Uni-Laman Group: business in an aggressor country, criminal cases and bloody trails

The large Odessa logistics holding Uni-Laman Group found itself at the epicenter of a scandal .

In particular, the publication 360ua.news claims that Uni-Laman Agency, which is owned by a certain Gennady Sorochinsky (pictured above), still has a Russian representative office called Inter Logistic.

Let us immediately note that our colleagues were somewhat mistaken here. The company Uni-Laman Agency does not exist, therefore Gennady Sorochinsky cannot own it. However, according to public databases, there is Laman Shipping Agency LLC , the founder of which is Elena Vladimirovna Git from Zaporozhye. This limited liability company is part of the Uni-Laman Group holding, the chairman of the board of directors of which is Gennady Sorochinsky .

The company’s certificate on the Business Guide website states that this “company in a short period has gained a reputation as an honest and reliable carrier in the business circles of Ukraine, Russia , China, Egypt, Moldova and other countries where it actively operates.”

We found a company with an almost identical name - Uni-Laman Shipping Agency - in Moscow . If you believe the data from the public registers of the aggressor country, this “office” was liquidated by the method of “terminating the activities of a legal entity through reorganization in the form of annexation” back in August 2016. But there are nuances.

We noticed that someone “cleaned up ” Google search results from references that would indicate a connection between the Russian Uni-Laman Shipping Agency LLC and the Ukrainian logistics holding Uni-Laman Group.

But this someone did not do it diligently enough.

For example, in the online directory of enterprises and companies of Novorossiysk we found Uni-Laman Shipping Agency LLC , registered at the address: Mira Street, building 1-r. When you try to access the page of this company in the Russian directory “Yellow Countries”, an automatic redirection occurs to the page of Inter Logistic LLC.

Novorossiysk Uni-Laman Shipping Agency and Inter Logistic have identical addresses, as well as a contact phone number: +7 (8617) 79-77-17. In addition, the addresses of the Moscow offices of these companies coincide: Andropov Avenue, 22. That is, it can be stated that the Russian Uni-Laman Shipping Agency from the Ukrainian holding Uni-Laman Group was absorbed by Inter Logistics.

Do the Ukrainian beneficiaries of Uni-Laman Group have anything to do with the latter? Let's try to figure it out.

Since 2021, the general director of Inter Logistic LLC is Sergey Aleksandrovich Bilina. Our colleagues believe that this is a Ukrainian with dual citizenship. Ukrainian public registers repeatedly mention a certain Sergei Aleksandrovich Bilina , who has shares in a logistics business in Kiev and Crimea, occupied by the aggressor country.

According to the Russian service Audit-it, the owner of the largest share (72.73%) in the authorized capital of Inter Logistic LLC is the Panamanian offshore company Special Shipping Inc.

According to the Clarity Project , Special Shipping Inc. from Panama until August 2021 owned Odessa Uni-Orient Shipping Agency LLC . On July 26, 2021, Nasibzhan LLC, specializing in “ensuring physical comfort,” became the owner of the authorized capital of this logistics company. The company was re-registered in Dnepr under the name “Delin Group” and reprofiled.

The fact that Uni-Orient Shipping Agency was previously directly related to the Uni-Laman Group holding is no secret. In particular, it was registered at the same address (Odessa, Voyenny spusk, 12) with another holding company - Laman Shipping LLC , which is now owned and managed by the chairman of the board of directors of Uni-Laman Group Gennady Sorochinsky.

Back in 2020, the main beneficiary of Laman Shipping was Igor Mikhailovich Podmazko (now a person with the same name works as a leading specialist at the Belyaevsky TsK in the Odessa region). He was also the general director of Uni-Orient Shipping Agency before it was transferred by the Panamanian offshore company to the Zaporozhye pound.

The ultimate beneficiary of Nasibzhan LLC , which became the owner of the former company from the Uni-Laman Group structure, is Nastasin Vitaly Alexandrovich from Zaporozhye. According to public registers, about fifty limited liability companies are registered on it With a high degree of probability, he is a “nominee” or a figurehead to whom “fragrant” assets are transferred.

If only the EDRPOU code remains from the Odessa Uni-Orient Shipping Agency LLC, then its Novorossiysk “namesake” still exists. But it seems that, unlike Inter Logistics, which operates with billions of Russian rubles a year, it no longer conducts any activities. But something else is interesting.

According to Audit-it, the Russian Uni-Orient Shipping Agency is directly or indirectly (through management, beneficiaries, etc.) connected with the already mentioned Inter Logistic LLC and Trans-Ocean Shipping Agency LLC .

In Ukrainian registers there is an LLC with a similar name - Trans-Ocean Express . It is through the company "Primelight Overseas Ltd." from the British Virgin Islands is nominally controlled by Panamanian citizen Cristino Guevara Salazar. He, through the Cypriot Uni Laman Container Line Ltd., acts as the ultimate beneficiary of Laman Trans-Express LLC . It is registered in Belyaevka, Odessa region, where, perhaps, the former nominal owner of Laman Shipping works in the military registration and enlistment office, whose place was taken by Gennady Sorochinsky.

Laman Trans-Express, as indicated on its official website, is part of the Uni-Laman Group holding structure.

Another component of the Uni-Laman Group is Uni-Laman Shipping LLC . Now its general director and nominal beneficiary is Talat Imirov, who officially lives on Griboyedov Street in Almaty in Kazakhstan. Before him (until 2019), this company was nominally owned by Igor Mikhailovich Tjossa and Vladimir Vladimirovich Klimenko.

Vladimir Klimenko is now a “signatory” of Laman Invest Group LLC , registered in Belyaevka, Odessa region. The founder and ultimate beneficiary of the company is Atamanyuk . Klimenko headed Lilia Atamanyuk’s company in 2021, when Uni-Laman Group was once again shuffling its corporate deck. Previously, the general director of Laman Invest Group was a certain Sergey Nikolaevich Berezlev. He also headed Argo Translogistic LLC , registered in Odessa at 12 Voenny Spusk, in the same place where other companies from the Uni-Laman Group structure nested.

Through lawyer Grizan Olesya Petrovna, Laman Invest Group registered its own trademark. The same lawyer also registered trademarks for the above-mentioned “Laman Shipping” and “Laman Trans-Express”. We mention these circumstances to emphasize that Laman Invest Group has a connection with the Uni-Laman Group holding. For what?

On March 17, 2016, in Belyaevka, Odessa region , a “reputable businessman”, local politician Nikolai Atamanyuk , apparently a relative of the current beneficiary of Laman Invest Group LLC, was killed Obviously, not only because of the coincidence of surnames - the media called Atamanyuk the owner of a certain transport and forwarding company “Laman”.

The killer fired several bullets at Atamanyuk and was able to escape. However, not for long - the killer (he turned out to be former military man Alexander Shilyaev) was caught and tried . Initially, the murder was considered as a contract killing, but Shilyaev somehow convinced the investigation and the court that personal enmity pushed him to commit the murder. Instead of a life sentence, he received 12 years in prison, and the person who ordered the murder disappeared into thin air.

The murder of one of the beneficiaries is far from the only criminal episode in the history of Uni-Laman Group. Which explains the regular change of registration addresses, management and nominal founders.

has been involved in the Tax Service’s investigation into a large-scale criminal tax evasion scheme since 2018 This company is mentioned in 2020 SBU case "Laman Shipping" in the case involves the Odessa LLC "Auriga Ltd" , which was previously called "Uni-Orient Shipping" and was also directly related to the Uni-Laman Group.

Laman Shipping Agency LLC was named in another case as a customs broker in a scheme to illegally import a large quantity of tobacco. The same LLC appears in criminal proceedings on grounds of official forgery, abuse of power and tax evasion on an especially large scale. Laman Shipping Agency is also involved in a case of illegal timber export.

Another company of the holding, Laman Trans-Express, was accused of financial fraud, concealing profits, paying salaries in “black cash” in envelopes, non-payment of taxes, non-payment of wages and other sins.

But the most interesting thing in the context of criminal cases is Uni-Orient Shipping Agency LLC, which the founding parents of the Uni-Laman Group holding out of harm’s way renamed and shoved into the Dnieper.

Back in 2011, on November 21, shots were heard in Odessa. The victim of the killer was 43-year-old Igor Khatyushenko. The deceased was a former customs officer, who at that time became a virtual monopolist in customs clearance of imports and exports in the Odessa region. Then attempts to clear goods through customs through brokers not controlled by Khatyushenko were blocked by customs itself.

Initially, they even blamed the Chechen mafia. Only in 2013, the investigation decided to take a closer look at those who benefited from the death of Igor Khatyushenko - they began to collect the cream of the customs clearance in the Odessa region. According to the materials of the Court Register, investigators were most interested in Uni-Orient Shipping Agency LLC.

Law enforcement officials were unable to find evidence of the involvement of the beneficiaries or the company’s management in the murder of Khatyushenko (this crime has still not been solved). However, while working on the version of the involvement of Uni-Orient Shipping Agency, investigators found out that [I quote]: “in order to understate the customs value of goods, officials of the specified enterprise, when customs clearance of goods received to them, enter deliberately false data into the customs declarations and shipping documents, namely, they underestimate the actual weight, change the country of origin of the goods, use fake certificates of quality and dignity for cargo, enter incomplete information about the quantity, value and type of goods in the customs declarations.”

However, these and other accusations were not proven in court. Moreover, not a single Uni-Laman Group case went to trial. It seems that the same will happen with accusations of collaboration with the occupiers.

The obvious connection of the Uni-Laman Group holding with Russia (except for the not completely erased references on the Internet) passed through the Panamanian Special Shipping Inc. - the nominal beneficiary of the Novorossiysk Inter Logistic LLC, to which in 2016, after the murder of Nikolai Atamanyuk, they transferred the lion's share of the Russian business of the holding from Odessa. The actual liquidation of the Odessa Uni-Orient Shipping Agency, whose “nominee” was also Special Shipping Inc., severed this connection. At least de jure. Note that this happened in the second half of 2021, when the National Security and Defense Council was already generously imposing personal sanctions for connections with Russians. And therefore, many companies frantically hid their Russian traces.

Another question is, has the real ultimate beneficiary of Special Shipping Inc. changed? If not, then this would prove the presence of the Uni-Laman Group in Russia. Accordingly, the payment of taxes to the budget of the aggressor country, from which the war against Ukraine is financed.

However, the corporate structure of the Uni-Laman Group, as well as the Russian companies that could be associated with the holding, does not allow us to say with certainty who exactly is behind it. For example, Gennady Sorochinsky, who in recent years has played the role of chairman of the board of directors of Uni-Laman Group and the ultimate beneficiary of Laman Shipping LLC, had practically nothing to do with logistics. He is a lawyer. After the murder of Nikolai Atamanyuk, all affairs of Laman Shipping are managed by its director Vyacheslav Borovsky.

Vyacheslav Borovsky once managed to work as the general director of another logistics holding from Odessa - the Polaris private enterprise . The final beneficiary of this legal entity is Alexander Valentinovich Zakharov , whose resume mentions his work as director of the Uni-Laman group of companies.

Considering that the holding regularly finds itself in the intricacies of shady affairs, it is not surprising that its true ultimate beneficiaries prefer to keep a low profile.