Quite strange things are happening around one of the strategic enterprises of the capital region - Belotserkovskaya CHPP - which could lead to it being taken over by the scandalous Kharkov oligarch, who has a Russian passport and made his greatest fortune in Russia, Pavel Fuks.
First attempt and criminal case
In fact, strange movements around the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant began a year ago. In August 2022, some media outlets wrote that a company from the orbit of the scandalous businessman Pavel Fuks, Investohills Vesta, had its eye on the Rosava tire plant, located in Bila Tserkva, as well as the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant. At the same time, fears were expressed that Fuchs’ company would simply sell off all the property of these enterprises, which would actually lead to their destruction.
At the same time, journalists of the “Stop Corruption” project conducted a large investigation, which led them to the conclusion that Fuchs in the Belotserkovskaya region seems to be actively playing along with the deputy of the Kyiv Regional Council Leonid Glinyany, who is also one of the co-shareholders of Rosava and the chairman of the supervisory board of the Belotserkovskaya CHPP.
Glinyany himself, in a conversation with media representatives, of course, actively denied his assistance to Fuchs in acquiring assets. At the same time, his main emphasis was not on the fact that he does not cooperate with Fuchs, but on the fact that he has nothing to do with Investohills Vesta.
The last statement looks, to put it mildly, very unconvincing. Firstly, Fuchs personally, in one of his interviews, admitted, albeit not directly, that he was related to Investohills Vesta. According to Fuchs, his companies make money by buying up distressed assets (those with large debts, etc.) and one of these in his portfolio is the Rosava plant, acquired by Investohills Vesta.
Secondly, information about Fuchs’s connections with Investohills Vesta and Leonid Glinyan is contained in the materials of the criminal proceedings, which were opened in September 2022 under the article “Appropriation, embezzlement of property or taking possession of it by abuse of official position,” and its materials were included in Media. According to these materials, according to the investigation, Leonid Glinyany, as a co-shareholder of Rosava and chairman of the supervisory board of the Belotserkovskaya CHPP, contributed to Investohills Vesta in the illegal acquisition of the company’s assets.
One of the court rulings in this case, which also appeared in the media, directly states that the sanctioned oligarch Pavel Fuks “created conditions under which he has a controlling influence on Investohills Partners Ltd., which in turn owns 99.9 % of the authorized capital of FC Investohills Vesta. In addition, back in 2021, the media reported on attempts by Investohills Vesta to seize the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant.
So, as we see, Fuchs’s first attempt to obtain the property of the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant clearly ended unsuccessfully. In addition, these actions led to the opening of criminal proceedings, which, as often happens in Ukraine, at least so far has not led to any conscious results, however, then publicity prevented Fuchs, with the help of Glinyanoy, from implementing this scheme. However, it seems that now Fuchs has a second chance to get the coveted assets and in a rather cunning way. But first, we should remind you who Fuchs is and why he is dangerous.
How Fuchs buys strategic assets for next to nothing
Despite the fact that Pavel Fuks was born in Kharkov, he was formed as a businessman in Russia and until 2014 he lived and worked in Moscow and had Russian citizenship. However, after the Revolution of Dignity, Fuchs decided to return to his homeland to earn money here.
It should be immediately recalled that back in June 2021, the National Security and Defense Council introduced a full package of sanctions against Fuchs. By the way, on the National Security and Defense Council website it was indicated that Fuchs is a Russian businessman. In May 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine informed Fuchs of suspicions of large-scale financial fraud with strategic enterprises in Ukraine and systematic tax evasion.
According to the SBU, Fuchs, starting in 2018, illegally took control of the assets of Ukrainian enterprises worth more than 100 billion hryvnia. The intelligence service even describes in detail how Fuchs' companies operated.
For example, its structures selected companies, say, in the country’s energy industry, but the main condition was that these companies had loans from banks declared bankrupt. After this, Fuchs’s firms bought out the so-called credit obligations of these objects from banking institutions, which made it possible to further interfere in the activities of such enterprises. Well, then, as they say, the matter is small, because the assets of factories or enterprises were usually simply frozen or even brought to bankruptcy.
All this allowed the attackers to make huge profits and also evade taxes. So Fuchs received suspicion from the SBU for all this, and he himself has been hiding abroad for a long time. The scandalous oligarch has a residence permit in the UK. Nevertheless, as we see, the companies controlled by him continue to operate in Ukraine. Actually, in the story of Fuchs’ attempt to acquire the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant, the same scheme that the SBU investigated and described is being implemented.
Debts of Belotserkovskaya CHPP
It all started back in 2015, when the Belotserkovskaya CHPP was owned by another disgraced Ukrainian oligarch, Konstantin Zhevago. Zhevago also owned the Finance and Credit bank. This bank received large refinancing loans from the NBU, and the Belotserkovskaya CHPP was the property guarantor for these loans.
Later, the Finance and Credit Bank refused to fulfill its obligations to the NBU, so the National Bank, through the courts, began to collect these debts from the property guarantor, that is, from the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant.
This debt of the Belotserkovskaya CHPP created a window of opportunity for Fuchs to acquire a strategic asset.
In February 2023, the National Bank of Ukraine, by a court decision, was given the opportunity to begin the forced sale of part of the shares of the Belotserkovskaya CHPP.
The day before, information appeared on Telegram channels about how exactly the National Bank decided to return its funds. A letter from the National Bank has leaked online, stating that the NBU has decided to sell the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant to the Belotserkovskaya City Council for 298 million 562 thousand hryvnia.
If this happens, Fuchs will again be in the game for the right to appropriate this asset. The fact is that there are big and reasonable doubts that the city of Bila Tserkva in a war will have the financial ability to hold such an asset with all its debts. Current and future.
Officials will most likely be very tempted to give a strategic enterprise as a concession. Simply put, city authorities can transfer a thermal power plant for temporary use to a private company, which undertakes to invest in the development of the enterprise, but at the same time receives income from its activities. And it is here that the same Investohills Vesta or some other of Pavel Fuks’s companies may appear on the horizon again as a concessionaire.
These fears do not arise out of the blue, because the already mentioned Leonid Glinyany has great influence in Bila Tserkva, and is also the chairman of the supervisory board of the Belotserkovskaya Thermal Power Plant. Considering his cooperation with Fuchs and the latter’s obvious desire to take over the assets of the thermal power plant, it can be assumed that with the help of Glinyanoy everything will become only a matter of technology.
The only thing that can prevent Fuchs from getting his hands on a tasty asset on his second attempt is serious publicity and great attention to the future fate of the Belotserkovskaya CHPP. Now all these games by Fuchs are not just the business of the oligarch, but issues of national security.
