Deputy Zhupanin and the business of laundering funds for Russian pharmaceuticals: data from the registers was shocking

In the wake of the exposure of the deputy from the Servants of the People Andrei Zhupanin for possible illegal enrichment, as evidenced by the data of the recently published investigation by Bigus.Info, both NABU and NAPC became interested in the state of the people’s representative.

In order to investigate the possible hidden business interests of the politician, the editors, in turn, began studying open registers.

According to OpenDat, as of 2020, Andrey Zhupanin was the beneficiary of a rather strange company - VALTERIA LLC. It’s strange, if only because the company changed its name from the previous “FIRST Kyiv SERVICES”, its address and type of activity.

It seems no less surprising that instead of Zhupanin, the owner of the company (at least on paper) became a person who has behind him literally a bunch of completely different companies registered at the addresses of the so-called mass registration of LLC. These and other signs indicate a purely nominal role of the new owner of VALERTIYA LLC, Yuri Sergeevich Pukhyr.

Imagine, in addition to Zhupanin’s former company, Pukhyr is a director in 10 companies, and another 248 companies are registered to him.

Among them are farming enterprises in different parts of Ukraine, and companies providing information services, and trade, and construction, and automobile, and computer, and furniture, and medical, as well as for the repair of aviation equipment.

In all these companies, Pukhyr appeared as the owner literally three to five months ago.

In addition to Pukhyr, these companies are conventionally united by a number of criminal and enforcement proceedings.

In general, this entire network of LLCs is very similar to a toolkit for fictitious economic activities, legalization of illegal income and tax evasion.

Otherwise, in principle, it is impossible to explain how one person in 5 months headed more than two hundred of these different companies, which, as if on command, synchronously and quickly changed their owners and managers.

Fiscal and tax authorities should have paid attention to such a large-scale anomaly long ago. Especially considering the fact that some of these companies do business with a bunch of offshore companies, sanctioned countries and Russians.

Thus, according to the ruling of the Kyiv Court of Appeal, in particular, it follows that SG TORG GROUP LLC, where “Zhupanin’s legal successor” Pukhyr is both director and owner at the same time, is a defendant in criminal proceedings for high treason, laundering of illegal income on an especially large scale and sale of counterfeit medical drugs in Russia and Belarus.

“The pre-trial investigation noted that there were facts of cooperation between officials of Force-Pharma Distribution LLC (code 41941076) with the aggressor states of the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation, as well as the manufacture, transportation, storage for the purpose of distribution and sale of obviously falsified medicines.

It is noted that Force-Pharma Distribution LLC (code 41941076) has stable trade relations with foreign legal entities, in particular: Russian, Belarusian, Italian and Bulgarian, which actively continue to supply pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to the Russian market. in turn, ensure a high share of revenues flows into the Russian budget.

An analysis of the enterprise’s activities noted that Force-Pharma Distribution LLC carries out business activities with the help of the controlled enterprise TOB AVE Pharma (code 41954834).

Withdrawal of excess profits, cashing out and subsequent legalization is carried out with the help of affiliated enterprises: LLC "SG TORG GROUP" (code 45088944), LLC "WEST MD Trading" (code 44284277), PE "Promotion Vostok Multipl De6lop2", PE "Logistics Multiple Development" ( code 42264950)… and others,” the resolution says.

In conclusion, the fact that Deputy Zupanin’s connection with a network of more than 200 fictitious companies is unlikely to be accidental is indicated by the following circumstance.

Zhupanin’s former common-law wife, Vlasova Yaroslava Vitalievna, was also the owner of VALTERIA LLC and was removed from it around the time of the end of the relationship with the people’s deputy.

Therefore, this detail indicates the “family nature of the case,” which now (through connections with citizen Pukhir) leads to an extensive network of shell LLCs, offshore companies and Russians.

After all, you must admit, it’s unlikely that anyone would include, besides himself, his then common-law wife in a random company.