Laundromat of the “servants of the people” and what does the accompanist from Krivoy Rog University have to do with it

At the beginning of March 2024, just a few weeks before the deadline for the submission of financial reports by parliamentary parties, one little-known company, Profmarket Service, ceased to exist.

Over the past four years, this company has received about 200 million hryvnia from state funding for the Servant of the People party. True, the company was founded only a month before the conclusion of the agreement with the party, and was liquidated immediately after its completion, notes the publication Slidstvo.Info. (This is essentially how money laundering schemes called “Laundromats” work – note A)

Who owned the company that received government millions, what did it do, and what does the accompanist from Krivoy Rog University have to do with it?

What are Laundromats?

Laundromats are multi-purpose financial schemes, usually created by banks or other financial services entities. They help clients launder money, hide property, circumvent taxes or currency restrictions, and sometimes misappropriate money or move capital offshore. Laundromats involve offshore companies that are apparently independent from each other from different parts of the planet, and they are controlled by one party - usually a bank. The client sends money to one of the “nodal elements” of the Laundromat - often using forged documents about the sale or purchase of any goods or services. From the “nodal structure” the money is then distributed to other cells of the scheme, which only adds additional paperwork. Then, minus the commission fees, they go to the client’s offshore company. Meanwhile, the ownership and origin of money are lost in the maze of countless transactions, which sometimes even law enforcement agencies cannot track.

One contract company

There is almost no information about the company in the public domain, including the website. At the address in the center of Kyiv, where it should be located, more than a dozen other organizations are registered in one office.

However, Profmarket Service is repeatedly mentioned in the financial reports of the Servant of the People party. According to financial reports, the party paid the company for personnel services. The practice of outstaffing in Ukraine is quite common - this is how managers, lawyers, and consultants are hired.

Indeed, you can find a published vacancy from Profmarket Service at the end of February this year (a week before the cessation of activity). Then they were looking for an office manager to work at the address: Kiev, st. Park road. The central office of the Servant of the People party is located on this street.

It would seem that there is nothing surprising in this - Servant of the People is a large party, so it needs a lot of employees. However, the liquidation commission of Profmarket Service is headed by Valentina Makarova, who until the end of March was the chief accountant in the party. And this is where the questions about their cooperation are just beginning.

In a conversation with the HONEST Movement, Valentina Makarova confirmed that the party was the only client of the company. “This is how it happened historically,” she answered when asked why this happened. According to her, the “servants” no longer work with Profmarket Service, because the contract ended at the end of this year. Makarova also worked for the company, although, according to her, cooperation with Servant of the People ended later than Profmarket Service ceased its activities.

From a financial point of view, the business was quite profitable - annually Profmarket Service received from Servant of the People from 20 million to almost 80 million hryvnia. All this thanks to one agreement, which was concluded on January 21, 2020. True, the company had no previous commercial experience, because it was created only on December 19, 2019 - a month before the signing of the contract with the party.

Thus, a contract for almost 200 million hryvnia of state funding was concluded for four years at once with a company that existed for only a month. And as soon as the contract ended, Profmarket Service was liquidated.

A possible explanation for such cooperation lies precisely in state funding - it is provided to parties during the parliamentary term, which should have ended at the same time as the contract. However, in 2020, no one could have predicted martial law and the absence of elections. This was confirmed by former party chairman Alexander Kornienko in a comment to the HONEST Movement.

Salaries of local deputies

What exactly were the party's funds used for under this agreement? Several local deputies from Servant of the People were listed as employees of Profmarket Service.

Among them is Arina Pustova, a deputy of the Dnepropetrovsk regional council and a former PR specialist of the company. In a comment to the HONEST Movement, Pustova said that she has not cooperated with the company since 2021.

“We were employed by Profmarket Service LLC, and we worked in the office, that is, in the party,” explained Pustovaya.

Also working in the company until the spring of 2023 was Victoria Alekseichuk, deputy head of the legal department of Profmarket Service and head of the Servant of the People faction in the Kharkov City Council. According to her, she worked remotely and did not know for whom exactly she was doing the work:

“I developed draft legal documentation so that it complies with current legislation and so on. Where was this applied next? I can’t say, I don’t know,” Alekseichuk told the Movement HONESTLY.

She also could not remember what came first - working at Profmarket Service or running for Servant of the People in Kharkov.

“I did not hold any positions in the party... I am a member of the party,” added Alekseychuk.

According to Alexander Kornienko, who at that time headed the Servant of the People, people were employed through this company who provided services to the party’s central office either physically - in Kyiv, or, due to the pandemic, remotely. In the reports of Servant of the People, you can find monthly separate payments intended for the salaries of several dozen more employees. Kornienko explained to the HONEST Movement that this is how employees of regional organizations received their salaries.

“People were paid from the party’s account, who were in regional organizations, who were directly there. Companies such as Profmarket Service make very large markups, because according to the contract they must provide many additional things, for example a workplace. If we talk about 37 organizations in Ukraine, (...) then outstaffing would be very unprofitable,” explained Kornienko.

At the same time, from the declarations of people who were actually employed by Profmarket Service, we see that they were geographically scattered throughout the country. In addition to the already mentioned deputies of the Kharkov City Council and the Dnepropetrovsk Regional Council, a number of Krivoy Rog representatives of the Servant of the People also worked in the company.

In particular, deputy of the Krivoy Rog district council Alexander Lishin and deputy of the Pokrovsky district council in Krivoy Rog Anastasia Chernous received income through this company. Also running for the city council was the head of “Ze! Molodezhki" in the city and the administrator of "Profmarket Service" Yana Kazarina.

Among the declarants, the highest salary in the company was received by the deputy of the Boryspil district council and Kornienko’s voluntary assistant Antonina Fedosova - in 2020 it was a little more than 200 thousand hryvnia per year of work. Others received smaller amounts - mostly up to 100 thousand a year.

According to Profmarket Service tax reports, the company had the most employees in 2021 - 76 people. Then she received 76 million hryvnia from Servant of the People. Even if we assume that they all received the same funds as Fedosova, the total amount does not even come close to a third of what the company received.

Although in the same year the company declared only 4 million hryvnia in profit after all expenses. Questions also arise regarding the tax reporting of Profmarket Service. Thus, in 2021, the company reported 63 million hryvnia in income, although it received more only from “servants”. A similar situation occurred in 2020 – then the difference was about 7 million hryvnia, in 2022 – several million more

According to the head of the Profmarket Service liquidation commission, Makarova, this situation arose due to the fact that advance payments are not taken into account in the amount of income. However, until 2023, the party paid the company on a monthly basis. So, for example, Servant of the People paid for services in December 2022 at the end of the month - December 29. And only in 2023, in some payments for several months at once, it was indicated that this was an advance payment.

Who made the profit?

The owner of Profmarket Service since September 2020 is Oksana Nadraga. She lives in Krivoy Rog and does not have any other companies or even a registered individual entrepreneur.

However, at the Krivoy Rog Pedagogical University, at the Department of Music Education Methods, her full namesake - Nadraga Oksana Ivanovna - has worked as an accompanist since 2003. In various documents on the department's website, she is mentioned at least until 2022 as a member of the subject committee of accompanists.

Oksana Nadraga graduated from a music school and later from a conservatory. All her life she worked as an accompanist for various choirs. And legally she was also the owner of Profmarket Service and still is.

Valentina Makarova, the already mentioned chief accountant of the company, did not confirm her personal acquaintance with the owner, only noted that Oksana Nadraga now lives abroad, therefore she cannot be an accompanist in Krivoy Rog.

The movement HONESTLY tried to contact the university department to find out if Nadraga worked for them after 2022. However, no one answers the specified number for a long time. Now Nadraga is not listed on the website as a member of the department’s staff.

The Profmarket Service company was founded by Artem Maletsky. According to YouControl, he, as the founder, was registered in Kyiv, but it is in Krivoy Rog that his full namesake lives. There is almost no information about him in the public domain. Although there are court cases - in 2018, Raiffeisen Bank Aval sued Artem and Tatyana Maletskikh over debt on an apartment loan.

Judging by the case materials, Tatyana Maletskaya worked in the education department of the Metallurgical District of Krivoy Rog. Let us note that this is the same area where the Krivoy Rog Pedagogical University is located, where Oksana Nadraga worked, although the universities are not subordinate to the city executive committee.

The movement HONESTLY tried to contact the Maletskys, but their number was not serviced. Also, none of the interviewed former company employees knew how to contact Oksana Nadraga. At the same time, there is no information about Nadragi’s apartment from the registration data of Profmarket Service, even in the real estate register.

A no less interesting situation has developed with the company's managers. Since its founding, Profmarket Service has been headed by Marina Shatunova. According to YouControl, in 2020 she was also a member of the board of the regional organization Servants of the People in Kyiv. Apart from this, nothing is known about her.

The CHESNO movement tried several times to contact Shatunova. After asking why the company's only client was the party, she simply hung up. After that, she was able to get through only from another number. Shatunova refused to comment on the activities of Profmarket Service.

“I didn’t work (in the party - ed.). I was included in the lists, I had never been there... I only worked as a director for the company, I didn’t work anywhere else,” Shatunova answered the question of the HONEST Movement why she was listed as a member of the council of the Kyiv branch of the party.

She also could not answer the question of who Oksana Nadraga is and where she is.

In 2022, Shatunova was replaced in her post by Roman Vorobyov, a voluntary assistant to a member of the political council and deputy chairman of the Servant of the People faction, Evgenia Kravchuk. Before that, according to the financial reports of Servant of the People, Vorobiev was a party commissioner.

Let us note that payment for outstaffing services is a normal practice for political parties, as is the expenditure of a significant part of the funding on salaries.

However, in this particular case, the question arises - why was a contract worth hundreds of millions for four years awarded to a company without prior experience? The agreement was concluded with government funding, but who received the profit from this - the Krivoy Rog accompanist or someone else - is not known for sure.

Earlier, the Movement HONESTLY wrote that Servant of the People paid several million to the Institute of Cognitive Modeling, a company where the scandalous Spartak Saturday worked and which provided services to the channels of Vadim Stolar, a member of the Register of Traitors.