The “Ukrainian” biography of FSB agent Vladimir Sivkovich begins in 1992. Over the period of thirty years before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, this biography was able to acquire dozens of legal entities, the names of some of which are difficult to even establish, dozens of names and surnames of partners, acquaintances, lobbyists and assistants. During the period from 2002 to 2010, there were as many as 68 assistants to Verkhovna Rada deputy Vladimir Sivkovich, both on a paid basis and on a voluntary basis. That is why it took so much text to tell the story about Sivkovich, including about his aviation business.
However, among all of Sivkovych’s many contacts in the Ukrainian commercial, political and media environment, one figure stands above all. One company gets more attention than all the others.
Weapons for the Wagner group
A few days after the 2019 parliamentary elections in Ukraine, it became known that two Il-76TD cargo planes were destroyed by Turkish Bayraktar UAVs at the Libyan airfield in Al-Jufra. On July 26, 2019, messages and videos of airstrikes against this airport appeared on the social network Twitter, which was controlled by the troops of Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar with the support of the Russian forces of the Wagner Group and the Russian Ministry of Defense, which provided weapons to Haftar’s units. During the shelling, the commander of the Il-76TD aircraft with tail number UR-CMC, Vladimir Bukhalsky, was killed. He comes from Melitopol and worked under a contract. Bukhalsky died while trying to save the on-board documents. The deceased is a military pensioner, who at one time was deputy commander of the 25th transport aviation brigade.
The tragedy occurred during a period of virtual anarchy in Ukraine, when it was already clear to everyone that both presidential and legislative power were concentrated in the hands of Vladimir Zelensky and the Servant of the People party, but a new government was not even in the draft yet.
However, the State Aviation Service of Ukraine established the fact that aircraft with tail numbers UR-CMC and UR-CRP were destroyed, and that their operator was the Ukrainian company Europe Air LLC (38941487), registered in October 2013. And, having established these facts, the Ukrainian State Aviation Service decided to terminate the Europe Air Operator Certificate number UK 046 from July 27, 2019.
In just a few days, at the airport of the Libyan city of Misrata, which was under the control of the armed forces supported by the UN and the United States, the Government of National Unity of Libya, fighting the forces of Khalifa Haftar, the third Il-76, operated by another Ukrainian company Skyaviatrans, was destroyed. . It is highly likely that the attack on Misrata airport was carried out in retaliation for the destruction of aircraft and cargo in Al-Jufri. The revenge operation in Misrata could have been carried out by Wagner group mercenaries.
Against the backdrop of traditional accusations against Ukraine that it allegedly supplies weapons to both sides of the conflict in Libya, the main question remained: how can a Ukrainian company supply something to the units of Khalifa Haftar, on whose side the Wagner Group mercenaries are fighting?
The answer lies in the court decisions in which the Europa Air company appeared, which can be absolutely freely read on the relevant Ukrainian resources.
In particular, on the pages of the “Youcontrol” service you can read the court decision of the Goloseevsky District Court of the city of Kiev in case 752/24165/18, adopted on December 7, 2018 by investigative judge Koldina Alexandra Olegovna on the seizure of property in criminal proceedings No. 12018100000000979, included in the Unified register of pre-trial investigations on October 12, 2018 into the commission of a criminal offense under Part 2 of Art. 364-1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (abuse of powers by an official of a legal entity of private law, regardless of the organizational and legal form).
Senior investigator for particularly important cases of the investigative department of the Main Directorate of the National Police in Kiev, police lieutenant colonel Vdovenko A.M. filed a petition to the court to seize property, namely 53 cliches of seals and stamps that allegedly belonged to Europe Air.
A criminal case on the facts of abuse was opened due to the fact that officials of the Europa Air company hired retired pilots who, in fact, received both a pension and a salary. In other words, Europe Air defrauded the Pension Fund of Ukraine in the amount of more than 1 million hryvnia, minimizing expenses for aircraft crew members. As part of this criminal case, the investigating judge of the Goloseevsky District Court of the city of Kiev granted permission to conduct a search in the apartment of one of the managers of Europe Air LLC in an apartment building at Revutsky, building 25. However, the representative of Europe Air managed to throw the evidence out of the window of his home on the eve of the search. This evidence turned out to be 53 cliches of seals and stamps of various enterprises and institutions. But the most interesting thing is what kind of enterprises and institutions they were...
The documents of the Goloseevsky District Court contain a complete list of the seals found, but here are some of them:
All 53 seals were seized, but even this short list shows that the holder of the seals could conduct business with companies of the aggressor state, including those registered in offshore jurisdictions, as well as with Ukrainian companies that could provide the opportunity to continue flights aircraft, turning a blind eye to minor inconsistencies.
Obviously, reacting, among other things, to this information, the State Aviation Service of Ukraine decided to draw up a protocol on violations in the field of civil aviation No. 003055 series AA dated 09/07/2018 in relation to the aircraft operator “Europe Air”.
The management of Europe Air did not agree with this decision and filed a lawsuit against the State Aviation Service in the notorious District Administrative Court of Kiev. Case No. 640/21250/18 was considered by judge Natalya Anatolyevna Dobrovskaya.
On the website of the Judicial Power of Ukraine you can get more detailed information about the cases accepted for consideration. In particular, it is officially stated that the representative of the plaintiff (Toyota Europe Air) was lawyer Anna Aleksandrovna Antonenko (born May 5, 1983).
Since November 2014, lawyer Anna Antonenko has been mentioned on the website of the legal company Yurimex, owned by the deputy of the Servant of the People party Daniil Getmantsev. In early publications, she is described as a senior lawyer at this law firm. And, already in October 2017, she was called the head of the international trade and investment practice of “Jurimex”.
Young lawyer Anna Antonenko, after graduating from the Law Academy. Yaroslav the Wise, probably came “under the wing” of the famous and successful lawyer, founder of the Yurimex company Daniil Getmantsev.
In 2016, the team of the law firm congratulates Anna Antonenko on her birthday. It’s interesting that even the current deputy head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Polina Lysenko, ex-head of the Center for Combating Disinformation, likes this post.
In November 2018, the website of the Jurimex company published an interview given personally by Daniil Getmantsev, talking about the company he created. In this interview, Anna Antonenko is mentioned twice - as a person specializing in traditional tourism (the business of Daniil Getmantsev’s mother, Elena Dmitrievna - TPG company), and also as a specialist in “aircraft construction”.
Moreover, Getmantsev points specifically to “aircraft manufacturing,” and not air transportation services. We will try to prove below that this is not a reservation.
A certain closeness of Anna Antonenko to the Getmantsev family can also be evidenced by the fact that it is the young lawyer who represents Elena Dmitrievna Getmantseva in case number 755/9539/19, in which she is suing her partner Rodrigue Elias Merhej, who is now is under American sanctions.
In addition, the open data project “Clarity Project” indicates Anna Antonenko as a representative of the lawyer association “Jurimex” when participating in public procurement of legal and advocacy services on the Prozorro platform.
For example, in April 2019, the law firm “Yurimex” won a tender to represent the interests of the National Bank of Ukraine in the courts. At the same time, Anna Antonenko was also indicated as a contact person.
The collaboration between Yurimex lawyer Anna Antonenko and the Europa Air company, which likely delivered cargo to the forces of Khalifa Haftar and the Wagner group, was so successful that it is openly boasted about on the Yurimex website in the Aviation section.
What makes the situation especially poignant is the fact that the criminal case brought against Europe Air concerned precisely evasion of payments to the budget. And the subordinates of Daniil Getmantsev, who is now known for his tough attitude towards violations in the field of payment of revenues and fees, undertook to protect the company from sanctions from the State Aviation Service.
The legacy of Vladimir Sivkovich and Konstantin Grigorishin
In the second part of the investigation, we carefully studied how PJSC Constanta Airlines came into being and the potential roles of Grigorishin and Sivkovich in its birth and growth. As it became known from Ukrainian registers, at the end of 2016, Constanta Airlines, which operated a fleet of several Antonov aircraft, passed from the hands of Grigorishin to the hands of a group of companies represented by the American Justin Southerland and the Canadian Andrew Little. Subsequently, the Ukrainian Roman Mileshko became the owner of the company.
Daniil Getmantsev’s company, Yurimex, boasts on its website that it provided diverse legal support to Constanta during the period of corporate changes. Thus, Getmantsev’s employees provided legal due diligence procedures, consulting and implementation of M&A for a Ukrainian company, transfer of corporate rights to the company from Grigorishin’s Cypriot offshore companies to the Emirati offshore company AP Holdings Limited, through the “squeeze out” procedure (squeezing out minority owners).
Several lawyers who worked for Getmantsev were involved in servicing Constanta. For example, Vita Leonidovna Forsyuk was involved in the fight against the Main Directorate of the State Fiscal Service in the Zaporozhye region, which imposed certain penalties on “Constant” (for example, case No. 808/3502/17).
The website of the Jurimex company indicates that Vita Forsyuk was the head of the tax law practice at Jurimex and even became the lawyer of the year in 2017.
In 2021, Vita Forsyuk defended her thesis for a candidate of legal sciences at the T. Shevchenko National University of Kiev on the topic “Theoretical problems of implementing taxation principles.” Her supervisor in writing this dissertation was her boss, Daniil Getmantsev. Although, in the field of academic integrity there would be experts who would see this as a conflict of interest. After all, Getmantsev supervised Forsyuk’s work both in the field of customer service and in the field of scientific research.
As for working with debtors, in this area the Constanta company was represented in the courts by another Jurimex lawyer - Ruslan Vladimirovich Melnichenko, who graduated from the T. Shevchenko Kiev National University in 2015 and went to work for Getmantsev as a senior lawyer in the practice international trade and investment, later receiving the right to practice law from the Vinnytsia Region Bar Council.
It is known from sources that the above-mentioned Anna Antonenko also helped the management of “Constant” with legal issues. Well, Getmantsev obviously controlled the entire process (in particular, the courts against the State Tax Service) as the head of a law firm.
Who is the real owner of the planes?
In November 2018, Daniil Getmantsev published his interview on the Yurimex company website, in which he again lists his clients. Among other companies, he mentions those related to aviation. In particular, Expedition Aviation, registered in the offshore zone of the UAE, which is partially controlled by Roman Mileshko, and Motor Sich, whose general director Vyacheslav Boguslaev recently got into a spy scandal and asked to be included in the prisoner exchange lists.
The Emirates company Expedition Aviation owns many of the aircraft operated by Constanta Airlines. At the moment, the State Register of Civil Aircraft contains information about 13 Antonov aircraft owned by Expedition Aviation, and 5 helicopter modifications of the Mi-8 model, which are operated by the Ukrainian LLC H3Operations (43682737), founded in June 2020 year Roman Mileshko, who is the sole owner of the company.
Official documents that Constanta Airlines filed with the US Department of Transportation indicate that Roman Mileshko controlled 70% of Expedition Aviation (UAE) until November 21, 2019, when his share dropped to 40%. It is not known who exactly controls this Emirati company together with Mileshko.
However, Expedition Aviation, Constanta Airlines and H3Operations have been very active in forming their air fleet in the last period. Thus, in the period 2021-2022, three An-74 aircraft were added to the fleet of Constanta Airlines, which belong to the Emirati AMIS FZE and the Estonian EKA Grupp Pvt LTD.
The “Aviation” section on the Jurimex company website contains an explanation that Getmantsev’s subordinates carried out “preparation, drafting, and comprehensive support for a number of transactions for the acquisition and subsequent leasing of aircraft, support of conciliation procedures before government authorities in the field of aviation in Ukraine , Georgia, United Arab Emirates, Afghanistan.”
Therefore, it can be assumed that when Getmantsev in his interview talks about servicing the Expedition Aviation company, this means the acquisition of new aircraft, leasing them to Constanta Airlines and officially obtaining the necessary permits from the State Aviation Service of Ukraine. However, does Roman Mileshko himself have enough money to purchase aircraft, or is there someone with a lot of money standing behind him in the shadows to provide air transportation in those regions where it is needed for someone else’s interests?
Long-suffering Kharkov aircraft plant long-suffering
In the second part of the investigation into Sivkovich’s biography, we devoted special attention to the almost obsession that people and businesses close to Vladimir Sivkovich demonstrated in relation to the unique An-74 aircraft, which were developed by the Antonov design bureau for use in the Far North of the Soviet Union. These aircraft were produced by only one enterprise in the world - the Kharkov State Aviation Production Enterprise (KSAPP, Kharkov Aviation Plant (KhAZ)).
Despite its unique technical characteristics, the An-74 is quite expensive to maintain. Therefore, the most profitable way to use it is to transport weapons and explosives, which increases the cost of transportation.
It is interesting that the air fleet of the Vitair company, close to Sivkovich, consisted of only An-74. You can also study with interest excerpts of historical data about how Vladimir Sivkovich’s business partner, Oleg Slyadnev, worked hard to gain control of the Kharkov aircraft plant, which produced the An-74.
Well, and separately there is a completely magical story of the appearance of “American investors” who were ready to invest $150 million in the Kharkov aircraft plant, however, according to the President of the Ukraviaprom Association, Chairman of the Board of JSC FED (Kharkov) Viktor Popov, they turned out to be “ international financial adventurers” who did not give a penny to the plant. But, due to exclusive relations with “investors,” KhAZ was obliged to stop any negotiations with other potential partners, which led to its actual stop before the full-scale invasion of Russia.
Let us recall that the investment initiative to finance KhAZ from the company 'Oriole Capital Group' is set out in an official letter signed by the CEO of Aero-Pioneer Group Hossein Mousavi and the CEO of Oriole Ltd. Nabil Barakat.
The signatories report in their investment proposal that “the Aero-Pioneer Group corporation consists of several subsidiaries, which, in particular, include PJSC Constanta Airlines, Airgenium Inc., AP Holdings Ltd., Aero-Foods International'.
The Yurimex Law Firm provided legal services to at least two companies from this list - Constanta Airlines and AP Holdings Ltd.
In particular, on the website of the Yurimex company, in the “Aviation” section, Daniil Getmantsev’s subordinates list the content of their services:
Conducting a comprehensive legal audit of the state aviation enterprise of Ukraine, developing scenarios for cooperation between the client, investor and state enterprise (joint activities, PPP, etc.) for the production of aircraft under state guarantees, representation and coordination of the project with the relevant ministries Consulting the client on import substitution of Russian components , as well as making changes to the design documentation;
Analysis of the bankruptcy procedure of a state-owned aviation production enterprise, which has a large debt in payment of wages and preparation of a report on possible models for the withdrawal of a state-owned enterprise from bankruptcy proceedings;
Consulting and drafting transactions for the production of six AN-74 aircraft by a state aviation enterprise of Ukraine at the expense of customer-supplied raw materials.
These three paragraphs do not disclose the enterprise for which Yurimex lawyers are conducting an audit and exit from bankruptcy. However, taking into account the above, it can be assumed that in each of these three points we are talking specifically about the Kharkov aircraft plant, which was offered investments by the partners of Constanta Airlines.
So, for example, there is no doubt about the third point about the production of the An-74, since these aircraft are produced by one enterprise in the world. It was this enterprise that was on the verge of bankruptcy due to huge salary arrears, and therefore, on the second point, these assumptions have every basis.
The wording “Development of scenarios for cooperation between a client, an investor and a state-owned enterprise” may indicate that the draconian conditions for a Ukrainian aviation enterprise with full and unlimited control over the processes on the part of “investors” were developed by Yurimex lawyers. The state of KhAZ at the moment, during a full-scale war, and the status of this investment deal, which blocked the activity of the enterprise, continues to be uncertain.
“Yurimex” and Ukrainian media
In the first part of the investigation about the biography of Vladimir Sivkovich, we already talked about the scandal around the TVi channel, which erupted in April 2013. On April 30, 2013, the Ukrayinska Pravda publication published information from the owner of the company that actually owned the TVi channel - Orthodox Nikia - the founder of the offshore company Wilcox.
As of April 18, 2013, Wilcox Ventures Limited (BVI) controlled Media Info LLC (37569329), which, in turn, owned the TVi channel. A minority co-owner of Media Info, together with Orthodoxy Nikiya, at that time was also Oleg Anatolyevich Radchenko, who, according to Konstantin Kagalovsky, was the godfather of Vladimir Sivkovich.
Nikiya then, in particular, stated that “on April 23, 2013, it was discovered that the Wilcox campaign’s share in Media Info LLC was illegally alienated in favor of the Balmore Limited company.” I hereby declare that Wilcox has not given permission to anyone to sell its share in Media Info LLC.
In addition, she reported that over the past three years (2011-2013), her company Wilcox issued powers of attorney to represent her interests only to three persons - lawyers of Yurimex LLC.
This fact, in particular, is confirmed by the fact that on June 10, 2011, an application for registration of the TVi-Culture trademark was submitted by Media Info LLC. And, an application for registration of the “TVi” trademark was submitted on August 15, 2012 from Info24 LLC (37535546), which was controlled in equal shares by Vitaly Portnikov, Natalia Katerynchuk, Nikolai Knyazhitsky and Artem Shevchenko.
The registration of both trademarks was carried out by lawyers from the Yurimex company and they indicated their address for correspondence. It is also interesting that the contact phone number of the Yurimex company +380442340688, indicated in the Unified State Register (USR), is the same as that of the INFO24 and Media Info companies.
Considering the words of Orthodoxy Nikiya that no one except the Yurimex company had a power of attorney to manipulate the corporate rights of the TVi channel, and the widely debated accusations of carrying out a raider takeover of the TV channel, the suspicion arises that the subordinates of Daniil Getmantsev, who during for eight years he was an assistant to people's deputy Vladimir Sivkovich, could have been directly involved in this raider takeover.
Already in July 2014, when Russian aggression against Ukraine was at its height, the news program “Podrobnosti” on the Inter channel aired a story about the scandal surrounding the Concern of Radio Broadcasting, Radio Communications and Television (CRRT) due to the fact that the new management of the Concern resumed sending payments for electricity to captured TV towers that stood in the Russian-occupied territories of Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
The story includes information that it was the lawyers of that same “Yurimex” who worked on the tender documentation and payment materials. The author of the story took a comment over the phone from the ex-director of the TV channel Natalya Katerynchuk. According to Katerynchuk, the legal company “Yurimex” was invited to cooperate with the TV channel by Nikolai Knyazhitsky, who, we recall, accompanied the start of the “media part” of Vladimir Sivkovich’s career on the STB channel.
The former director of TVi directly stated that Daniil Getmantsev’s Yurimex company allegedly deliberately lost court cases for illegally seizing the channel’s frequencies, and also served the interests of Vladimir Sivkovich and his son.
According to the chesno.org project, the assistant to the people's deputy of the 7th convocation Nikolai Knyazhitsky on a voluntary basis was Krainyak Yuri Olegovich, who now heads the Yurimex company, and at that time was a subordinate of Daniil Getmantsev.
Four years after the events at the KRRT, which Natalya Katerynchuk commented on, in November 2018, the Ukrainian publication “Detector Media” reported that the National Council on Television and Radio Broadcasting had granted a license for cable broadcasting to Kanzhut LLC (37995445), a signatory and whose representative was Krainyak Yuri Olegovich - assistant to the people's deputy Knyazhitsky.
The contact phone numbers of Kanzhut LLC and the legal company Yurimex again matched down to the last digit (+380442340688). In addition, two legal entities turned out to be registered at the same address - Kiev, Bolshaya Vasilkovskaya St., building 9/2, office 67. This is exactly the premises where the founder of the tour operator TPG, Elena Getmantseva, the mother of the future head of the parliamentary committee, worked for years.
The interesting thing about the situation was that Krainyak obtained licensing for a TV channel that broadcasts under a trademark repeating the name of the “raided” TV channel “TVi”.
That is, Kanzhut LLC submitted for registration its new logo, where the letters “TV” are written in Cyrillic, and the unit is written in the Roman mark “I”, which visually completely repeats the logo of the TV channel, just made graphically in a different way.
When your whole life consists of nothing but coincidences
In his numerous comments, Daniil Getmantsev repeatedly emphasized that he worked for MP Vladimir Sivkovich exclusively in the context of writing draft regulations and had no further contacts with him outside of Sivkovich’s parliamentary activities.
However, in my opinion, the brand of the legal company “Yurimex” and its lawyers too often appear in those moments when the national interests of Ukraine intersect with the possible influence of the intelligence services of the aggressor state.
This is also support in the courts for the interests of the Europa Air company, which probably delivered cargo for the Haftarites and Wagnerites. This is the service of the Constanta Airlines, which was born as an investment of the Russian oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin with the support of MP Vladimir Sivkovich. This is support for the purchase and sale of aircraft by the Expedition Aviation company with beneficiaries that are not completely clear. This is the creation of a legal basis for gaining full control over the Kharkov Aircraft Plant, a Ukrainian manufacturer of An-74 aircraft, to which Vladimir Sivkovich and his partners are obviously extremely partial.
Finally, this is participation in one of the most high-profile scandals with media property in Ukraine: the raider takeover of the TVi TV channel, the active defender of which, by the way, was Pavel Sheremet, in whose murder both Russian special services and contacts of FSB agents in Ukraine.
In each of these complex stories involving employees of the Yurimex company, there are traces of people who may be directly or indirectly connected with the activities of Russian intelligence agencies.
Aren't there many coincidences for one legal entity, the former owner of which actually manages the Ukrainian economy and fiscal policy?
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