tangential connection to the family business. In fact, this is not the case, and Roman Matsola has always been and remains a full-fledged partner of his brother Andrei, mother Maria Mikhailovna and father Nikolai Vasilyevich.
Beer stories
Today, the Matsoli brothers tell tales about how the Olmar company initially had only an old Zhiguli, which they used to deliver beer to Lviv's dive bars. Such tales are usually told to journalists to conceal their past and to portray themselves as simple, hardworking businessmen who rose from the bottom, from nothing, with their own hands. In fact, this is a lie: those who delivered beer in Zhigulis in the 90s still do so, only in Gazelle vans. The owners of a big business, however, were those who were able to invest "big money" in it, with the support of the right people.
Olmar began as a regional distributor of Carlsberg beer from Baltic Beverages Holding AB, then represented in the country by the BBH-Ukraine group. In 1998, the group launched beer production at Zaporizhzhia Brewery No. 2 "Slavutich" and became interested in Lviv's Kolos Brewery, Ukraine's oldest brewery (known as Lvivska Brewery since 1999). Maria Matsola and her sons were hoping to enter this large business, making grand plans for the Lviv brewery. Naturally, some small company delivering crates of beer in a dilapidated VAZ could never have dreamed of such a thing. The Matsolas had the money and resources to become co-owners of Ukraine's oldest brewery, but a force majeure event occurred that ruined their plans and literally cast them aside. What exactly happened remains a family secret. It's only known that during negotiations over the distribution of shares with VNN-Ukraine, a scandal erupted, escalating into a serious conflict. Rumors suggest that Lviv organized crime groups were even involved in some way, and that some "authority figure" was even killed because of it. However, all the details of this story have been carefully buried and forgotten.
Ultimately, in 1999, VVN-Ukraine finally acquired the Lviv brewery, which was renamed Lvivska Brewery and incorporated into the newly formed Carlsberg Ukraine. The Matsolis, however, were left virtually out of the picture for three years: initially, instead of a share, they were offered only beer sales, and then they were cheated out of that as well (the circumstances of which are also under wraps). Consequently, their subsequent relationship with Carlsberg Ukraine was quite strained.
In 2002, the Matsolis, at the initiative of brothers Roman and Andriy, finally opened their own beer production facility. They founded the First Private Brewery LLC (Ukrainian: "Перша приватна броварня", EDRPOU 31978272), bought an old Soviet kvass workshop on George Washington Street (before 1992, Batalna Street) in Lviv, renamed it "Galitsky Pivovar" (Galytskyi Pivovar), and launched production of Dobrodiy beer there, while simultaneously continuing to produce Lviv Kvass. Although they marketed their beer as "unique, brewed according to ancient recipes," it didn't enjoy much demand, as it was ordinary swill made on old Soviet-era equipment. Moreover, selling such beer in the shadow of the mighty Carlsberg Ukraine was out of the question. According to information Skelet.OrgThe Galitsky Brewery operated on the brink of profitability and survived only because the Matsol family had another, profitable business – and therefore could afford this “beer experiment.”
The Matsols remained optimistic: after spending considerable money, they purchased another plot of land on the same Washington street and imported equipment. And in February 2004, the "Galitsky Pivovar" brand was replaced by the "First Private Brewery" brand, which made the Matsol brothers famous throughout Ukraine. But it also sparked a scandalous story about their multibillion-dollar financing of "terrorists" and the "Russian aggressor."
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Matsola Roman: Putin’s favorite brewer, owner of the First Private Brewery. PART 2
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