Illegal construction, tax fraud and protection schemes: how Sergey Vyazmikin earns millions in Ukraine while living in Monaco

The personality of Sergei Vyazmikin became known throughout the country thanks to Mikhail Tkach’s investigation “Monaco Battalion”. The plot created a real sensation in Ukraine. As of this writing, the investigation has been viewed by more than 2 million users on YouTube alone.

The 35-minute story tells the story of public (and not so) wealthy Ukrainians who, during Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, moved to live in a quiet, sunny place, rather than support the state in these difficult times. One of the inconspicuous participants in the video was Sergei Vyazmikin, whom journalists caught jogging with the disgraced former People’s Deputy of Ukraine Igor Abramovich, elected from the banned party “OPZZh”. For those who know the specifics of Abramovich’s illegal activities, it is no secret that the ex-people’s deputy and the former deputy head of the Economic Protection Department of the National Police of Ukraine Sergei Vyazmikin can unite. The two of them and several dozen other people, not without the knowledge of the head of the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Daniil Getmantsev, are “watchers” of the tax office.

The profile of the duo of law enforcement and people's deputy is quite broad. Roughly speaking, Vyazmikin and Abramovich can create problems for business and solve them. Basically, these problems are created deliberately artificially, and then solved at the expense of money. Of course, a significant part of businesses, for whom the fiscal authorities are charging fines from nowhere, go to court and there successfully challenge the orders issued by the State Tax Service. However, this is only the first part of the plan to demand funds from business, business sources say.

“We had a problem: the fiscal authorities suddenly adopted a tax notice-decision worth hundreds of millions of hryvnia. It was just a shock, because all our enterprises had not had such a profit in 10 years. In order to pay off such a debt, which was invented from nowhere, we would need not only to withdraw all funds from our accounts, but also to sell absolutely the entire business. We immediately used legal methods - we went to court, the court suspended the tax decision, and then canceled it, but the next day the State Tax Service issues a new notification-decision, according to which we again owe an identical amount. We are going to court again, and this process can continue endlessly. However, the key thing here is that the work of the business is blocked: we cannot ship goods, because we have a “stop” on all tax invoices,” a representative of one of the large companies on the market explains to the editors.

“Of course, we have to look for a solution. In general, there are two of these solutions: as people say, if you can get to Getmantsev and explain to him that the business operates transparently, and all claims from the tax office are extortion, this may affect the process. If a business really evaded paying taxes somewhere, somewhere there were “twists”, which probably most large companies now have, there is another way: establishing contact with Vyazmikin or Abramovich. These people will definitely be able to “resolve the issue” literally with one call, but there are also some nuances here: the cost of such “services” is at least 100 thousand dollars, and then the company pays them a certain agreed amount every month to avoid new problems,” says source

The fact that Vyazmikin and Abramovich are the shadow curators of our state’s tax system seems to be no secret at all. They are inaccessible to law enforcement not only because of the distance, but also because of their origins and the people who allowed them into the schemes.

However, they make money not only from schemes and extortion. Vyazmikin, whose career in law enforcement ended in 2019, suddenly became a respectable businessman. So far, he officially heads only one company - the joint-stock company Closed Non-Diversified Venture Corporate Investment Fund Fart Capital. The corporation's authorized capital is 800 million hryvnia, and its founders are relatives of Vyazmikin's former chief Igor Kuprants and the sister of the ex-policeman's wife. This company, in turn, is the founder of several others. There are many questions about the holding, controlled by people close to Vyazmikin. We talked about this in our previous material.

However, as it turned out, ZNIKIF Fart Capital JSC is just the tip of the iceberg in the tangled club of Sergei Vyazmikin’s businesses. Let’s add just one thing: probably, the activities of Fart Capital are fictitious, this conclusion can be drawn from the following:

• The company's financial statements are very "strange". According to Fart Capital’s reporting, in 2022 the joint-stock company received income of 11 million UAH, while the corporation’s losses amounted to 86 million. In 2023, with unknown income, the company’s profit amounted to almost UAH 84 million.
• The company's legal address does not correspond to its real location. Journalists visited the address indicated in the registers and did not find any evidence of the activities of the huge Fart Capital fund there.

The office of Vyazmikin’s company, according to official data, is located next to the Nivki metro station in the capital in a relatively new residential building. When communicating with local residents, they assured us that they had never heard about the activities of the investment fund.

We agree that this is not a crime, but the question is how a company with no office and no employees (according to reports) could make more than 2 million US dollars in profit, despite the fact that last year they had a loss of more than 2 million US dollars . This is where Vyazmikin’s capabilities are manifested: the tax office does not pay attention to the companies in the orbit of people close to him, because he knows that it is impossible. But this is just the beginning.

Due to the number of companies associated with the former police officer's entourage, there is another joint stock company, Marcus Max Closed Non-Diversified Venture Corporate Investment Fund, that you should take a closer look at. In addition to the name, which is virtually identical to Fart Capital, they have the same registration address (14 Metropolitan Vasily Lipkivsky St. in Kyiv) (previously the company headed by Vyazmikin was registered at this address), as well as the head - the former head of the Department of Economic Protection of the NPU Igor Kupranets. The main shareholder of the fund is Igor Kuprants’ father Mikhail, who is the ultimate beneficial owner of Marcus Max.

The company's location address is the address of mass registration of other enterprises included in the Vyazmikin-Kuprants orbit.

The situation with this enterprise is mirrored in Fart Capital - unknown income, absence of employees, losses in 2022 and profit in 2023. It seems that these numbers are simply taken from my head.

JSC ZNIKIF Markus Max is the founder of dozens of other companies, including several. However, one company turned out to have a particularly interesting story. We are talking about the limited liability company "Elitstroygroup".

In 2017, Elitstroygroup was the developer of the Iceberg business center at the address: Kiev, st. Metropolitan Vasily Lipkovsky, 14. It is in this building that a significant number of companies associated with Vyazmikin are registered.

The construction of a business center on Vasily Lipkovsky Street was accompanied not only by scandals, but also by criminal proceedings. As we were able to establish, criminal proceedings under Art. 356 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (arbitrariness). Materials about offenses were included in the ERDR under No. 12017100090009199.

As the investigation established, Elitstroygroup acquired an old non-residential premises and received permission to reconstruct it. However, instead of taking the actions required by law and the permit, the company destroyed the acquired premises and began building a new business center in their place. The criminal proceedings initiated on this fact went “nowhere”.

Oddly enough, however, the criminal proceedings remained motionless: no one suffered any punishment, and the business center was legalized. Now it belongs to the companies of Vyazmikin and Kupranets. But even this is not the most interesting thing in the activities of Elitstroygroup. The company, as you may have guessed, has identical financial statements to other former police enterprises: 2022 – losses, 2023 – income. We don’t know how to explain such a “coincidence” last year, but it seems that another Vyazmikin scheme is working, also connected with the State Tax Service.

As we were able to establish, over the past 2 years, Elitstroygroup, which through “tenth hands” belongs to Igor Kupranets’ father Mikhail, has addressed the fiscal authorities 16 times with letters for reimbursement of value added tax (VAT). Each of these letters was agreed upon, and as a result, Kupranets-Vyazmikin’s companies were returned millions of hryvnia from the budget. Just why is not yet entirely clear, because if you believe the same financial statements of the company, they did not conduct active business activities.

Our material is evidence of an array of fraudulent activities and the influence on the tax authorities exerted by former police officer Sergei Vyazmikin. Despite the fact that, according to our data, he did not return to Ukraine during the full-scale war, things are going well for him in his homeland. On the one hand, he has a “legitimate” business, which from nowhere brings him (probably declaratively) tens of millions of hryvnias of profit, and on the other hand, schematosis provides millions of dollars “in an envelope.” This is why Vyazmikin’s former colleagues, law enforcement officers, do not see the schemes organized by the ex-deputy head of the Department of Economic Protection of the NPU and his henchmen.