Ukraine is in dire need of financial assistance from its Western partners to continue to counter the armed aggression of the Russian Federation and support the country’s economy during the war.
To cover the budget deficit, the government is also considering raising taxes for millions of Ukrainians. At the same time, there are favorable conditions for those who received billions of hryvnia from the state and do not pay their debt obligations, investigative journalists from Schemes note.
A striking example is Viktor Polishchuk, a businessman with connections in the Russian Federation, who enriched himself during the time of Yanukovych and continues his activities in Ukraine. Polishchuk’s wife is a relative of Dmitry Medvedev, the ex-president of the Russian Federation, where the businessman flew several times after 2014, that is, after the Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbass.
As of 2024, he owes Ukraine about 14 billion hryvnia - and this is only for one of his businesses - the capital's Gulliver trade and office center, the construction of which was generously financed in previous years by the state-owned Oschadbank and Ukreximbank.
Despite the abnormally low interest rate and long repayment period - a quarter of a century, Polishchuk's structures during the great war stopped the repayment of this debt for a whole year.
At the same time, as Schemes (a Radio Liberty project) found out, the management of state banks did not apply any penalties to him and have not yet begun forced collection of debts or loan collateral (Gulliver himself), once again meeting the businessman halfway with a Russian trail.
During the journalistic investigation, “Schemes” established that overdue debt to state banks did not prevent the purchase in 2022 of numerous luxury cars worth tens of millions of hryvnia, which the businessman himself uses.
Just like martial law and conscription age did not prevent Polishchuk from freely traveling abroad on the basis of documents with signs of forgery.
Thus, the businessman was included in “Shlyakh” both as a volunteer driver and as a driver for a freight transportation company - but he did not bring either the declared humanitarian aid or commercial cargo.
Failure to fulfill publicly assumed obligations to support the Armed Forces of Ukraine also occurred in another case, essentially with the misleading of numerous clients of the Eldorado network, also part of Polishchuk’s business empire.
“Schemes” found that after the widely publicized “Equipment that saves lives for the military” campaign, under which Eldorado pledged to send 0.5 percent of sales to the needs of the army, the network did not fulfill its stated promise and did not transfer any funds.
Connection with Yanukovych and Medvedev
A businessman from the time of Yanukovych, a relative of Medvedev through his wife, the owner of Gulliver, Eldorado and the bankrupt Mikhailovsky Bank - this is a brief description of Viktor Polishchuk, a non-public businessman who, on the eve of the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation, took 36th place in the list of the richest Ukrainians in the Forbes ranking .
The peak of his business development occurred during the presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. And Polishchuk himself was called one of the “wallets” of the so-called “Family” - the oligarchic-political clan of the fugitive former president. It was then that he literally came out of nowhere as the owner of large assets in finance, retail and real estate. Subsequently, information appeared about the family ties of his wife, Liliya Rizva, with the Kremlin. It turned out that she is the niece of the wife of Dmitry Medvedev, the former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, and now the Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, who constantly scares the world with the use of nuclear weapons.
Viktor Polishchuk became known to the general public after Yanukovych fled to Russia. In 2016, the National Bank declared the bank of the businessman Mikhailovsky insolvent and accused him of transferring assets to related structures. Then the bankruptcy of Mikhailovsky was accompanied by mass actions of bank depositors with the blocking of the main street of the capital - Khreshchatyk. The trial against the accused top managers of the bank is still ongoing. But Polishchuk himself managed to avoid the status of a defendant in a criminal case regarding the theft of Mikhailovsky funds.
The Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of war in Donbass in 2014 did not become a reason for him to sever ties with the Russian Federation. According to information from Russian air travel databases obtained by Schemes, Viktor Polishchuk flew to Moscow at least six times during 2016-2018.
According to the same data, his wife (niece of the wife of ex-Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Svetlana Rizva) flew to Russia at least twice after 2014 - in February 2018 and June 2019.
Business at the expense of the state
The crown jewel of Viktor Polishchuk’s business is one of the tallest skyscrapers in Ukraine – the Kiev shopping, entertainment and office center “Gulliver”. Its construction began in 2001, and the center itself opened in 2013. At first, Kiev developer Vagif Aliyev, together with politicians Sergei Veselov and Alexey Kucherenko, acted as investors in the construction. But on the eve of the opening of the complex, it turned out that Polishchuk became the new owner of Gulliver - at that time he became close to Yanukovych’s “Family”, and part of the floors in the new business center were occupied by the structures of the then Minister of Revenue and Duties Alexander Klimenko.
In fact, this is a large profitable business in the center of the capital built at the expense of the state. After all, Gulliver was built precisely with money from state banks - Oschadbank and Ukreximbank. Polishchuk's powerful patrons fled to Moscow, but he stayed and continued this business.
And as of now, Polishchuk’s structures owe about 14 billion hryvnia to state banks.
What attracts attention is how, with each successive government, the state willingly met the interests of this businessman. Over ten years, we revised the lending terms several times, each time making them more and more profitable - no, not for the state, but for the private borrower.
The last restructuring with significant concessions to Polishchuk’s structures under the terms of the loan took place during Zelensky’s time - in 2020.
The editors of Schemes have exclusive documents - copies of the detailed plan for this restructuring. It provides for deferment of debt repayments for another quarter of a century - until 2044. At the same time, the interest rate on the loan was reduced almost threefold - it is now only 3.65% per annum.
In fact, the state, represented by Oschadbank and Ukreximbank, once again played along with the owner of Gulliver, says financial analyst Ivan Uglyanitsa.
“In general, I would not call this story a restructuring. In fact, this is simply moving the maturities 20+ years into the future and reducing the rate at a level that is much lower than the market,” says Uglyanitsa. And he adds that for comparison, according to the NBU, during the period of this restructuring the average rates on loans to large commercial enterprises were 9.1%, and on existing loans 10.9%. Moreover, for hryvnia loans the rate was 15.2%, and for foreign currency loans - 5.7%. “In this case, a single rate was established for both the foreign currency and hryvnia portions of the debt in the amount of 3.65%,” the analyst notes.
However, despite such preferential conditions for the owner of Gulliver, from the beginning of 2022 he stopped returning money to the state altogether. The loan was not repaid for a year, this was confirmed to Schemes by several sources in state banks, Forbes also wrote about this.
Monthly payments resumed only in 2023, and even then not in full. At the beginning of 2024, the owner of Gulliver was overdue for a debt repayment plan of about 500 million hryvnia, out of a total of 14 billion UAH that he still must return to Oschadbank and Ukreximbank, says a Schemes source in one of these state banks.
The Scheme asked the management of Gulliver about the reasons for the long stoppage of payments; they received a request, but within a week they did not answer these and other questions from the editors.
And “Schemes” became interested - what penalties were imposed on the structures of a businessman with connections in the Russian Federation? It turned out that the management of state-owned banks simply turned a blind eye to the almost year-long stoppage in the fulfillment of financial obligations by the borrower and did not use any of the enforcement mechanisms, although they had such in their arsenal.
Personal guarantee
In general, as often happens with scandalous assets, Polishchuk publicly denied being the owner of Gulliver. The shopping, entertainment and business center is run by his wife Lilia Rizva, and the formal owner of the Three O company (the legal name of the complex) is her cousin. However, the fact that Polishchuk is the owner of the complex has been repeatedly reported by the media, citing numerous sources in the market, who also referred to the guarantee agreement for the loan for Gulliver, personally signed by Viktor Polishchuk.
To verify this for themselves, Schemes received the aforementioned surety agreement. According to the document, Viktor Polishchuk actually personally guaranteed to return at least $207 million to state banks if the Three O company violates its obligations to Oschadbank and Ukreximbank.
That is, the claim work to collect debts could begin after the first late monthly payment.
Why didn’t state banks take advantage of their legal right for a whole year and start neither collecting money from Viktor Polishchuk on a surety basis, nor confiscating the collateral - the Gulliver complex?
The Schemes addressed these questions directly to Oschadbank and Ukreximbank, which provided money to the owner of Gulliver.
Oschadbank explained its unwillingness to now engage in forced collection of collateral or money from Viktor Polishchuk by the fact that the use of these settlement options “will mean the actual termination of relations with the debtor in a situation where he agrees and is ready to cooperate with Oschadbank JSC to repay the debt” .
The financial institution separately notes that when working with problem loans, they cannot ignore factors such as Russia’s large-scale military aggression and the COVID-19 pandemic, which have negatively impacted Ukrainian business. Regarding the favorable debt restructuring conditions for the borrower, which were approved in 2020 for the next quarter century at a significantly lower market interest rate, the bank explained that they made this decision due, among other things, to “the debtor’s being in a critical financial condition.”
Ukreximbank, when asked by Radio Liberty about preferential terms for Polishchuk, also noted that the terms of restructuring depend on the type of activity, the current financial condition of the debtor, prospects for business recovery and financial burden.
“The measures determined by the bank to manage problem assets are economically and, if possible, statistically justified, and the bank’s calculations, taking into account its own experience, indicate that their implementation will ensure that the bank receives economic benefits that are higher than the costs that may be incurred in managing problem assets. assets,” says Ukreximbank’s response.
Oschadbank and Ukreximbank did not answer the rest of the journalists’ questions about the failure of the company “Three O” to fulfill its obligations, citing bank secrecy.
Obviously, the last two years have been difficult for retail and office real estate in Kyiv. But for Gulliver, which is located right in the center of the capital, the situation is better than the market average, says the managing director of Colliers in Ukraine, Alexander Nosachenko: “Properties such as Gulliver, as a rule, have a vacancy rate of about 10-15% . That is, it is not critical.”
Together with specialists in the real estate market from the international company Colliers, Schemes have calculated that a retail and office complex like Gulliver in today's conditions can earn more than $22 million a year.
Buying luxury cars instead of paying off debts
Are Polishchuk and his structures really experiencing critical financial difficulties that allegedly complicate his settlement with the state? In May 2023, detectives from the Bureau of Economic Security discovered a large-scale scheme to conceal income from Gulliver's activities.
In turn, during this journalistic investigation, “Schemes” established that while some of Polishchuk’s structures did not repay their debts to the state, others spent tens of millions of hryvnia on the purchase of luxury cars in which the businessman himself and his security move.
How did you manage to discover this?
In March 2022, in the second month of the full-scale war, the State Bureau of Investigation reported that it had foiled an attempt to smuggle three luxury Rolls-Royce cars out of the country on the basis of likely forged documents, with a total value of 50 million hryvnia. Law enforcement officials said that two of them were registered to the company of “a person associated with one of the high-ranking officials of the Russian Federation.”
We were talking about Viktor Polishchuk - his wife Liliya Rizva is the niece of Svetlana Medvedeva, the wife of the deputy of the Security Council of the Russian Federation.
Thus, two of the three Rolls-Royces that were not allowed to leave by the SBI workers are registered to the company Carpe Rentals.
The company is registered in Gulliver. And its formal owner in the register is 59-year-old Ekaterina Kuzmenko from the village of Peregonovka, Kirovograd region. The “schemes” established that this was the businessman’s cousin. It was in this village that Viktor Polishchuk was born. He, in fact, travels in cars registered with Carp Rentals. Before the invasion, journalists recorded him driving one of the aforementioned Rolls-Royces.
As of the time of publication of this material, Carpe Rentals owns 36 cars, most of which belong to the “premium” and “business” class. Some of them are brand new cars from the showroom, purchased in 2022. Thus, the company spent tens of millions of hryvnia on the purchase of luxury cars, during the same period when the owner of Gulliver did not pay his debts to state banks.
From sources in the tax “Scheme” we received the financial and economic statements of “Carpe Rentals”.
In 2022, she purchased as many as three new Mercedes-AMG G 63 - for seven million hryvnia each (this is the newest model of “Gelik”, as they are popularly called), and also a Volkswagen Multivan for 2 million hryvnia, a Skoda Kodiaq for almost one and a half million. The company bought another three dozen cars around the time when law enforcement officers suspected Gulliver of withdrawing money from the company under fictitious contracts to hide its income from the state.
Now the cost of the entire Carpe Rentals fleet can be estimated at approximately three million dollars. This is more than one hundred million hryvnia.
Viktor Polishchuk left unanswered a request to comment on whether the purchase of luxury cars from a company registered to his 59-year-old sister is a way of hiding real income in conditions of large debt to the state.
Volunteer on a Gelika
The investigation of this secret elite fleet of vehicles led The Schemes to another interesting aspect of the debtor billionaire's activities, namely, his unhindered travel abroad under martial law.
Viktor Polishchuk is a man of military age, 47 years old. But during the two years of full-scale war, he and his wife regularly traveled abroad, in one of the brand new Gelik cars from the Carpe Rentals fleet. As “Schemes” found out when searching for reasons to leave, Polishchuk applied to “Shlyakh” on the basis of documents with signs of forgery about humanitarian aid - and did not bring it. And he even got a job as a truck driver for a carrier company, but he also didn’t deliver any cargo.
According to information received by Schemes journalists from sources with access to border crossing data, he traveled abroad at least five times: twice - in 2022 and 2023, and also in 2024.
It’s rare to see the use of several “schemes” for travel at once using the example of one person, so we’ll talk about each one separately.
On August 10, 2022, Viktor Polishchuk left for Poland driving a Mercedes-Benz AMG G 63, and his wife Liliya Rizva crossed the border with him. Border guards released a man of military age because he was entered into the Shlyakh system as a volunteer driver who was supposed to bring 700 first aid kits from Romania, as well as medicines, hygiene products, clothing, sleeping bags and food with a total volume of 12 tons.
Polishchuk was included in “Ways” by the Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration, at the request of the local NGO “Association for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs,” which petitioned for “granting permission to travel outside Ukraine to Romania for volunteer driver V.S. Polishchuk.” to receive humanitarian aid from the Romanian company OSF Global Services.” The Dnepropetrovsk Regional State Administration itself informed Schemes about this, in response to a request, providing copies of all documents, on the basis of which the departure was permitted.
Polishchuk returned in 16 days, also in a passenger Mercedes. The carrying capacity of which would not be enough for even a tenth of the declared humanitarian aid. I also came from Poland, and not from Romania.
Radio Liberty appealed to the management of the Romanian company, a letter from which became the basis for allowing Polishchuk to leave. This letter, signed by Alina Dorobantu, director of the Romanian office of a large international IT company OSF Global Services, was provided by the Dnepropetrovsk OVA in two languages - English and Ukrainian. Here it is:
Dorobantu himself responded to the editor’s request. He said that their international company had sent humanitarian supplies to Ukraine in other periods. But she never collaborated with either the Dnieper NGO or with Viktor Polishchuk, and did not send the cargo stated in the letter through them. And the letter itself is an obvious fake.
“OSF Digital did not contact the NGO “Association for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs” regarding the transfer of humanitarian aid or requests for assistance in sending volunteer drivers to deliver any cargo. We have no connection with the specified organization or individual Polishchuk Viktor Stepanovich (or his companies),” said Chief Operating Officer Alin Dorobantu.
“Based on the information provided, we have discovered certain details that indicate that the “letter” with which OSF Global Services requested permission for volunteers of the NGO “Association for the Protection of Entrepreneurs’ Rights” to cross the border is a fake. These details include an outdated form, lack of a registration number and an illegible signature,” Alin Dorobantu responded to Radio Liberty.
It was impossible to get a comment from the NGO “Association for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs” - the head of the organization, Sergei Selin, did not respond to phone calls and a request from the editors. And one of the co-founders of this public organization, Oleg Zorin, said that it has been inactive for two years.
In the end, documents with signs of forgery about a fictitious humanitarian worker from Romania opened the “path” for Polishchuk to travel abroad for a whole six months. Returning from Poland in August 2022, he used the same permit again last year - leaving with his wife across the Polish border on September 24 and returning on October 5.
What is the responsibility for traveling as a volunteer on the basis of fake documents? Lawyer of the NGO “Human Rights Platforms” Evgeniy Vorobyov says: if it turns out that the documents submitted for permission to travel abroad contain signs of forgery, then law enforcement officers can begin a pre-trial investigation under Article 358 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, at least for the use of a deliberately forged document .
“In this case, the entire chain should be checked - where did this document with signs of forgery come from and the like. If the driver was aware of the falsity of the purposes and reasons for traveling abroad, he may be an accomplice with an organization that submitted a deliberately forged document to the official bodies that granted permission to travel abroad. And the organization itself can also be checked for signs of Article 332 - illegal transportation of persons across the border,” says the lawyer.
Billionaire truck driver
In August 2023, the businessman and his wife went abroad again, but the “volunteer” permit had already expired. Therefore, the Forbes rating participant got a job... as a truck driver. This follows from the response of the State Service of Ukraine for Transport Safety (Ukrtransbezopasnost) to a request from Radio Liberty.
So, in 2023, Polishchuk was included in the Shlyakh system on the proposal of Trans-Soyus LLC - this is a Bukovina company that specializes in freight transportation and has the appropriate license. She has the right to make a presentation on departure only in relation to drivers employed by the company. And they, in turn, are obliged to cross the border exclusively on the company’s freight transport included in the application.
And indeed, on August 17, 2023, Viktor Polishchuk crossed the border in the direction of Poland driving a Mercedes Sprinter cargo bus. His wife was also with him. This is evidenced by data on border crossings from the border service, which are at the disposal of Schemes.
However, despite the clear rules defined by the Cabinet of Ministers resolution on the rules for obtaining exit permits for freight drivers, on August 29, 2023, Viktor Polishchuk did not return to Ukraine while driving a truck. And on a luxury “Gelika” produced in 2021 worth 200 thousand dollars (registered to a cousin’s company).
He managed to repeat this scheme in the staff of the same carrier company again - on October 15, 2023, he and his wife again drove a cargo bus from the Bukovinian company Trans-Soyus, and three weeks later they returned with her in a Mercedes-AMG G 63.
Schemes journalists turned to the Trans-Soyus company, which provided Polishchuk with travel outside the country.
The head of the company, Yuriy Iftimiychuk, confirmed that Viktor Polishchuk was employed in his company as a truck driver, but says that he does not remember under what circumstances they agreed on this.
“It was arranged. There was a probationary period. Now it's hard to find a normal driver. I had two drivers who left and didn’t want to come back and abandoned the car,” says Iftimiychuk.
According to him, Polishchuk was supposed to transport parcels, but “couldn’t cope” with the job, so he and other drivers were fired.
“I fired them all because they didn't do the job right. I remember that they did not take all the parcels, all the parcels,” said Yuriy Iftimiychuk. He refused further communication.
“Equipment that saves military lives”
One of the largest chains of supermarkets for electronics and household appliances, Eldorado, is another asset of Polishchuk’s business empire. In 2023, the OSINT community Molfar published an investigation into the activities of Eldorado in Ukraine and proved the facts of its long-term cooperation with Russia.
Therefore, while exploring the volunteer efforts of Viktor Polishchuk, a dollar multimillionaire with family ties to the top government of the Russian Federation, Schemes drew attention to the widely advertised charity event of Eldorado stores in the Ukrainian information space called “Equipment that saves lives of military personnel,” announced in early summer 2023 year. It turned out that since then Eldorado has not fulfilled its obligations and has not transferred funds from its sales to the army.
So, last year, Eldorado encouraged customers to buy goods in their network, promising that 0.5% of sales in stores and online would be allocated to the production of armored buggies (a small car for off-road driving - ed.) for the medical service 1 1st International Legion of Defense of Ukraine. The money was to be transferred through the well-known metropolitan charitable foundation “Solomenskie Kotiki”, for which an agreement was concluded.
“Helping the Defense Forces is the least we should do to bring victory closer. You can also get involved in something important in such a common matter as buying a smartphone or household appliances: we will direct part of the funds for the purchase to specially made armored bugs,” said Vera Vitinskaya, executive director of the Eldorado chain.
On YouTube alone, the advertisement for this promotion received almost two million views. A number of media outlets wrote about her. How much money did the Eldorado chain ultimately transfer from its sales to the needs of the army?
The Solomensky Cats charity foundation, which acted as a partner in this project, told Radio Liberty that Eldorado did not fulfill its stated promise and did not transfer any funds.
“We did not receive any funds from Eldorado at that time. We don’t even know if they collected anything, since no funds went to us. They just said that they were bankrupt, there was no money, and they didn’t give us anything. In general, we are open to working with business. There are many responsible businesses, but this is the first time we have such a story,” Andrey Erofeev, executive director of the Solomenskie Kitties charity foundation, told Schemes.
The Eldorado chain is indeed experiencing financial difficulties - since 2022, it has owed its supplier partners two and a half billion hryvnia. But the bankruptcy procedure was not declared, the business is trying to stay afloat. There are still about 60 retail outlets throughout the country, and trade continues through the online store.
The editors asked Eldorado to comment on whether the company believed that they misled people who responded to a widely publicized charity event and bought goods online in the belief that part of the funds would go to the needs of the medical service of the 1st International Legion of Defense Ukraine.
Eldorado left Radio Liberty's request unanswered, but the very next day after receiving it, the company, after an almost six-month pause, got in touch with the Solomensky Cats charity foundation and announced that it was ready to urgently close the collection for any needs of the army in the amount of about 800 thousand hryvnia. The Charitable Foundation reported this to Radio Liberty.
“Before this, they actually didn’t communicate for six months. We asked for a meeting with the manager, but we were told that this was impossible. But now we got in touch. Obviously, your journalistic requests helped,” Andrei Yerofeyev, executive director of the Solomensky Seals charity foundation, told Radio Liberty.
The same chronology of events in a commentary to Radio Liberty was confirmed by the head of the medical service of the International Legion, Asan Charukhov, who in 2023 did not receive the promised armored buggies for medical evacuation from Eldorado.
“The agreement was that they had to fulfill it before the New Year. The Solomensky cats periodically communicated with them, but Eldorado answered them that they were at the stage of bankruptcy and they could not fulfill the terms of the contract. Therefore, all this did not happen, and in January the Foundation informed us that there would be no bugs. We eventually found other options to purchase it,” said Charukhov.
“We’re at war, we didn’t have time to figure it out and prove anything. But now the Solomensky Seals have informed us that after you contacted them, the next day Eldorado stated that they were ready to fulfill the terms of the contract. Bugs are not relevant to us now, so we said that we need electronic warfare from FPV drones and we will be grateful. There has been no payment from them yet, they promised next week. Let’s see if they will,” the head of the medical service of the International Legion told Radio Liberty.
Schemes journalists sent all the facts presented in this material to Viktor Polishchuk with a request to comment on them. As of the time of publication of the material, he left the detailed list of questions sent by the editors unanswered.
