Sergey Shakhov: How does Rodnyulya buy grannies' votes and feed the separatists? Part 1
His name is well known to many pensioners in the Luhansk region, who regard Shakhov as a benefactor. After all, as soon as parliamentary or local elections begin, Sergei Shakhov's team immediately begins generously distributing cash, food packages, or sugar to low-income voters. In return, he receives not only their votes but also their willingness to participate in "pro-Shakhovsky" rallies. He has also formed squads of militant "babushkas" from his most loyal female fans, using them in his political shows and provocations. However, according to Skelet.Org, Shakhov also has real "titushki" (illegal fighters), and even worse: long-standing close ties to the commanders of the "Luhansk Republic" militants, whom, according to several sources, he also "feeds."
Yet Sergei Shakhov is not an oligarch, at least not officially, and his most recent declared annual income barely reached one million hryvnias. So where does he regularly obtain the enormous sums to bribe tens of thousands of voters?
Stakhanov's "Whale" Sergei Shakhov
First of all, it's worth finding out where Sergei Shakhov himself came from. After all, his official biography covers most of his life in just a few lines. He was born on May 7, 1975, in the Kazakh village of Sayak in the Dzhezkazgan region. A year later, his parents moved to the city of Bryanka in the Luhansk region, and in 1986 to Stakhanov (now Kadiyevka). There, from 1990 to 1993, he studied at Vocational School No. 21 to become a pastry chef. After graduating, he became a sales representative for Marichka LLC, and in 1996, Deputy Sales Director for Ruslan LLC. In 2006, he was elected as a deputy of the Luhansk Regional Council, from 2007 to 2011 he was listed as the deputy director of the RIM Law Firm LLC, from 2011 as the head of the Luhansk Industrial Group LLC, and he ran in the 2012 elections as the director of Sergey Vladimirovich Shakhov LLC.
All this sounds respectable enough, but there's one caveat: searching publicly for information about what exactly these companies did, or how their directors earned their living (and helped pensioners), is pointless. This is the main difference between official businessmen, including oligarchs, and people like Sergei Shakhov. Oligarchs have all their businesses in plain sight—at least their factories and banks—but the activities of these shadowy LLCs are hidden from prying eyes; sometimes it's not even clear whether they're real companies or just shell companies. And apparently, something fishy has been going on in Ukraine lately, as more and more of these "shadow entities" are entering politics and power, displacing the old "guard."
But Shakhov's old acquaintances revealed to Skelet.Org what he concealed about his past . For example, they described his school years this way: he lived on the outskirts of Stakhanov, attended a hooligan-ridden "special class" in School No. 11, where the kids who were gathered there had only two paths—to become miners or gangsters. Incidentally, according to one of Shakhov's classmates, half of that class is no longer alive: some were killed in gang warfare or drunken brawls, others died from drugs or alcoholism.
Shakhov enrolled in the "chef's" vocational school only to obtain his high school diploma, choosing it because he didn't have access to algebra and physics at such institutions. Immediately after college, Sergei Shakhov went to the market, where he became a money changer. This is how he became known in certain circles of Stakhanov, under his nickname "Whale"—a nickname he'd acquired while still in school.
However, Sergei Shakhov wanted more, not just money, but power over people. And in the mid-90s, together with his cousin, Alexey Shakhov, he decided to engage in racketeering. However, not being natural "wolves" or even "jackals," but rather "barking Chihuahuas," the Shakhov brothers were wary of targeting those who could easily and publicly tell them to go to hell. They chose their victims right there at the market, among quiet and incapable small-time traders, classified as "suckers." Therefore, their "racketeering income" was meager; Skelet.Org sources reported that the Shakhovs sometimes took their tribute in goods: chewing gum, cigarettes, and tights, which they then passed on to their acquaintances for resale. In the evenings, "Kit" liked to hang out at cheap dives, where he'd boast to the equally dimwitted crowd about how "cool" he was. It was then that his fascination with drugs began: first with weed, and then, with the arrival of money, with cocaine. Who knows how this "drunk hare" would have ended up, but important people took notice of Shakhov. Apparently, Shakhov already possessed a talent for convincing people of his indispensability, because he wasn't "punished" but hired as a "sniffer"—that is, an errand boy. Thus, Shakhov made a ton of useful connections among local gangsters, businessmen, and law enforcement officers.
Converter-robbers
Shakhov's new talents were discovered by Stakhanovite Alexander Stetsenko (born 1978), who, from a seminary dropout, retrained first as a non-ferrous metals buyer and then as a criminal financier. He is known as the founder and director of so-called conversion centers, whose services were used by both organized crime groups (including drug dealers) and businessmen of various calibers—from small entrepreneurs to Luhansk oligarchs, including Viktor Topolov's companies . It was reported that for several years, these conversion centers operated under the protection of criminal authorities Sergei Kolinko (nicknamed "Tsypa"), who served as Stakhanov's "overseer," and Vladimir Polubatko from Alchevsk (nicknamed "Footballer").
Shakhov and Stetsenko's active collaboration began in 2002, and it was this collaboration that turned Sergei Vladimirovich into the wealthy con man he is today. It's worth noting that the would-be priest Stetsenko also introduced Shakhov to Orthodoxy, revealing to him the benefits of close cooperation with the church. Thus, in 2006, Sergei Shakhov received two church orders and one medal from the head of the UOC-MP—for spirituality, charity, and patriotism.
A characteristic of Stetsenko-Shakhov's conversion centers was their frequent collapses, leaving clients penniless. According to information available to Skelet.Org , the initial reason for this was trivial: the centers had been successfully busted by law enforcement on a couple of occasions. The money was lost, however, by the gangsters, and, unwilling to listen to Stetsenko and Shakhov's excuses, they simply forced them to return the money (allegedly related to the "common fund") under penalty of death. Then the cunning Shakhov suggested that Stetsenko find the money by ripping off his other clients—wealthy but relatively harmless businessmen. They led the police to another of their own conversion centers, from which, admittedly, they had previously siphoned off most of the funds for themselves—and told the clients that the "cops" had confiscated it all. According to another report, Shakhov "earned" his money by leaking information about his wealthy clients to gangsters, who were then robbed or "taxed." Another story was also told: when Shakhov-Stetsenko's relationship with the thieves reached a critical point, they turned the "crowned" ones over to the Organized Crime Control Department. In short, even this illegal business of Shakhov's was accompanied by "scams" and "rip-offs."
Since the operation of conversion centers requires the use of shell companies and front men, Shakhov had already learned to exploit the passport details of those who trusted him: for example, he registered one of the fictitious LLCs in the name of his office cleaner! In fact, he needed the RIM law firm to operate these schemes. Sergey Shakhov solved his higher education problem in 2004-2005 by earning (or buying) two degrees (a specialist's degree and a master's degree) from the KROK University of Economics and Law.
Stetsenko-Shakhov's conversion business expanded further in 2006, when Stetsenko, through Fininvest, acquired a 49% stake in the Chernihiv-based bank Demark. Another 49% of the bank's shares was acquired by Prioritet-Inter LLC (which sold its stake to an undisclosed buyer in 2011). Thus, the partners were able not only to incorporate a fairly large bank into their schemes but also to use it to legitimize their own profits. However, in the following years, Demark Bank never became a buyer of business assets, but for some reason preferred to work with individuals, whose deposits constituted 84% of its capital. This was rather odd!
The decline of Stetsenko-Shakhov's business began in 2009. By then, they were already serving clients in Kyiv, but then, one after another, Shakhov, who had been left in the Luhansk region to oversee their currency conversion operations, suffered several severe blows. First, his cousin, Oleksiy, died in a car accident near Pereyaslav-Khmelnytskyi while transporting a large sum of rubles and hryvnias in a minibus.
Sergei Shakhov then hastened to claim that the money belonged to his brother, who was bringing it to him to help repay a debt. When journalists asked why it was in rubles, Shakhov responded in his usual "false lie" style: his brother bought the rubles for me because I had borrowed the money in rubles and was supposed to repay them! The incident was then chalked up as a tragic accident: Alexei Shakhov's minibus collided head-on with a Suzuki Granta Vitara on the highway. However, the unusual identity of the Suzuki driver aroused suspicion: according to documents, he was an Italian citizen registered in Donetsk but living in Kyiv and supposedly working as a chef at a restaurant. But as journalists later discovered, there were no restaurants in the capital with the given address! The appearance of a "phantom" restaurant in the case of "shadow" companies cast doubt on the fatal accident. Rumor had it that the accident was the result of an attempted robbery of a minibus carrying money from important people whom Shakhov had previously cheated out of their money.
Then, at the Goptovka customs post (Kharkiv Oblast), a minibus was detained, and $4,5 million was discovered under its lining (such "finds" are usually not made by chance). Interestingly, the minibus was registered to Stakhanov resident Yuriy Borisov, a man completely controlled by Shakhov. Despite the fact that this outrageous case of dollar smuggling was covered on national television, and everyone in Stakhanov was discussing the serious troubles of "Seryoga Kit" (knowing full well who was behind the money), the case was hushed up, and only the minibus driver was held accountable. Moreover, a year later, Yuriy Borisov was elected mayor of Stakhanov!
That same year, the SBU raided Shakhov's office in a Stakhanovite business center on Khrunichev Street, where one of his conversion centers was located. The haul was plentiful: the SBU press service then announced the seizure of documents from more than twenty shell companies, as well as the passport details of numerous individuals who were later used to register financial transactions. But some details remained "behind the scenes," namely: sources later reported that wiretapping and spying equipment had been found in Shakhov's office. And that it was used, in particular, to monitor banks and financial institutions in order to identify people withdrawing large sums of illegal cash—the data was then allegedly passed on to the gangsters (or Shakhov's "titushki") who robbed such clients. It was reported that exactly the same equipment was also found in Shakhov's Kyiv office, from where information was leaked to a Georgian gang that was robbing wealthy residents of the capital.
Things get even more interesting! In 2010, this gang was busted, but only Tamaz Kardava and Mamuka Samushia ended up in pretrial detention. Kardava died a few weeks later: it was reported that he was tortured to death by deputy head of the police department, Igor Grintsevich. Samushia, meanwhile, was diagnosed with stomach cancer and was simply kept locked up, denied surgery, waiting for him to die before his trial. As for the gang leader, no one ever even knew his name. And Sergei Shakhov in this story turned out to be... the victim! He himself was robbed by those damned villains! What an incredible twist! According to Skelet.Org sources , Shakhov was allowed to reclassify as a "sucker" by the Kyiv office of the SBU in exchange for leaking information, signing a pledge to cooperate, and a hefty kickback.
Sergey Varis, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Sergey Shakhov: How does Rodnyulya buy grannies' votes and feed the separatists? Part 2
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