The name of vodka magnate Yevgeny Chernyak has not left the front pages of the media in recent weeks. Surely, it’s not every day that a businessman of this level is accused of working for an aggressor state.
Some of Chernyak’s colleagues came to his defense and spoke about the pressure on business, while others agreed that the sale of Ukrainian goods to the Russian Federation sounds like complete nonsense, given military aggression. The further the investigation continues, the more details appear in this case. And one of them, his son Alexander Chernyak, also does not hesitate to work with the occupiers.
Alexander is the first-born of Evgeny Chernyak and is involved in the family business through the Zaporozhye Non-Ferrous Metals Plant, where he is the chairman of the supervisory board. The company is managed by his grandfather Alexander Chernyak Sr. The plant in Zaporozhye produces copper cable and is one of the leaders in this segment. With the beginning of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the plant’s capacity began to be transported to the Ivano-Frankivsk region, because Zaporozhye is under constant enemy fire. It would seem that in such a situation there can be no question that any person in the leadership of this enterprise has any connection with the aggressor country. However, journalists found evidence that Alexander Chernyak Jr. has had business and partners in Russia for a long time.
January 2020 Two years before the start of the Russian war against Ukraine and six years since the occupation of Crimea and hostilities in the Donbass. The Russian press reports that the Russian Direct Investment Fund intends to invest in several Internet companies. Among them is the online service for selling used cars Carprice, founded in 2014. “The largest owners of the main company Carprice, Vendebita Trading Ltd are Baring Vostok funds (27.2%), AE37 Holdings Ltd (17.1%, beneficiary - Alexander Chernyak), Oscar Hartmann (11.9%), Almaz Capital Fund II ( 11.4%), Artem Bolshakov (7.1%), follows from the data of the Cyprus registry as of mid-2019,” writes the Russian publication Vedomosti.
Did you see a familiar name? Yes, yes, Evgeny Chernyak’s son Alexander is listed among the owners of a Russian car sales service.
According to register data, in Cyprus the director of Vendebita Trading Ltd from October 2022 to the end of January 2023 was Victoria Kobzar.
In 2020, she managed the Cyprus company Global Spirits AMG Trading LTD, which in turn is the founder of Evgeniy Chernyak’s main alcoholic company, Global Spirits.
That is, Chernyaki, through intermediaries, continued to influence the Russian car sales service Carprice at least until January 2023.
Russian registers provide even more comprehensive information. It turns out that the Cypriot company of Chernyak Jr. is the founder of three companies registered in Moscow - Selanikar LLC (the legal entity of the above-mentioned Carprice - Ed.), Kartech LLC and Autograph LLC (liquidated in May 2022 - Ed. .).
It is interesting that Chernyak Jr. is also involved in the case of his father, whom the Ukrainian special services suspect of working for the aggressor. The website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs notes that he is wanted as a person hiding from the investigation.
It will obviously take a long time to find his investigation, although usually he doesn’t even hide where he is. The problem is that it is extremely difficult to drop by in any one country, because traveling is Alexander Chernyak’s real hobby.
Through the Instagram of his wife, Diana Evdokimova, you can find out, for example, that the couple celebrated New Year 2024 in warm regions by the sea.
In December 2023, the wife and son of Chernyak Jr. managed to visit Austria and Venice. In general, last year turned out to be surprisingly rich in travel for the Chernyak-Evdokimova family. The geography is amazing - from Kenya to Iceland.
And of course, where would we be without Dubai? Here Chernyak’s wife is photographed most often and mostly in expensive places - the artificial island of Palm Jumeirah, a hotel on another Dubai island, Bluewaters, where there is the largest viewing wheel in the world. Valentine's Day on the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine Chernyak and his wife celebrated on a yacht in the Persian Gulf overlooking the famous Burj Al Arab hotel.
But what is most striking about this incredible luxury is that Chernyak and his wife fly to all these luxury places on a personal plane. Diana Evdokimova is not shy about showing off the private jet both from the outside and, of course, from the inside.
There is also something to be said about his wife, Alexander Chernyak, and, unfortunately, this too cannot be done without Russian influence. Diana's father is police general Vladimir Evdokimov. For a long time he worked in law enforcement agencies and reached the pinnacle of his career during the chairmanship of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with Yuriy Lutsenko, and subsequently with Arsen Avakov. From December 2005 to March 2014, he alternately held the positions of Deputy and First Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs. But there is an interesting detail - in 2004-2005, Evdokimov worked as an adviser to the Ukrainian Embassy in Russia. Actually, from that moment on, experts and public organizations began to suspect that Vladimir Evdokimov was recruited by the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.
In 2014, the Right Sector organization called on the then president to immediately dismiss Evdokimov from the Ministry of Internal Affairs due to his pro-Russian views and even friendship with some Donbass separatists. He was also accused of allegedly shooting dead Right Sector member Alexander Muzychko, nicknamed Sasha Bely, on his direct orders. After Evdokimov’s resignation, the Ministry of Internal Affairs even carried out an official verification of these facts. Of course, no one publicly announced the results, although it would be nice.
At that time, the media wrote a lot about his wife’s father, Alexander Chernyak. Evdokimov was associated with the criminal world of Donbass and protecting banditry in the Lugansk region, where he worked for some time. At the same time, information appeared that criminals awarded Evrokimov a 23-meter Marquis 690 yacht, which was moored in Crimea. True, after the annexation, the elite gift remained on the peninsula.
Vladimir Evdokimov and his dark past were remembered again in 2020. And strangely enough, they again predicted a place for him in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the now deceased Minister Denis Monastyrsky was appointed. Servant of the People deputy Maxim Buzhansky did not hide that Evdokimov’s reputation is “sweet.” “And everything would have been fine if not for the “dangerous connections.” The fact is that in the 90s, as head of the department for combating organized crime in the Lugansk region, Vladimir Evdokimov was “seen” in friendly relations with local criminals. “Obkom,” with reference to an article in “Grani+” dated April 26, 2004, even wrote that the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Nikolai Belokon then fired Evdokimov from the authorities for “a dubious reputation,” Buzhansky said in a media commentary.
The funniest thing in this story is that the newspaper “Grani+” was at one time edited by Yuriy Lutsenko, whose first deputy later became the same Evdokimov with a “dubious reputation.”
Alexander Chernyak’s wife does not show her father on her Instagram. But he boasts about his mother, with whom he and he fly around Europe with the most expensive Birkin bags in the world. For example, Diana and her mother at Nice airport two months after her father Vladimir Evdokimov was fired from the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
It is difficult to understand how, being a policeman all your life, even in high positions, you can earn money for a private jet, yachts, and constant travel for your wife and daughter? And most importantly, why didn’t the SBU check Vladimir Evdokimov for recruitment by Russian special services, if in 2020 they were talking about a possible return to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine?
There are a lot of questions and, unfortunately, they are connected with the Russian trace. As in the story with the son of Evgeny Chernyak, Alexander, so with the family of Diana Evdokimova, who in 2020 gave birth to a child for the son of a vodka magnate.
