“We will fight corruption after victory,” said MP Nikolai Tishchenko, who is under house arrest. You could laugh at this phrase and make funny memes.
But in fact, it best reflects the reality that exists in Ukraine. A recent example: cover license plates can be “obtained” thanks to connections, despite the fact that by law they are issued exclusively to top officials of the state or to those performing an operational task. One of these pseudo-operatives turned out to be the son of a former Donetsk businessman, Denis Shumakov.
Yuri Shumakov, during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych, owned coal and energy enterprises in the Donbass. He also became famous thanks to the fact that his company Lama bought the Bagerovo airfield in Crimea, built for spacecraft flights. Also, according to the registers, he is Yanukovych’s neighbor at his dacha in Yalta.
The Crimean house remains the property of the Shumakov family even now, despite the occupation of the peninsula by Russia. The estate in the town of Voskhod, Yalta, with an area of 441 square meters on a land plot of 8615 square meters, has been registered to Denis Shumakov since 2013. This is exactly what journalists were recently able to record on cars with cover plates. True, not in Crimea or in the occupied territories of Donbass, but in the very center of Kyiv.
In addition to the Crimean dacha, Denis Shumakov has several other interesting real estate properties. In particular, two plots of land in Kozin, Koncha-Zaspa, near the Kozinka River. The recreation center “Solnyshko” is now located on these lands. Shumakov acquired them in 2016, after his father’s “patron” Viktor Yanukovych escaped to the aggressor country.
The value of these land plots, in addition to the picturesque nature, lies in the proximity. 650 meters from Shumakov’s property is the estate of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, which is wittily labeled “Petroland” on the Google map.
In August 2022, in the sixth month of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Denis Shumakov purchased two apartments in the Novopecherskie Lipki residential complex. The total housing area is almost 200 square meters.
According to the registers, Denis Shumakov is registered in his father’s apartment in the very center of Kyiv on Mikhailovskaya Street. This four-room apartment in a historic building, with an area of 229 square meters, was purchased by Yuri Shumakov in 2018.
In the same year, his son Denis purchased an apartment in Pechersk, not far from the pretentious Tsarsky sports club. It is interesting that both father and son decided to sell their apartments on Mikhailovskaya and Staronavodnitskaya on the same day in May 2023. The buyers are Beelight Group LLC and Oleum Gas LLC. The founder of both companies is Olga Spektor. This woman is a business partner of the Shumakov family.
The head of Beelight Group in 2019 was Denis Pakhomov. He also managed Kasan-Ukraine LLC, the founder of which as of March 2024 was Grigory Yuryevich Shumakov.
Bilight Group supplies petroleum products, in particular diesel fuel. At the end of 2022, the company took part in a tender for the supply of diesel fuel for the Kievpasstrans utility company in the amount of 344 million hryvnia.
But the most interesting company, with which the business partners of the Shumakov family have connections, is Falineate LLC. Denis Pakhomov was its director from February 2020 to February 2022. Olga Spektor is noted as the founder of this company as of January 2022. Until 2022, the company was called Kim-Trading LLC.
“Kasan-Ukraine” and “Kim-Trading” appear in the same criminal proceedings, the investigation of which was carried out in 2018-2019. In particular, law enforcement officers suspected both companies of illegal production and sale of petroleum products. According to investigators, the sale of fuel was carried out by the company TEK.
Among the aforementioned Olga Spektor and Denis Pakhomov, the founder of TEKU LLC in 2018 was Yulia Gersak. This is the wife of the former head of the Nikolaev SBU Vitaly Gersak.
Recently, the name Gersak appeared again in the news due to the purchase of luxury real estate during the war. The former SBU officer has recently begun to conduct an active PR campaign as a public figure and head of the Free and Faithful NGO. In particular, he organized an international conference involving American investors for veteran programs.
According to law enforcement officers, the firms of the Shumakov and Gersakov families jointly organized a criminal group and profited from the sale of illegal diesel fuel.
Vitaly Gersak is associated with the criminal authority “Apti Islandireev”, who is on the list of “thieves in law” of the National Security and Defense Council. And in the apartment of another Odessa bandit, a native of the Grozny region of the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic Khalid Musaev, Gersak even lived for some time.
Denis Shumakov also has certain interests in Odessa. He was noted by the founder of Pago Paradise Odessa LLC. This name coincides with the formerly famous entertainment establishment “Paradise” (“Pago”), located in the elite Odessa district “Arcadia”. In 2019, it became known that they were going to build an eight-story hotel with apartments on the site of the club.
Apparently, the Shumakov family, despite the fact that its main business remained in the occupied territories, managed to secure the right contacts in the new government. Neighborhood with Poroshenko and common interests with former SBU officer Gersak certainly create privileges for the Shumakovs. Hence the cover license plates, the “buried” criminal case about illegal fuel, and the opportunity to outright lie about the fact that the motorcade with flashing lights is simply the property of some friends.
