Sergey Vyazmikin and black business. Themes, schemes, faces

Sergei Vyazmikin is a rather non-public figure from the law enforcement system. For a long time he worked as deputy chairman of the economic protection department of the National Police of Ukraine. The highest position in the policeman’s career was temporary work as the head of the specified unit of the NPU, but he was quickly escorted out of there.

Since 2019, Vyazmikin has not worked in the law enforcement system, and since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, he (it is unknown how) left the state. Perhaps the former high-ranking national police official would have been forgotten, but he made his presence felt in 2022, when Ukrayinska Pravda released the first part of an investigation called “Monaco Battalion,” which caused outrage in society.

It turned out that the former policeman lives in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferret in the same villa with the odious people's deputy (now former) Igor Abramovich. Abramovich is a member of the banned party OPZZH, was elected to parliament from a pro-Russian political force and was a member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Tax and Customs Policy. Abramovich is called one of those watching the tax office.

The third no less important person in the organized criminal group is the former head of Vyazmikin, ex-night officer of the economic protection department of the National Police of Ukraine Igor Kupranets. It was he who brought Vyazmikin into the world of “big taxes”, introduced him to Igor Abramovich and taught him to sketch. Their illegal earnings amounted to tens of millions of dollars a month.

The scheme was that the police, together with the tax authorities, came up with violations for representatives of medium and large businesses, which made the further operation of the enterprises impossible. Businessmen understood that challenging the actions of the authorities was expensive, time-consuming and not guaranteed to succeed, so they were forced to pay. However, this was a much easier and more effective method of unlocking activity.

But that was before 2019. At this time, the Kupranets-Vyazmikin duo was dismissed from law enforcement agencies. It seems that everyone knew about the schemes of the then heads of the economic protection department of the National Police. Vyazmikin was not yet so famous and influential, because he was in the shadow of his boss and teacher Kupranets, but the head of the department had already become the “star” of journalistic investigations, which repeatedly demonstrated his illegal activities and “strange” enrichment. Despite this, no criminal proceedings were initiated against the former police officers. They were allowed to go quietly with the opportunity in the future to use connections, schemes and illegally acquired assets. They showed themselves in tax policy. Under the leadership of People's Deputy Abramovich, Vyazmikin, together with Kupranets, managed to take control of traffic police officials. This story is not new, it has already been written about more than once, so we will not focus on it. It’s much more interesting what the former policeman’s business looks like now, because immediately after serving in law enforcement he became a respectable entrepreneur. It is clear that this was done in order to show as much income as possible in the shortest possible time, so that NABU detectives would not have questions about where the ex-deputy head of the economics department immediately got a million-dollar fortune.

Policeman in the outback

Sergei Vyazmikin began his career in the police in the mid-2000s. Little is known about his professional development. He first began appearing in the media space in 2014. Then he headed the Office of the State Service for Combating Economic Crime in the Zhytomyr Region, and did not at all look like a “seasoned corrupt official”

However, as they say, appearances are deceiving. During his management of the Department for Combating Economic Crime, Vyazmikin was involved in scandals several times, but they were mainly of a local nature and did not have a significant impact on his career. For example, in 2014, Vyazmikin’s subordinates illegally seized a car from a local businessman, which was allegedly illegally transporting explosive substances. The businessman provided all the documents confirming the legal origin of the cargo, but the police flatly refused to hand over private property to the citizen (probably they wanted to receive a bribe). In this situation, the court put an end to it, declaring the actions of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate in the Zhytomyr region illegal, and decided to return the vehicle to the owner. In addition, the Zhytomyr region is a rich region of natural resources. By the time Vyazmikin’s department was supposed to protect the economy from criminals, a historical maximum in illegal amber mining had just occurred. It was not for nothing that the head of the local department for combating economic crime then devoted his scientific articles to combating this crime, however, as we know, “if you cannot defeat crime, you should lead it.” It seems that this principle was chosen by Vyazmikin, who, according to local residents, turned a blind eye to the total theft of a valuable mineral - amber.

In 2015, Vyazmikin received a serious promotion. After the dissolution of the State Service Directorate for Combating Economic Crime, the Economic Security Department of the National Police was created. After working in the Zhytomyr region, Vyazmikin was immediately appointed deputy head of the department. True, he did not forget about the Zhytomyr region. Local public figures and journalists have repeatedly written that the leadership of the national police in the region are Vyazmikin’s “watchers.” As they wrote in the “Gangs of Berdichev” public page on Facebook in 2019, the main local police officers, appointed under the patronage of Vyazmikin, artificially create obstacles to local businesses in order to extract bribes from them. This happened a few months before the dismissal of the deputy chairman of the Department of Economic Protection of the NPU. The dismissal of Vyazmikin and Kupranets was not accompanied by scandals or corruption investigations. In fact, they have already been so “beaten” by accusations of illegal enrichment that the next news about this would no longer become a sensation for anyone. But the authorities were preparing for Vyazmikin to continue his career in law enforcement. According to sources familiar with the situation, Vyazmikin was planned to be appointed head of the Zhytomyr region police. This proposal arose due to the fact that his father-in-law Alexander Sitak is a major agrarian in the Zhytomyr region and has a significant influence on the region. However, the appointment failed, and not because the former policeman was not agreed to a new position, but because he already had a new role - “supervisor” of fiscal officials.

Multi-billion dollar fortune

As we mentioned, immediately after his dismissal from law enforcement agencies, Vyazmikin retrained as a businessman, although in fact he became one of the top back office employees of the state tax service. In 2020, he headed the Joint Stock Company “Closed non-diversified venture investment fund “Fart Capital”. Dozens of questions arise regarding the activities of the enterprise. Firstly, the figures of its beneficiaries are interesting. As of 2020, the owners of the joint-stock company were Kupranets Mikhail Grigorievich (father of the Exker Department of Economic Protection of the NPU and Vyazmikin’s chief Igor Kupranets) and the sister of Vyazmikin’s wife Maria Sitak. Subsequently, the company experienced a change of beneficiaries, and as a result, Sitak became the owner of more than 97% of the company, therefore, has a full stake and can independently manage the company. She is very lucky, because the company’s authorized capital is more than 800 million hryvnia. Probably, such a powerful financial fund should carry out serious activities in the investment market, but no. Fart Capital does not have its own website, or even pages on social networks. She does not conduct any public activities and there are such suspicions that under the guise of a multimillion-dollar company hides an absolute zero. The financial statements of the joint-stock company are no less surprising. In 2021, Fart Capital did not file any declarations at all, but information about financial activities in 2020, 2022 and 2023 is enough to see that everything is not clean there.

As the company's financial statements indicate, over the last years of its activity it did not generate income, while net profit came from somewhere. In 2020, the joint-stock company showed 48.6 million hryvnia in income, and already in the first year of a full-scale war, the damage amounted to 86.5 million hryvnia. This happened exactly when Vyazmikin left Ukraine, therefore, there are suspicions that such a coincidence was not accidental. Probably, the funds were transferred to the Cote d'Azur in order to provide the former policeman with comfortable funding. Already in 2023, according to official data, the company’s profit amounted to 83.9 million hryvnia. The difference between 2022 and 2023 is 170 million hryvnia. At the same time, apparently, the company did not carry out any economic activities, so the money could not first suddenly disappear and then appear. It seems that Vyazmikin was not in vain for years “overseeing” the tax service. They managed to learn a genuine technique for whitening products.

Fart Capital is the founder of three other companies - Ossoyo LLC, engaged in the wholesale trade of grain, tobacco, feed and others, West Gas Plus LLC, engaged in oil production and sand mining Golovinsky Kamen LLC, gravel, crushed stone etc. The general picture of the business scheme of people close to Vyazmikin looks like this:

Absolutely the entire business is registered either directly to the mother of Vyazmikin’s wife, Maria Sitak, or through other companies owned by Sitak. That is, all “flows” pass through it. It would seem that such a number of companies with such profitable activities should bring in tens of billions of hryvnia, but no. According to the documents, virtually all the companies in the orbit of the former high-ranking National Police official are extremely unprofitable. If each of them were studied separately, an entire book could be written about this grand scheme. Let's focus on a few businesses.

Ossoyo LLC, which we have already mentioned, officially demonstrates excellent financial results, but this company has its own characteristics, which boil down to the fact that the declared income is fictitious. According to financial statements for the period 2020-2022, the income of Ossoyo LLC amounted to 1.2 billion hryvnia. Net profit for these 3 years amounted to 44 million hryvnia. Already in 2023, the company's income sharply exceeds the entire income for 3 years. Officially, it amounted to 1.6 billion hryvnia. At the same time, the profit amounted to only 3.8 million hryvnia. Taxes of legal entities are paid precisely on net profit, so why, while income increased by 1.2 times, it became 12 times less is a rhetorical question. However, that's not all. The Department of Strategic Investigations of the National Police was interested in the activities of Ossoyo LLC. According to ANTIKOR sources, criminal proceedings were investigated against the company for fictitious business activities, but Vyazmikink managed to “bury” the proceedings in time, and all information about the pre-trial investigation was deleted or hidden away from the public.

Another company owned by Fart Capital, West Gas Plus LLC, is generally engaged in fraud, judging by the number of cases in the court registers. This year alone, journalists were able to find dozens of cases in economic courts in which West-Gas-Plus LLC was the defendant. In most industries, the complaints against the “oil workers” are the same - they promised to provide a service or supply a product and did not do it.

The financial statements of West Gas Plus are no better. According to official data, over the past two years, the company has brought its owner more than 100 million hryvnia in losses. But the same company reporting indicates that it has assets worth almost 300 million hryvnia. It seems that the Vyazmikin family was assigned a different role in the oil and gas business - to withdraw funds due to the bankruptcy of the enterprise, which is also one of the ways of tax schemes.

Former policeman Sergei Vyazmikin may have never dreamed of such a career, but life has turned out in such a way that he has become a real underground billionaire, and has a well-functioning scheme for his own family’s business. The financial statements of enterprises in Vyazmikin’s orbit clearly make it clear: hundreds of millions of hryvnia are laundered on them, and using different schemes. The former deputy head of the Department of Economic Protection learned how to work on the other side of the law and is now actively implementing what he was supposed to resist.