A Crooked One for a Straight One

Besides the channels 112 and NewsOne that were seized due to political motives before, Medvedchuk is related to the channel Pryamyi that has some ties with Petro Poroshenko.

Medvedchuk’s offshore companies were involved in the acquisition of the channel Pryamyi, the CEOs of which carried on their businesses with both Putin’s best friend in Ukraine (that is Viktor Medvedchuk) and Petro Poroshenko.

As you remember the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registered a draft of the resolution approving the proposals to apply restrictions (personal, special, economic etc.) towards two broadcasting channels. It happened on October 3, 2018.

The need in those sanctions was motivated by national security in the field of information. After the deputies voted, the resolution was enacted on October 4, 2018. 229 deputies voted for the resolution and only 42 were against it.

Due to such actions the owner of the channel NewsOne, Volodymyr Murayev, son of Deputy Yevhen Murayev, had to sell the channel to Taras Kozak known as the deputy and the partner of Medvedchuk. Andriy Portnov, who had managed the channel since August 2018, terminated his cooperation with the channel due to that fact.

What’s stirring my interest the most is that Kozak was one of those deputies who voted against the sanctions. And in the end he became a so called savior of the channel having promised to do everything possible to preserve its broadcasting.

Apparently, the channel 112 was included in the sanctions list just formally as Medvedchuk had already been its informal owner since August 2018.

Officially, the channel was bought by an obscure small-business entrepreneur from Germany by the name Eduard Katz. Artem Marchevskyi was assigned as Chief Manager of the channel. That man was also linked to Medvedchuk. In 2015 Marchevskyi took part in the elections to the City Council of Kyiv as a nominee from the party Pravo Narodu (People’s Right).

Viktor Chornyi was at the top of that deputies list. He was a candidate for the position of Mayor of Kyiv. At the moment Chornyi holds an executive position as Vice-President at Combat Sumbo Federation of Ukraine and manages LLC Detective and Security Agency ‘Storm’. Medvedchuk is given a title of the Federation’s Honorary President so he snatched at a chance to use the cars of the aforementioned security company.

Well, in the period of only three month there were two channels at a time that pulled in to the shore of the informational influence of Putin’s friend.

Indeed, there are reasons to think that Medvedchuk controls not only two channels but there is another third one as Medvedchk’s offshores can be easily tracked in the ownership of the channel Pryamyi that is linked to Poroshenko and Taras Kozak functions as a mediation party in this chain.

The nominal owner of the channel Pryamyi is Mr. Makeyenko, former deputy of the Party of Regions. He acquired the channel from Oleksandr Yanukovych, son of former President Viktor Yanukovych (the channel was earlier called ‘Tonis’).

Parlimo Trading Limited and Centerano Trading Limited have the ownership over the channel through Mr. Makeyenko.

Here below you can find the managers of these offshore companies:

Dadlaw Secretarial Limited

ΛΟΥΚΙΑ ΑΥΓΟΥΣΤΗ

ΧΑΡΙΣ Δ. ΔΗΜΗΤΡΙΑΔΗ

The secretarial company Dadlaw Secretarial Limited is included in the list of companies that carry on their businesses with the closest partners of Poroshenko.

For instance, the company is engaged in the correspondent operation in Cyprus for Efamiando Holdings Limited. Until recently, that offshore company had owned the lottery operator ‘Ukrainian National Lottery’ linked to Petro Poroshenko’s partners by the name Borys Lozhkin, former Head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, and People’s deputies from Petro Poroshenko Bloc Oleksandr Tretiakov and Glib Zagoriy. For the sake of those people Poroshenko authorized sanctions aimed at striking gaming businesses of their competitors.

These very nominal managers lead Hakail Limited and Turul Investment Limited. Taras Kozak known as the partner of Medvedchuk is a beneficiary of these two firms.

In its turn Hakail Limited is the owner of LLC Dobrobut-Invest that has a plot of land and a boarding house in its ownership in Crimea. This property has been indicated in the declaration of Mr. Kozak. There’s also a Russian clone of LLC Dobrobut-Invest that was initially reregistered in Crimea and then changed that registration address to another one in Moscow. The latter company made 300mln RUB of net profit in 2015-2016. A bit later Deputy Kozak reported that he had transferred those assets to the management and known nothing about the business of the company since then.

Concerning Turul Investment Limited, this company jointly owns Havanor Management Limited that had its shares in Tedis Ukraine (a monopolistic company in tobacco distribution).

Kozak turns out to be a minority owner of the scandalous privatized monopolistic company in the field of tobacco distribution (by way of the aforementioned firm). And the deputy acknowledged that fact himself. Poroshenko’s businessman and partner Borys Kaufman poses as the main shareholder of the company. He is the one who used to discussion his business with the President of Ukraine in private. Besides, he is known as Gontareva’s companion who was moving assets out of the Platinum Bank. According to the information in media, Tedis Ukraine appeared in the domestic market of Ukraine owing to exactly Viktor Medvedchuk.

The money was transferred from the accounts of Tedis Ukraine in particular to the companies of Medvedchuk-Kozak. In order to evade taxes, 2.5 billion UAH, received by Tedis Ukraine out of cigarettes distribution, was transferred to the accounts of dozens of local firms based on the contracts of returnable financial assistance.

And after that the money was moved to offshores. Three broadcasting TV channels popped up right there in the offshore companies as well just to guarantee Poroshenko a comfortable media environment on the eve of pending elections.