One of the richest Ukrainian businessmen, co-owner of the Fozzy Group, Vladimir Kostelman, is considered a victim of Russian aggression in 2022-2023.
But it is precisely the activities and approaches of the Kostelman family and related structures that are one of the main reasons for the tragic events of 2014-2023 in Ukraine.
Contrasts
The success story of the Kostelman family is built on contrasts. There are very big differences between their advertising image and the dirty secrets of their inner kitchen.
For more than 10 years, Vladimir Kostelman, who has been present in various “TOP20” and “TOP50” of the richest businessmen in Ukraine, is considered a “Western-type business prodigy.” Allegedly, together with school friends, he started speculating in the Dnieper and succeeded. Through his work, he became the owner of one of the largest and most influential retail chains in Ukraine, a dollar millionaire.
In fact, Vladimir Kostelman comes from an influential family of Russian businessmen of Jewish origin. His father Mikhail Kostelman mastered and developed the gas condensate field in Novy Urengoy, built the Urengoy-Nadym-Gryazovets, Urengoy-Petrovsk, Urengoy-Chelyabinsk gas pipelines, the Urengoy-Center gas transportation system and the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod transcontinental gas pipeline. In 1999, Kostelman Sr. was awarded the title of Honored Builder of the Russian Federation, and in 2000, with a diploma from the Ministry of Fuel and Energy of Russia. From 1990 to 2014, Mikhail Kostelman led the State-Cooperative Association “Business Partners” with an authorized capital of 50 million rubles in the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, the most important for the Kremlin’s oil and gas business.
Vladimir Kostelman received his first higher education in the places where his father became successful and rich - at the Tyumen Industrial Institute. “Friends and classmates” of Kostelman Jr., with whom he “created a business from the very bottom” and played music together in the rock band “Repair of Water”, are actually a screen, representatives of Kostelman Sr.’s Moscow friends. The main loans for the development of one of the largest Ukrainian retail networks were given to Kostelman Jr. by the Russian VTB Bank, known for servicing delicate real estate transactions of Russian President Putin and his relatives.
Simultaneously with the expansion of Vladimir Kostelman’s business into the Ukrainian economy, his mother, Lyudmila Kostelman, became a Russian businesswoman. Its main legal entity in 2001-2017 was Nezhin LLC, and it was also related to Fozzi-Eurasia LLC, Fozzi-Euro LLC.
In 2003, Kostelman Sr. opened the company “Bagira-2003” to engage in the hotel business in the Kanak Valley, near the village of Privetnoye in Bolshaya Alushta in Crimea. But from 2003 to 2018, the company “Bagira-2003” had Kostelman Jr. as its founder and owner; only in 2018 the asset was re-registered in the name of his father, Mikhail Kostelman.
It is interesting that the shadow owner of Big Alushta is considered to be an Ossetian ethnic group led by Russian FSB functionary Alan Dzhangobegov. The neighbors of Kostelman’s hotel business in Crimea are the Kanaka boarding house of the Russian state enterprise Almaz-Antey Air Defense Concern, whose partner until 2014 was the oligarch Dmitry Firtash. The Kanak Valley is also known for the “general’s houses”, where even after 1991 high-ranking Russian military personnel regularly rested. Also, representatives of an Ossetian ethnic criminal group engaged in illegal coal mining in the Donbass under the patronage of the People's Deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the I-VIII convocations Efim Zvyagilsky.
Getting a hotel complex in such a place with such neighbors confirms the special connections and status of the Kostelman family among the Russian “elites” and their Ukrainian business partners. This is evidenced by the presence of Vladimir Kostelman on the supervisory board of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine - here his partners are the Surkis brothers, Alexander Rodnyansky, Evgeniy Chervonenko, Alexander Suslensky, etc.
In reality, Vladimir Kostelman is not so much a “business prodigy” as a project for the expansion of Russian clans into the Ukrainian economy with the support of influential religious and ethnic organizations.
Business secrets
It is believed that the basis of the business empire of the Kostelman clan is the trade in food products through chain stores covering the whole of Ukraine. In fact, merchants and their top management make a significant portion of their income by selling access to the shelves of their vast retail empire. These are large sums, bribes, passing through behind-the-scenes agreements. Entering the store shelves of the Kostelmanov business empire is expensive, and there are no guarantees of success. It happened that 90% of the products were not sold and no one bore responsibility.
Another source of income for the Fozzy Group is considered to be “laundering” operations of hundreds of millions of hryvnias through fictitious exports of agricultural products.
The most important pillar of the Kostelman business empire is the “serf labor” model, treating junior staff as cattle and slaves. Small salaries, dozens of mostly insanity fines, violence against the psyche of staff by “corporate culture”, “free food” with expired food products, etc. The “serf” system - when the salary consists of a meager rate and supplements, depending on the fulfillment of “corporate standards” , the ability to bend before the authorities, to avoid absurd fines. If a person decides to quit, he is deprived of all bonuses and given a meager farewell pay.
Kostelman himself and his top managers say in image publications in the media that his business became successful not on trade, but on debt. They regularly took out loans from the Russian VTB Bank to develop their retail empire. Then, due to crises, debts were actually written off through a restructuring procedure. Also, the Kostelman clan did not return money to banks that went bankrupt as a result of the so-called. “The Poroshenko-Gontareva Bankfall” of 2015-2016. “Fozzy Group” and persons associated with them in those years also refused to the Deposit Guarantee Fund to repay their debts to bankrupt banks - and they got nothing for it.
For fraud with debts to VAB Bank, Kostelman was publicly accused of fraud, and a statement was filed against him with the prosecutor's office. It was reported that the director of the Kyiv Institute of Forensic Expertise, Alexander Ruvin, helped the leader of the Fozzy Group escape responsibility.
The Kostelmans themselves own banks. Better known is the Ukrainian-Israeli Bank Vostok, where the head of the board is the former top manager of Pi Vdennoye Bank Vadim Morokhovsky. Kostelman’s “Bank Vostok”, together with the Pivdenny Bank of Odessa resident Yuri Rodin, got into a scandal in 2018 over the dubious purchase of food products for the Armed Forces of Ukraine with the participation of the suspicious Resurs-Service KM LLC. At the same time, it was discovered that the Vostok and Pivdenny banks were jointly involved in servicing dubious fuel purchases for the Armed Forces of Ukraine by the Trade-Commodity company, which was connected through businessmen Granovsky and Adamovsky with President Poroshenko. Moreover, the Roshen corporation of the Poroshenko clan for some reason chose the small bank of the Kostelmans “Vostok” to store 300 million hryvnia.
Less known is the Zapad Bank, opened in Montenegro; Kostelman also owns it together with Morokhovsky.
Despite or vice versa, thanks to such scandals, the Kostelman clan became one of the richest and most influential in Ukraine. At the beginning of 2021, in addition to two banks, they owned 592 supermarkets of the Silpo, Le Silpo, Trash!, Favore, Fozzy chains, 119 points of sale of Ringoo mobile phones and 54 Bila Romashka pharmacies " Another agrarian and food cluster - Nezhinsky canning plant, Varto poultry farm, Agro-alliance "Zakarpattya", Boguslavsky food products plant, Sumyrybkhoz, specializing in seafood LLC "Lights of Hestia". In addition, the Kostelmans controlled 7 restaurants, a delivery service, a travel agency, a national logistics operator, the Chili publishing house, construction companies Bricklayers, Magic Village, Lyn Becker, a Kiev business school, auxiliary trading companies, and a plot of land. on the Venetian Island in Kyiv.
Together with his colleague on the supervisory board of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, a classmate of Petro Poroshenko’s wife, influential developer Alexander Suslensky, Vladimir Kostelman controls the Art mall in Kyiv. The construction of our own shopping and entertainment center was very difficult. It is known that only thanks to the large financial assistance of Moscow friends of the clan of influential retailers, the project was able to be completed and opened. And what played a role was Kostelman’s proximity to the Poroshenko clan and the need to invest financial bonuses from the “I shake hands” phenomenon. Hugs."
Attitude towards people and cooperation with Russian occupiers
Let’s imagine that the largest retailers “ATB”, “Fozzy”, “Furshet” in 2014 do not recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea and simultaneously curtail their work. It is very unlikely that the Kremlin would be able to turn around on the peninsula in conditions of a food crisis. If there had been a failure in Crimea, there would have been no events in Donbass, which, first of all, distracted attention from the difficulties of the Russian Federation in absorbing the peninsula.
In the situation with Crimea, the Kostelman family took steps to ensure that the unspoken agreements on the takeover of Crimea by Putin’s gang worked. Indeed, in their system of coordinates, facilitating agreements on the surrender of Ukrainian territories to the Russians is just a used opportunity to make money on the transfer of “serfs” from one master to another.
Therefore, on April 29, 2014, even before the escalation of the conflict in Donbass, top managers associated with the Kostelman business empire created companies for them in Russian registers to conduct business in Crimea. These are “Krymtorg-S”, “Krymtorg-E”, “Krymtorg-B”, “Krymtorg-R”. The owner of these legal entities was the Moscow LLC Nezhin owned by Lyudmila Kostelman. Additional Russian legal entities organized to service the gardens, logistics and livestock enterprises of the Kostelman clan in occupied Crimea were also associated with this “bush” of companies of the Kostelmans’ business empire.
At the same time, companies of Ukrainian retail giants began to work “under the umbrella” of the so-called. the “head” of Crimea Sergei “Goblin” Aksenov and the gangster group “Salem” controlled by the FSB of the Russian Federation. On “conceptual” terms, part of the income went to Aksenov and his partners. They, in turn, through their Moldovan connections helped the Kostelman clan establish not entirely legal supplies to Transnistria.
It is significant that when the “professional Tatar” Refat Chubarov was involved in the “transport blockade of Crimea” in 2015-2016, he did not mention the Kostelman clan, which was clearly collaborating with the occupiers, in his angry interviews. The Fozzi and Silpo trucks had no difficulties crossing the border between the Kherson region and Crimea.
In 2017, Lyudmila Kostelman’s Nezhin LLC curtailed its activities. The Kostelmans’ businesses continued to operate in Crimea under the leadership of trusted persons, for which they were covered with “matryoshka dolls” from chains of companies establishing one another in a circle.
The Crimean segment of the Kostelmanov business empire continued its work under the patronage of their partner and, concurrently, representative of Sergei “Goblin” Aksenov, Vyacheslav Tashkinov. Through his legal entity Krymfrukt LLC, which also exists in Ukrainian registers. General management and corporate culture remained with the Kostelmans. Enterprises still use Fozzy Group corporate mail.
"Silpo" continued to operate in Crimea as "Silpo" until September 2022. After which they underwent a cosmetic rebranding and turned into supermarkets of the Yabloko chain - the same Vyacheslav Tashkinov. But, at the same time, as can be seen from the check at our disposal, their legal entity, and as of September 2023, remained from the structure of the auxiliary network of the Kostelman clan. This is EKTs Etalon LLC, where the founder is the professional “director” and “founder” (12 organizations at the same time) Anastasia Popova. She is the “Zits-Chairman of the Pound” of Tashkinov and the Kostelman clan.
By the way, it is interesting that in Yalta, “Silpo”, which turned into “Yabloko”, operates in the “Confetti” shopping center - this is a shopping center included in the business empire of Ramzan Kadyrov through his “pound” Sergei Klimov. This has long been a well-known fact in professional circles. That is, back in ancient times, Kostelman’s top managers agreed on cooperation with Kadyrov’s top managers, and this cooperation, de jure, continues to this day, even in the context of the escalation of the war.
As of 2023, Lyudmila Kostelman continues to be involved in real estate in Moscow, and Mikhail Kostelman is in the hotel business among the Crimean junipers in Kanaka. This is in conditions when the occupiers took away the assets in Crimea from the relatives of Kolomoisky, who fell out of favor with Zelensky.
The tycoon’s daughter, Zarina Kostelman, lives mainly in the UK, where she owns the company Kosa art group Ltd, which previously organized joint art performances with Russians in Venice. Together with Vladimir Kostelman’s parents, his daughter Zarina also owns a company in the Czech Republic that deals with tourism and resort real estate in Karlovy Vary.
Somehow, miraculously, in conditions when many influential clans in their entirety, even together with their figureheads, find themselves on different sanctions lists, the Kostelmans manage to simultaneously conduct business in the Russian Federation, in Ukraine, in the occupied territories of Ukraine, in the UK, and in the EU without any hindrance. Moreover, in 2023, amid the noise of war, Fozzy Group announced that it would expand to Poland.
Paradoxes occur - de jure, the “taxes” paid by Vladimir Kostelman’s parents in the Russian Federation also went towards missiles that bombed a clan-owned warehouse in the Kyiv region and a supermarket in Odessa. There were wounded and seriously injured.
At the same time, Vladimir Kostelman is one of the few Ukrainian dollar millionaires and owners of systemically important businesses who have not clearly spoken out about the aggravation of the conflict with the Russian Federation. Only once, on June 17, 2023, Vladimir Kostelman, as a member of the supervisory board of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine, signed a general communiqué condemning the statement of Russian President Putin that “Zelensky is not a Jew, but a disgrace to the nation.” The destruction of a logistics warehouse and serious injuries to employees of the supermarket of his business empire did not prompt Vladimir Kostelman to take any public steps.
Taken together, the expansion of the Kostelmans’ business empire in 2014-2022 occurred because they, along with many other Ukrainian dollar millionaires, bet on Russia for a long time. And they lost. That is why Vladimir Kostelman does not make statements about war.
