Agricultural businessman Dmitry Kolesnik can once again “heat up” banks worth millions

Spring 2015. A large agricultural holding hired 300 armed titushki to illegally export seized grain. During events worthy of a Hollywood action movie, a bodyguard was killed.

The events were preceded by the seizure of the property of the TAKO holding due to debts to banks that reached about $60 million. The beneficiary of the group of companies was then Dmitry Kolesnik, later a business partner of the godfather of the Russian dictator Putin, Viktor Medvedchuk. Nine years passed, Medvedchuk was suspected of high treason and settled in Moscow. But his comrade Kolesnik, it seems, is trying again to pull off a scheme with non-repayment of insane loans to Ukrainian banks.

Over the course of 10 years, Dmitry Kolesnik’s agricultural holding “TAKO” was transformed into “Akris-Agro”, the land bank of which is 45 thousand hectares. One of the main companies of the group is Agricultural System Technologies LLC. It was for this purpose that in 2015 the lease agreements for the TAKO land on which the pledge crop was grown were renewed. This scheme allowed the agricultural holding, driven to bankruptcy, to “cheat” banking structures for tidy sums. As of September 2022, the beneficiary of the company is Ekaterina Kolesnik, daughter of Dmitry Kolesnik.

At the same time, Ekaterina Kolesnik is a co-founder of Club House “Brilliant” LLC - together with Medvedchuk’s wife Oksana Marchenko. At the registration address of Ekaterina Kolesnik, a corresponding condominium was organized that manages the house in the center of Kyiv. Now this company, like other Marchenko-Medvedchuk companies, has been seized as part of the case of encroachments on the territorial integrity of Ukraine.

Despite the fact that most of Medvedchuk’s companies are under arrest, his business partner recently received a fat gift from the Ukrainian Themis, which unblocked the accounts of his companies and lifted the arrest from the companies. And this story is very reminiscent of the one that Dmitry Kolesnik managed to pull off with the TAKO agricultural holding.

Since December 2022, the National Police has been conducting a pre-trial investigation into a criminal case regarding fraudulent actions by a group of persons who seized funds from the Bank Alliance joint-stock company. Thus, Davest LLC signed two loan agreements with the bank in 2021 for a total amount of $6 million. As stated in the case materials, the collateral for the contracts was agricultural machinery owned by private property of Evenris LLC, Agro Estate LLC, and Baners LLC. The guarantor under these agreements is Dmitry Kolesnik. The companies mentioned above, whose agricultural machinery and real estate were secured by loan agreements, are part of the group of companies of the Akris-agro agricultural holding, the beneficial owner of which is Ekaterina Kolesnik, but in fact the group of companies is owned and managed by her father, Dmitry Kolesnik.

Law enforcement officials exposed a scheme led by Kolesnik, according to which from the very beginning the loan funds were not planned to be returned to the bank. For this purpose, the same scheme was used that worked for the bankrupt holding company “TAKO” - re-registration of collateral property to controlled companies. According to the court decision dated January 24, 2024, “the location of the majority of the pledged movable property (machinery and equipment for it) is unknown, since officials of the group of companies of the Akris-agro agricultural holding take actions aimed at concealing it.”

This court decision in January 2024 seized the accounts of the group of companies of the Akris-agro holding company Dmitry Kolesnik.

It should be noted that in August 2023, Dmitry Kolesnik, his sister Tatyana Kolesnik and their business partner Alexander Amirov were included in the “Peacemaker” database on the basis of connections with Viktor Medvedchuk and financing of Russian military aggression against Ukraine.

A few days earlier, in August 2023, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine exposed MP from the Servant of the People Anatoly Gunko of taking a bribe for the allocation of land to the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine. In the video from a hidden camera, Gunko offers his interlocutor to get about 2,000 hectares of land in the Rivne region that have not yet been sown. However, the bribe for the land should be 130-150 dollars per hectare, part of which will go to him, and the other to law enforcement agencies and local authorities. And then he says that “AST” works there for 150...”

“AST” is Dmitry Kolesnik’s Agrarian System Technologies LLC, which has land plots in the Rivne region, and according to deputy Gunko, it pays bribes for them in the amount of $150 per hectare.

Interestingly, in 2021, it was reported on specialized agricultural websites that “AST” Dmitry Kolesnik, his cousin Yuri Puchinkin and Alexander Amirov mentioned in “Peacemaker”, with the complete inaction of law enforcement agencies, took over the State Enterprise “Experimental Farm “Bilokrinitskoye”, area the land plot of which is 2000 hectares. All this land was owned by the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences, which was actively distributed by bribe-taking deputy Anatoly Gunko.

According to a court decision dated January 2024, which seized the accounts of Kolesnik’s group of companies, officials of controlled companies were prohibited from carrying out any financial transactions that would lead to a decrease in funds in the accounts. With the same decision, the court recognized the Akris-invest money as material evidence in the case of non-repayment of loan funds.

But if at the beginning of 2024 the court was on the side of the bank, then in the spring its opinion changed dramatically. By a decision of March 5, 2024, the Pechersky District Court of Kyiv lifted the arrest from the accounts of Dmitry Kolesnik’s companies. Moreover, according to the decision, this decision is not subject to appeal. In fact, now nothing prevents Kolesnik and his business partners from withdrawing funds from their accounts and re-registering the collateral to other companies, as was done with the TAKO holding. And Bank Alliance can forget about its 6 million that Akris Holding owes it.

In the summer of 2023, the media wrote that in April 2022, criminal proceedings No. 42022100000000153 were registered against Dmitry Kolesnik, his sister Tatyana Kolesnik and their partner Alexander Amirov for “financing actions that were committed with the aim of a violent change and seizure of power in Ukraine, as well as changing the boundaries of its territory through a military attack by the armed forces of the Russian Federation.” “In June 2022, law enforcement officers conducted searches in Tatyana Kolesnik’s apartment in an elite building on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, 27B in Kyiv and in the apartment of Alexander Amirov on Vasily Tyutyunnik Street, 37/1,” the publication noted without further details.

The apartment on Shevchenko Boulevard, 27B is located precisely in the “Diamond” club house, where Medvedchuk’s wife Oksana Marchenko owns the company together with Kolesnik’s daughter Ekaterina.

According to data from the court registry, in August 2023, Dmitry Kolesnik sued a publication that published an article about criminal proceedings against him. He asked that the material be recognized as such that it harms his business reputation and honor. Separately, Kolesnik demanded from the publication 100,000 hryvnia in moral damages and, in addition, the removal of the published article.

True, the court remained on the side of the journalists and rejected Dmitry Kolesnik’s claims. The article is still available via the link, which means it can be considered completely truthful.

Officially, Dmitry Kolesnik, who became a long-time business partner of the traitor Viktor Medvedchuk, did not receive any suspicions from the Ukrainian investigation. In the third year of the military aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, he can calmly conduct business, use accounts, and his family can use property in the center of Kyiv. Moreover, the Ukrainian court even helped him with the unblocking of money from companies that owed banks millions of dollars. The only thing that can spoil the mood of Medvedchuk’s accomplice Dmitry Kolesnik is inclusion in the “Peacemaker” database, which, however, does not carry any practical significance.