“Ukraine is a country of opportunities” - one of the last photographs is jokingly captioned, which depicts the Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada Ruslan Stefanchuk, Petro Poroshenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, representatives of the top leadership of the EU and a deputy from the Opportunity for Life, who supported Novorossiya in 2014, Valery Gnatenko .
The author of the signature is indignant at how it is possible that a person who supported the separatists, in principle, was a deputy and still held meetings at such a high level. The outrage is quite obvious, but, unfortunately, this situation is not isolated.
Journalists learned that one of the leading Ukrainian taxi companies, which volunteer Sergei Pritula thanks for his patriotism, conducts its financial transactions through a company created by the wife of a henchman of the “DPR” terrorists. We are talking about Uklon taxi and how recklessly they chose their financial partner.
Over the past few weeks, the topic of taxi work has begun to be actively discussed in Ukrainian Telegram channels. Here we also talk about how drivers transport passengers during curfew, increasing the price tag 10 times. And about where drivers get passes to travel at night. And about many other “hows and whys”. But among all these messages there are those that relate to settlements between drivers, passengers and taxi services. In particular, Uklon drivers write that last spring all payments and deposits began to be made through the intermediary company Fondy. Previously, the WayForPay system was used, but for some reason the National Bank did not renew its license to provide financial payment services.
According to the NBU, the Fondy payment system, registered under the legal entity FC Alliance LLC, received permission to operate on May 1, 2023 as a payment institution with a license to provide payment services.
FC Eliens LLC was created in 2013 and its founder is Valeria Valerievna Vagorovskaya, a native of Donetsk. This surname is very closely connected with the Donetsk region and the events of 2014, when separatists seized power in Donbass.
Valeria Vagorovskaya’s husband, Vladimir Vagorovsky, was a minority shareholder of the Amstor supermarket chain operating in the Donbass. The majority owner was a deputy from the OPZZh, an active supporter of the “Russian world” Vadim Novinsky. In December 2014, Novinsky announced a raider takeover of Amstor by Vagorovsky. He, according to investigators, created a fake clone company, to which he transferred all property and finances, “dumping” Novinsky.
It is important to add that the history of the trials for Amstor continues to this day. One of the latest court decisions was made in January 2022 in the Vilnius court. From it we learned that in December 2014, Vagorovsky tried to sell his shares in Amstor to the Lithuanian company Topfonda UAB, falsifying documents backdated. Moreover, the court decision states that he created a shell company for this agreement.
Why is this story important to recall in the context of Uklon’s work with the Fondy payment service? Because the founder of the payment system was too close friends with the DPR terrorists and even serviced their financial transactions, helping her husband in this.
In August 2015, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine established facts indicating that the Vagorovsky family financed terrorists of the so-called “DPR”. In particular, they transferred food and vehicles to the combat units of the Kalmius battalion. In order to continue the activities of the Amstor retail stores they seized, the Vagorovskys created a legal entity that paid taxes to the DPR terrorists.
In 2017, the SBU reported that it suspected Vladimir Vagorovsky of financing terrorism. “During the secret investigative measures, the SBU established that in July-October 2015 alone, Amstor stores in the occupied territory transferred 36.8 million rubles or about $0.6 million at the 2015 exchange rate to the DPR budget,” it says in a message from the intelligence service.
Vagorovsky’s wife Valeria, then still with the surname Bondarenko, also did not stand aside from the financing of terrorists. According to media reports, she, together with other employees of the captured Amstor, created the “Unified Wallet W1” payment system, which was used to make payments from Ukraine to the “DPR” on the one hand, and from the “DPR” to the Russian Federation on the other.
Thus, Valeria Valerievna Bondarenko was the founder of Olmost Software LLC in 2015, along with other Amstor employees. At the same time, since December 2013, another company associated with electronic fund transfers, Payment Technologies LLC, moved to Donetsk. One of its founders was Glinchevsky Denis Stanislavovich. He also headed United Wallet LLC, which had Donetsk registration from 2013 to 2015. Another company operated at the same address in Donetsk - Digital Payment Systems LLC, which in 2015 was headed by the same Denis Glinchevsky. All these companies were associated with the fact that they were used to make payments through the “W1 Single Wallet”.
Valeria Bondarenko-Vagorovskaya has a historical connection with both Payment Technologies and Olmost Software, so it is safe to say that she is involved in the use of these systems by terrorist organizations.
To prove that these are not unfounded accusations, you should pay attention to the decision of the Court of Appeal of the Dnepropetrovsk region dated April 1, 2015: “The pre-trial investigation established that from September 2014 to the present, officials of Digital Payment Systems LLC (USREOU 36859032) , legal address: Donetsk, st. Shevchenko, 41d, acting by prior conspiracy by a group of people, organized an illegal financial scheme aimed at financing terrorism, namely: using the company's current accounts opened in PJSC CB "PrivatBank", they organized the collection of funds for further use by representatives of the "Humanitarian Battalion "Novorossiya" under the guise of the “PERSON_2 Charitable Foundation” for the purchase of weapons, uniforms, unmanned aerial vehicles, food and other material support for members of terrorist groups (organizations) operating in the Donetsk region. In particular, it has been established that financial assistance for the needs of illegal armed groups carrying out forceful opposition to Ukrainian military formations in the territory of the anti-terrorist operation zone comes from individuals and legal entities in the form of charitable donations for targeted support of the activities of these funds. At the same time, from the production materials it is clear that the accumulation of non-cash funds for the purpose of their conversion and subsequent transfer to the territory of the Russian Federation is carried out using accumulating and transit bank current accounts, including No. 26003001014280, opened in PJSC "Radical Bank" (MFO 3) LLC "Prime Monitoring" (EDRPOU 38958522)"
Now Valeria Vagorovskaya positions herself almost as a financial genius, whose payment service Fondy operates in many countries around the world, and its clients are the largest companies. So, for example, on the Ukrainian Fondy website it is indicated that they serve the already mentioned Uklon, Novaya Poshta, Sport Life, Glovo, etc. But nothing is said about the fact that before the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Fondy company worked in Russia without remorse, despite the annexation of Crimea and separatist actions in the Donbass. The office in Moscow was happy to have Russian clients, despite what had been happening since 2014 in Valeria Vagorovskaya’s native Donetsk.
However, as mentioned above, the arrival of terrorists in the Ukrainian Donbass did not upset the Vagorovsky family at all. And, apparently, it doesn’t upset me even now, because until 2018, Nina Nikolaevna Bondarenko was listed as the founder of the Foxweepement LLC company from Donetsk. This woman has the same Donetsk registration as Valeria Bondarenko-Vagorovskaya. She could probably be the mother of Fondy's founder.
And finally, a person with the same registration and the same first and last name - Valeria Valerievna Bondarenko, until October 2021, headed the company Regional Investment Agency LLC, which now continues to operate in occupied Donetsk.
It turns out that a person who is reasonably suspected of having connections with terrorists, in the second year of the Russian Federation’s full-scale war against Ukraine, calmly receives a license from the NBU to conduct business related to payment systems, connects the largest Ukrainian companies to them, and there are no questions from either the SBU or other law enforcement agencies.
This month, Valeria Vagorovskaya’s company Fondy must undergo an audit from the Tax Service. Such data is contained in public registers. But the question of the company’s director’s connections with terrorists remains open.
On the other hand, no fewer questions arise for the taxi service Uklon, which has chosen as its financial partner a company whose founder has such a tarnished reputation. On the one hand, Uklon, together with charitable foundations, call themselves patriots and volunteers. On the other hand, the company makes financial payments through the service of a person who served the top of the “DPR”, which paid taxes to the quasi-state entity and stopped working for Russia only after the full-scale invasion. Shouldn't Uklon's recklessness also be of interest to law enforcement? Not to mention the fact that the police should finally open their eyes to violations by taxi drivers during curfew.
