Sergei Shapran amassed the wealth of an Arab sheikh and brought a Russian oligarch out of sanctions

Two yachts, five offshore companies, a trading company in Dubai, watches of the most expensive brands and loans from individuals amounting to almost $1 million. At first glance, what is described may concern some major businessman from the Forbes list. In fact, this is information from the declaration of former Brovary City Council deputy Sergei Shapran.

Shapran is the owner of the Brovary Aluminum Plant and officially heads the Alumeta group, of which this enterprise is part. For 2023, according to official reports, the plant received a net profit of just under 5 million hryvnia. This amount can hardly be called colossal for the owner of the company, Sergei Shapran, to be able to afford to buy two yachts worth millions of dollars.

Shapran's declaration states that he owns a Princess V 65 watercraft manufactured in 2001 and another Princess V 85 manufactured in 2008. According to the advertisements, a similar water product of the same year of manufacture can be purchased for 1.85 million euros.

Princess V 85 is a 26-meter yacht built by a company from the UK. On deck there are three spacious sitting areas, four guest cabins, two dining areas and four bathrooms. The yacht is designed for a comfortable stay of eight guests.

The second yacht, Princess V 65, built in 2001, owned by Sergei Shapran, was featured in a journalistic investigation back in 2017. Then she was called the most expensive watercraft moored at the elite Kiev yacht club.

The collection of elite products by Sergei Shapran and his wife, TV presenter Victoria Batui, includes three watches – Ulysse Nardin, Girard-Perregaux and Hublot. The latter brand, in particular, is loved by the dictator of the aggressor country, Vladimir Putin. So there is no need to talk about their cost.

Elite accessories were already getting out of Sergei Shapran’s way. Checking the declaration of the then deputy for 2020, the National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption identified unreliable data that differed from the reliable ones in the amount of at least 9 million 482 thousand hryvnia. In particular, among other things, Shapran did not indicate the cost of watches and watercraft. By the way, he did not indicate the price of accessories in the declaration for 2023, which in fact continued to violate the requirements of the NAPC.

Of course, it would be naive to think that the ex-deputy of the Brovary City Council acquired all this elite solely through earnings at the Brovary Aluminum Plant. According to Ukrainian registries, he is the director or beneficial owner of more than a dozen companies, including construction, logistics, consulting, etc. He showed some of them in offshore companies in Cyprus, the British Virgin Islands and Dubai in the declaration. It was they who brought journalists into contact with Russia.

If the presence of island offshores is understandable - tax evasion, then with the Dubai company everything is somewhat different. According to a court decision dated April 2020, in which the Brovary Aluminum Plant appears, the trading company of the Alumeta group holding, owned by Sergey Shapran, is Alumeta trading limited. The latter's registered address is Bayswater Tower, office 1812, Business Bay, Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Business Bay is a business district in Dubai, which, although not a tax-free zone, has its own privileges. As a lawyer involved in registering companies in Dubai explains, this emirate is beneficial for creating so-called shell companies. They are created in order to minimize the tax burden. The scheme is as follows - the main company sells its products first to a Dubai company, and through Dubai the goods are sent to the real buyer without additional taxation. As the lawyer adds, from July 2024 the scheme has become a little more complicated, because Dubai introduced a 9% corporate tax for companies. But if the company does not sell this product in the UAE, it is exempt from paying it.

From the court decision for 2020, we see that for some time the scheme worked exactly like this: the Brovary Aluminum Plant sold its products to a Dubai company, and it sold it to the European Union.

Despite the fact that Sergei Shapran honestly indicated all these offshore and semi-offshore companies in the declaration, he received the greatest income in 2023 from entrepreneurial activities - in the amount of 5.7 million hryvnia. For some reason, the scope of this activity is hidden, although all other income is specified.

In second place in terms of earnings, Shapran lists dividends from Vipek LLC in the amount of just over 4 million hryvnia.

In fact, Vipek LLC has an authorized capital of 50,000 hryvnia, and net profit for 2023 was minus 36,000 hryvnia. The company has only one employee.

But this company is interesting for some other reason. Its registration address is Kyiv, st. Saksagansky, 78–80. At the same address is the Patriarch Hall clubhouse, which JV ATAD K LLC began building in the mid-2000s. The house was put into operation, but some investors never received their square meters.

The founder of JV ATAD K LLC is Ukryurconsult Group LLC, the beneficiary of which is Sergey Shapran. As of June 2024, the head of the ATAD K joint venture is Sergei Brovko, who at the same time manages the Brovary Aluminum Plant.

The declaration of the former deputy also indicates a mining business. For example, Shapran is the owner of Stroyindustriya Service LTD LLC, which is engaged in mining. Until January 2021, businessman Igor Naumets was among the founders of the company, who then transferred his share to his relative Vladimir Naumets.

According to the Presidential Decree of May 2023 on the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine on the application of sanctions, Igor Naumets is a sanctioned person holding a Russian citizen passport. Sanctions were imposed against him for a period of five years. Also on the sanctions list is his business partner Elena Kalpa, a British citizen.

Igor Naumets was the founder of the Cypriot Westgrinite holdings limited (the same company is indicated in the registers regarding the Ukrainian Stroyindustry Service LTD LLC. - ed.), the secretary of which for some time was another Cypriot company - Bizserve secretarial services limited. They are connected by the main Cypriot company – Smartdixi Limited.

Cypriot Smartdixi Limited, according to the registers of the Russian Federation, is one of the founders of the Bakhchisarai Cannery in the now occupied Crimea. Until 2018, the founder was the above-mentioned businessman Igor Naumets. And from December 2018 to February 2023 - that is, already during the full-scale invasion - the founder of the Crimean enterprise was his daughter Anastasia Naumets.

In one of the court decisions from June 2022, the investigation proves the connection between former brewing deputy Sergei Shapran and Russian citizen Igor Naumts through the Stroyindustriya Service LTD enterprise. The company owns permission to extract sand within the Spassky deposit in the Brovary district. The investigation suspected that between 2019 and March 2021, the company illegally extracted sand in an area for which it did not have permission, worth about 340 million hryvnia.

During the pre-trial investigation, it turned out that Igor Naumets is the founder and owner of Stroyindustriya Service LTD LLC. Although he is a citizen of Ukraine, at the same time he has a Russian passport. Moreover, the investigation suspected that the sand was illegally mined by Stroyindustriya Service LTD, and sold by another Naumts enterprise, Unigran LLC.

Although Igor Naumets has been under sanctions since 2023, the Unigran enterprise controlled by him continues to quietly operate in Ukraine and even participate in government tenders. In 2023, the company tendered for 1,334,641 hryvnia, and in 2024 – already for 2,562,680 hryvnia.

Igor Naumets also owns the Zhytomyr company Brizzo LLC, specializing in the sale of household goods and cosmetics. A company with a similar name, owned by Naumets, has been registered in the Czech Republic since November 2018. It existed until April 2021.

True, the sanctioned Naumets himself, it seems, did not leave the Czech Republic. At least, in comments to journalists in August 2022, he stated that he was located in Prague and confirmed that he had a registered company there.

And here it is interesting to remember the Brovary business partner of Naumets Sergei Shapran. His declaration for 2023 indicates expenses for studying in the Czech Republic in the amount of almost 2 million hryvnia. They are presented in separate parts. Considering that Shapran and his wife Victoria Batui have two children, we can assume that these are expenses for their education and the family now lives in Prague, next to the sanctioned Naumec.

The amounts indicated in the declaration fully correspond to the prices in private educational institutions. If his children study, say, in schools with an International Baccalaureate (IB) certificate, which is very prestigious, then $50,000 (about 2 million hryvnia) for two children per year is exactly the cost that is asked for education in such institutions .

Finally, one cannot help but pay attention to the column in Sergei Shapran’s declaration reflecting the loans he received, taken in 2022 from an unknown individual. The total loan amount is UAH 37 million. Information about which person provided Shapran with such money is closed due to the military aggression of the Russian Federation.

The question arises: would a person who supposedly owns two yachts, three amazingly expensive watches and at least five offshore companies take such loans from someone for his own needs? The sale of the watercraft alone would have given him a much larger sum than he received from the unknown. Moreover, it is unlikely that during a full-scale invasion, Shapran will have a desire to use these yachts.

According to social networks, former deputy of the Brovary City Council Sergei Shapran is currently on the territory of Ukraine. At least he reports to his subscribers every day that he is at his workplace, at the plant in Brovary. At the same time, his wife Victoria Batui, after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, stopped publishing any photos on her Instagram.

Shapran’s connection with the sanctioned businessman Igor Naumts, confirmed by the registers, suggests that it is the latter who may be the “reason” for the insane enrichment of the former brewing deputy. At least 10 years ago, when Shapran ran for the Verkhovna Rada, he did not have not only yachts and watches, but even his own home.