Vladimir Zubyk
Although he's among the country's hundred richest people, his name means nothing to most Ukrainians. But Volodymyr Zubik himself isn't exactly striving for national fame. He's quite content with the curses he's received from the buyers of apartments in his residential complexes, which are often simply unfit for normal habitation. He also doesn't want everyone to remember where he got the money for his scandalous developments, which destroy architectural monuments and violate all safety regulations. Or that for much of his life he was a "native" of distant offshore islands, and that after receiving Ukrainian citizenship and buying a seat as a member of parliament, he immediately became the first "migratory carcass" of the Verkhovna Rada...
Auditor from Cape Verde
Future oligarch Vladimir Vladimirovich Zubik was born on February 28, 1958, in Lviv, to a family of Soviet specialists. However, he never spoke about his parents, much less his first wife's family, perhaps to avoid revealing the secret of his success. After all, Zubik always claims he achieved everything with his own hands and brains, although this is far from true. Brains and hands are worth little in our country without the right connections and profitable schemes. That's what we're going to tell you about!
In 1975, after finishing school, young Volodya's parents sent him to study at the rather boring for a teenager Lviv Institute of Trade and Economics (now the University of Trade and Economics), pursuing an even more boring major: "Organization of Mechanized Processing of Economic Information." There was no military department, so Zubik was forced to serve another two years in the army—or, more precisely, the navy. He didn't explain why he needed two years, rather than the three required for sailors, or even more (as is typical after graduation).
After being demobilized in 1982, Zubik found a job as an accountant at the Lviv Canteen Trust—a job with little prospects and a meager salary. But less than a year later, he was appointed auditor of the Lviv Regional Executive Committee's Public Catering Department. This position wasn't just lucrative; it offered the opportunity to meet numerous highly valuable people—and only Zubik stood between them and the OBKhSS investigators. This unexpected career advancement was facilitated by the relatives of his first wife, Elena Yevgenyevna Petruk. Her father is known to have worked at a Lviv research institute, and she also had relatives in Hungary, whom Zubik and his wife began visiting frequently immediately after their wedding. It's worth noting that at the time, such free border crossing to visit relatives was only available to families from Transcarpathia—meaning his wife's family likely hailed from there. Incidentally, Zubik later had some kind of construction business in Uzhhorod and Mukachevo...
The inspector always had money, and quite a bit of it! First, Zubik realized his dream of owning his own house, as his fifth-floor apartment was too cramped. His father-in-law received a plot of land near Lviv, and the house's design was drawn up by Alexander Matveyev, deputy head of the regional executive committee's architectural department, while Zubik hired the builders and oversaw the work. The house was built according to a "European design," three stories high, with a 14-meter swimming pool! This, remember, was the mid-80s, when such "huts" still attracted the attention of the authorities. This means that Zubik and his family had friendly connections within those authorities.
With the onset of perestroika, the inspector Zubik's workload increased dramatically. By then, a trade and business mafia (the foundation of the future business elite) had already formed, launching a massive embezzlement of the country's resources. Specifically, large quantities of meat, butter, sugar, and all manner of scarce goods (even cafeteria napkins) were siphoned off (written off) through the public catering system, then either sold through cooperatives or exported to other regions of the USSR and even abroad. Zubik simply had to turn a blind eye to all this, receiving kickbacks. However, you must agree that the size of these kickbacks for the inspector, even though he was a senior official, was still limited—meanwhile, according to sources who knew Zubik, he had not just a lot of money, but a whole lot! This means he and his family were also involved in some schemes, amassing start-up capital and expanding their connections not only in Ukraine but also abroad. This page of Zubik's biography is always omitted, as if it is of no interest to anyone and remains a grey spot with two or three lines.
In 1991, Zubik left his job as an auditor and officially became a businessman, founding the small enterprise Progress, where he served as its own director. From 1993 to 1995, he headed the joint venture Ocean. Skelet.Org's search for any information about them was unsuccessful , and Zubik himself refused to disclose to his constituents what and where he exported and imported through his joint venture Ocean in the first half of the 90s. One can only assume that he imported a lot and from far away, because he then suddenly decided to go abroad for big business.
For the next ten years of his career, Vladimir Zubik listed himself as the CEO of the Lviv office of Worldwide Nova Associates . Its activities were stated as "market and public opinion research." The company was ostensibly American, but no information about it was available on US websites. A firm with the same name was mentioned in a court case in St. Petersburg in 2005 as a timber buyer, but the court noted that it, too, had no registration information in the US federal system. What does this mean?
It's worth remembering that in 1996, Vladimir Zubik voluntarily renounced his Ukrainian citizenship, accepting a different one (he couldn't remain stateless, after all!), and in 1998, he additionally acquired a Cape Verdean passport and even obtained permanent residence registration there. It was only in 2005 that Zubik decided to become Ukrainian again (and a member of parliament) and applied for the restoration of his Ukrainian citizenship, a process that took him about a year. This is confirmed by the following request to the relevant authorities:
What is Cape Verde? It's a well-known offshore haven with near-zero tax rates and such a liberal fiscal system that it has become a hotbed of international corruption, leading to its being blacklisted by the EU in 2019. Acquiring a Cape Verdean passport is quite simple: simply invest at least $200, usually by purchasing a house for an office. So, the mysterious "Worldwide Nova Associates" could very well have been registered in Cape Verde or another offshore haven on the edge of the southern seas – after all, who knows how many foreign passports Zubik actually holds! And this is far from the only offshore company that has supported his intricate schemes.
How to become an "oilman", or the forgotten case of "Livela"
Vladimir Zubik's biography further states that in 2005-2006, he served as the economic director of the "Children's World" charitable foundation, after which he obtained a Ukrainian passport and served as a member of parliament for a long time (from the 5th to the 8th convocation). Zubik was also open about securing a prominent spot on the party list in 2006 and 2007 through "investments" (purchases), facilitated by his longtime business partner, Bohdan Gubsky . "Gubsky and I had clear commitments—millions and millions," he said. Zubik declined to reveal the specifics of their joint business, but it is known that Gubsky was actively involved in the import of petroleum products in the 90s. Bingo! It's no wonder Zubik has erased all mention of scandalous oil companies from his official biography. Well, let's fill in these gaps!
The Ukrainian-Polish joint venture "Taistra" (EDRPOU 14299348) was founded back in 1992 as a wholesaler of everything. Information about its original founders has not survived, and their composition has subsequently changed several times. However, the media have named Elena Zubik, her sister Olga Petruk, Andriy Zubik (her brother), and Igor Miroslavovich Pavlishin as such.
Taistra emerged immediately after the adoption of the Foreign Investment Law of March 13, 1992, which exempted such joint ventures from VAT and excise duties. As a result, many joint ventures carried out highly profitable export-import transactions, leaving the country they were bankrupting in the lurch. The "foreign investors" in Taistra were Poles Stanislav Preis and Piotr Boyko, who invested a whopping $400! Their relationship to Zubik or his wife is unknown, but their stake was later transferred to HALLPORT DEVELOPMENT LIMITED, a company registered in the British town of Burslem. At the time of its closure in 2015, Olesya Yaroslavovna Olshanskaya-Bokhonko owned the majority of Taistra. However, we should add that since from 1996 to 2006, Vladimir Zubik was officially a citizen of some other countries, not Ukraine, he could also have acted as a foreign investor during this period.
Taistra's activities in the 90s remain unknown (just like those of JV Ocean), as Zubik himself keeps them secret, and journalists have been unable to uncover anything. However, Skelet.Org has discovered that virtually no one has heard of Taistra at the time. More precisely, Taistra, like Ocean, was not a direct supplier of goods to Ukrainian enterprises or government agencies (like Itera, Nordex, EESU, and others), and therefore has not appeared in documents or publications. However, they could have been quiet intermediaries through which supplies were made under devious schemes.
In the early 2000s, Taistra and its numerous subsidiaries registered in Poltava and were openly supplying Russian oil to the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery located in the region. More precisely, Tatneft supplied the oil to the refinery, and its subsidiary, Ukrptatnafta, operated in Kremenchuk. Taistra and Zubik's other companies served merely as intermediaries and fronts for tax and excise duty evasion schemes. These companies opened offices in rented offices or apartments, where their only possessions were a computer and a couple of flower pots—and yet they handled millions of tons of petroleum products, siphoning billions of hryvnias from the budget.
Among these companies were named: Taistra Poltava Express LLC (32753578), Taistra Poltava Import (32753700), Taistra Poltava Service (32753559), Taistra Poltava Torg (32753585), Sun Travel (33574822), Global Trade (32844436), Intertechservice (23809023), Geo Alpha Deus (38276530), Triumfvirat (31035280), Interliga (37439842), Taiz (32635669), DP Link (36195434), Korund (37439784), Topaziya (34612219) and the notorious "Livela" (34612245). Their founders and directors were Igor Aleksandrovich Stolyarchuk, Oleg Viktorovich Vasilevich, Nazar Gorodetsky, the aforementioned Igor Pavlishin and Olesya Olshanskaya-Bokhonko, and other individuals close to Zubik. Zubik himself tried to keep his name out of the picture—as did his partner Gubsky, who facilitated these scams until 2007 (Zubik then found a new "roof").
However, it wasn't just the sheer volume of tax evasion that led to the scandals, as it amounted to a blatant legal scam. Here's the deal: in 2003, the law on tax breaks for joint ventures expired, and then Zubik and his partners came up with a truly ingenious move, extending it exclusively for their own firms (!) through a ruling by the Avtozavodsky District Court of Kremenchuk on January 19, 2004. In its ruling, the court explained that this meant exemption from VAT, excise duty, and corporate income tax for another 10 years. In March 2005, the Supreme Commercial Court confirmed that the "state guarantees for investment protection" for Zubik's firms could not be revoked or narrowed. And in 2010, the same Avtozavodsky District Court confirmed that all these decisions were binding. This wasn't corruption, but legal chaos...
These corruption schemes were repeatedly reported in the media, and statements were made by senior officials , but for some reason they continued to operate, with only the companies involved periodically changing. They only experienced a slight hiatus in 2007, when control of the Kremenchuk Oil Refinery passed to Kolomoisky, but Zubik quickly became his collaborator . They no longer limited themselves to oil supplies; they were running even more sophisticated schemes: gasoline and diesel produced at the refinery were registered for export, then registered as purchased abroad and imported. But in 2010, scandal finally broke , and Livela became the main figure. This company, in three years of operation, paid only 1 hryvnia 82 kopecks in taxes to the budget, while handling hundreds of thousands of tons of petroleum products. According to the Poltava branch of the Antimonopoly Committee, Livela alone diverted over 3 billion hryvnias from the budget. Zubik's other companies cheated the state out of several billion hryvnias more between 2003 and 2008. And they had been engaged in "tax-free" imports even before that. Just think about these figures—they're comparable to the fortunes of the largest oligarchs!
However, the scandal remained just a scandal, and no one was held accountable for the actual theft. Although a special investigative committee of the Verkhovna Rada was even created for the Livela case, headed by Roman Zvarych, his work ultimately just stalledThis was explained not only by the fact that Vladimir Zubik was a Party of Regions deputy at the time, and that his Livela was already running schemes under the protection of Andrei Klyuev, but also by the fact that it financed the Party of Regions' election campaign in the local elections. Then Livela self-liquidated, Zubik declared himself indifferent to it, the figureheads fled, and the case was shelved.
And here’s what’s interesting: Livela had barely managed to stop its fraudulent imports at the end of 2010 when it received a huge contract for the supply of petroleum products worth 19,4 billion hryvnias (!) another of Zubik's companies, "Intergal Company" (EDRPOU 35286991). This is also a rather curious company: its primary activity is stated as... "market and public opinion research." Just like Worldwide Nova Associates, whose representative office Zubik managed for almost ten years. This suggests that if Intergal, the "market research" company, was engaged in the resale of petroleum products, then Worldwide Nova Associates could have been engaged in similarly profitable, tax-evading business.
Mikhail Shpolyansky, for Skelet.Org
CONTINUED: Vladimir Zubik: Tax Fraudster and Toxic Developer. PART 2
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