Until 2019, Pavel and Olga Klimets, owners of the famous alcohol producer Olympus, continued to actively conduct business in the DPR and occupied Crimea, with the help of crime boss Mikhail Lyashko (“Misha Kosyoy”).
The Klimets couple, together with Mikhail Lyashko, opened an underground alcohol distillery on the territory of the DPR and were involved in alcohol smuggling. According to eyewitnesses, business was going well, there was even evidence of smuggling of alcoholic beverages from the territory of the DPR to the Russian Federation. Everything changed with the death of Misha Kosoy, after which Pavel Klimets was forced to look for a way to regain control over his assets from a legal perspective.
Attempts to return business assets resulted in Pavel Klimts’ arrest in Moscow in 2019. This is how the general public learned about the frequent trips and connections of the Ukrainian concern “Olympus” with the Russian Federation. The systematic nature of the Klimts family’s business in the Russian Federation is evidenced by the fact that together with Pavel Klimts, the general director of the Olymp company, Yulia Samoilova, was arrested in Moscow and subsequently received 8 years in a general regime colony for attempted mediation in bribery. It is worth noting that Pavel Klimets, during the trial in Moscow, fully confirmed his contacts and business activities in the occupied territories and in the Russian Federation. For attempting to give a bribe on an especially large scale, Pavel Klimts was sentenced to 9 years in a maximum security colony .
What is noteworthy is that if information about doing business and cooperation with the DPR had become known to Ukrainian law enforcement officers earlier, then, in fact, there would have been every reason to initiate a criminal case of treason against Pavel and Olga Klimets. Most likely for this reason, Olga Klimets kept silent in every possible way and refused to comment on the arrest of her husband on the territory of the Russian Federation.
Pavel Klimets’ confession about doing business in the Russian Federation and in uncontrolled territories, which actually meant financing DPR militants and the Russian army, did not prevent Olga Klimets from continuing to run her family business in Ukraine. In addition to alcohol, the Klimets family was also involved in construction.
In the construction business, the Klimtsov couple are known to the general public for two incidents. The first, when the construction company Atlant, owned by the Klimtsy, attacked the housing of employees of the Kiev Regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs , the second with an attempt to raid the Chaika residential complex. The conflict between Pavel and Olga Klimets with the developer of the Chaika residential complex, Alexey Kulagin, began with the fact that the Klimets raided a plot of land from Kulagin, then there were unsuccessful attempts to raid the entire Chaika residential complex , with the involvement of titushki and black realtors from the Donetsk region .
Alexey Kulagin managed to defend his business through the courts (more than 100 hearings) and resonance in the media, but Olga Klimets continues to block the activities of Kulagin and other developers in the Kyiv region through the Golos faction in the Borshchagovskaya OTG.
During the first attempt to raid the Chaika residential complex, Pavel Klimets hired local activists: Elena Gorb, Tetyana Garanina and Natalia Rozovenko to torpedo Alexey Kulagin. Although Chaika’s raiding attempt was not successful, cooperation with the “activists” continued. So, for the 2020 local elections, Olga Klimets “bought the franchise” of the Golos party and was able to bring 4 of her deputies to the Borshchagovsky village council: Gorb, Garanina, Rozovenko and Artem Postovalov.
On Olga Klimets's payroll, the above four are engaged exclusively in the development sector, blocking the work of all developers that Olga Klimets does not like. The connection between Olga Klimets and the faction of Golos deputies is carried out through Olga Klimets’s close friend and confidant Natalia Rozovenko. Rozovenko “cuts up tasks” and transfers “salaries” in envelopes from Klimets to other Golos deputies.
However, Golos representatives do not hide the scope of their interests. If you look at the Facebook page Voices of the Borshchagovskaya Community , in addition to congratulations on the holidays, 90% of the information on the page concerns the work of developers. In other words, not a single construction site, not a single residential complex on the territory of the Borshchagovskaya community is built up without taking into account the interest of Golos and Olga Klimets.
It is worth noting that the head of the Borshchagovskaya UTG, Oles Kudrik, also had to bow to Golos and Olga Klimets. For each vote on development, Golos deputies demanded a bribe, which was brought from the developers by Kudryk’s confidant, Alexander Golovko. Golovko also transferred money for voting on issues necessary for developers in the Kyiv region to Natalia Rozovenko. The system worked until the Voice received money for their votes and refused to vote, and the funds were not returned. Thus, the wife of the vodka king Pavel Klimenko, instead of suspicion of treason, got the opportunity to terrorize the developers of the Kyiv region.
Recently, the odious ex-regional officer Nestor Shufrich was suspected of treason; as they say, better late than never. There is hope that Olga Kilimets will receive the same suspicion of treason, who, together with her husband Pavel Klimets, has not stopped doing business in the occupied territories since 2014 and regularly visited Moscow. As far as we know from sources close to the Klimets family, Olga stopped openly conducting business in the occupied territories only after her husband’s arrest in 2019, but to this day she oversees part of the shadow alcohol circulation in the DPR.
