Vasily Khmelnitsky and Biopharma earn money on both sides of the front

Over the two years of war, the number of stories about how domestic and Western companies are trying to conduct business as usual simultaneously in Ukraine and the Russian Federation has exceeded several dozen and probably won’t shock anyone.

But even in this situation, the story of how the founder of a strategic enterprise for Ukraine tried to make money on the territory of an aggressor state by providing the Russian defense industry with products for the production of aircraft, helicopters and infantry fighting vehicles goes beyond the usual.

We are talking about the Bila Tserkva “Biopharma Plasma”. This is one of the key biopharmaceutical enterprises in Ukraine, focusing on the production of drugs from blood plasma. They produce a number of important medicines in the field of hematology and immunology, including blood clotting drugs - thanks to this, Ukraine is among 12 countries in the world capable of producing them. Naturally, in war conditions, Biopharma drugs are very important for saving lives, especially military personnel.

For 4 years, “UkrRudProm” talked about how “Biopharma” was privatized by the capital’s developer Vasya Khmelnitsky and his junior partner in this project, Konstantin Efimenko (for a better understanding of the history, this is the former Minister of Transport and Communications, as well as the first Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Development of Ukraine in the government Nikolai Azarov). Khmelnitsky’s interest lay in the Biopharma real estate, which this company owned next to the center of Kyiv. Naturally, our valiant law enforcement officers could not help but become interested in Vasya’s wet dreams.

In 2015, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case into abuses by officials of the State Property Fund during the privatization of Biopharma. Investigators were interested in the alienation of the entire property complex of an enterprise on Amosova Street in Kyiv (adjacent to the city center) worth several million dollars. During the investigation, searches were carried out in the offices of the State Property Fund, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Economy and Biopharma.

The Prosecutor General's Office became interested in the scheme that Khmelnitsky carried out during that amazing period of time when the State Property Fund was headed by the late Valentina Semenyuk. In 2008, with the consent of the State Property Fund, the joint-stock company “Biopharma” was created, to which the state contributed the entire property complex of the plant for the production of bacterial preparations on Amosova Street, and Khmelnitsky’s structures contributed money. And two years later, the state, represented by the State Property Fund, got rid of its stake in the company, selling shares to a company close to Khmelnitsky. In 2015, this scheme was classified by the Prosecutor General's Office under Part 2 of Article 364 (abuse of power or official position), Part 2 of Art. 366 (official forgery), part 5 of Art. 191 (embezzlement of state property) of the Criminal Code.

The seriousness of the situation can be judged at least by the fact that 5 years ago the sole shareholder of PJSC Biopharma decided to terminate the issuer through its liquidation. According to the company’s message in the information disclosure system of the National Securities and Stock Market Commission, the decision was made on August 15, 2018 “due to the unsatisfactory state of financial flows from business activities.”

As a result, the Biopharma production site on Amosova Street went under construction, and the security forces, as usual, received money (a lot). As for the remains of the equipment of the Kyiv plant, they were either sold for scrap or transported to Bila Tserkva.

It was there that in September 2019, under the Biopharma brand, a plant was opened - a plasma fractionator that can process up to a million liters of plasma per year. Even before its launch, Khmelnitsky and Efimenko lobbied for the Cabinet of Ministers order to grant their Biopharm Plasma LLC the exclusive right to export from the country components of donor blood and preparations from it, which openly contradicted the Law of Ukraine “On the Donation of Blood and Its Components”. In accordance with it, the sale of donor blood and its components outside of Ukraine is possible only if they fully meet the health needs of the population of our country.

Just 4 years ago we wrote: “Considering that Ukraine today is actually in a state of war, which at any moment can go into a hot stage, the desire of a native of “gangster Petersburg” to send as much Ukrainian blood as possible for export looks not just like a whim of an insatiable nouveau riche , but also a completely meaningful attempt to undermine the country’s defense capability.”

However, the reality turned out to be even more than our expectations. In December 2023, a scandal erupted in Russia. There they finally found out that an entire Russian industrial holding, whose products are used for the production of airplanes, helicopters and infantry fighting vehicles, “found itself under the control of people from Ukraine who are sponsors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

The Volga City Court of the Volgograd Region considered the claim of Deputy Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Tkachev behind closed doors. Russian security forces found out that Konstantin Efimenko and his sister Elizaveta Andreeva, through their Belo Tserkov foundation, are actively helping the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Through this organization, not only funds are raised for the needs of our army: the foundation’s volunteers purchase food for the military, sew clothes and camouflage nets. As the president of Biopharma Plasma LLC, Efimenko also uses this company’s money to purchase and supply the Ukrainian Armed Forces with drones, tactical backpacks, first aid kits, medicines, food, etc.

What appears before us is not a former “regional” official, but practically a UPA rebel working behind enemy lines. In order not to get caught once again, Efimenko transferred all his assets on the territory of the aggressor state to his sister Elizaveta Andreeva. Among them is PJSC Ural Auto-Textile Plant (PJSC UralATI, Asbest, Sverdlovsk Region), specializing in the production of brake, friction and sealing materials for transport, industrial and construction enterprises. The subsidiaries of the PJSC are JSC Friction and Heat-Resistant Materials Plant (Fritex), LLC Vati-Avto, LLC Research and Production Association “Brake Mechanism Plant” LLC, LLC Kolodka-Kompozit, LLC Temak-Engineering ”, LLC “Volzhsky Textile Materials Plant”.

All these companies, located on the territory of the Volgograd, Sverdlovsk, Yaroslavl regions, as well as Tatarstan, form a single industrial holding, the main customers and consumers of whose products are the state defense factories of the Russian Federation, which use them for the production of aircraft and helicopters, military vehicles, airborne and infantry fighting vehicles .

However, supplying products to the Russian army is not all that is interesting. Russian security officials claim that the sister of the president of Bila Tserkva Biopharma, born Maria Alekseevna Efimenko, upon entering Russian citizenship (six months after the start of a full-scale war), changed her last name, first name and patronymic to Elizaveta Nikolaevna Andreeva in order to “hide her family connection” with her brother and his participation in the ownership of the industrial holding described above.

As a result, having received a Russian passport on August 3, 2022, the newly minted Andreeva flew to the UAE on August 9, from where she never returned to the Russian Federation. And the enterprises transferred to it continued to ship products for the production of Russian airplanes and helicopters, military vehicles, airborne and infantry fighting vehicles. Thanks to AI, they continued to kill and maim Ukrainians, for whose salvation the Bila Tserkva Biopharma supplies drugs.

As a result, a month ago, the Russian Federation stopped this theater of the absurd and confiscated Efimenko’s assets. And on the agenda is the question of when our country will take a similar step. And not only in relation to Efimenko’s assets, since, according to sources, he ran his Russian business (as in the case of the Belotserkov Biopharma) together with Khmelnitsky. Vasya, by the way, still has a construction business in occupied Crimea, has shares in the oil companies there and many other “small things” - but this does not bother law enforcement officers at all (apparently, they are still digesting bribes received from our protagonist 5 years ago).

In the case of the industrial holding confiscated in the Russian Federation, Vasya, despite his good connections in St. Petersburg, could not save him from confiscation (he joined this story too late), but he still managed to remove references to his beloved self in the case materials of the Russian investigators.