Redistribution of spheres of influence after the imposition of sanctions
Stolen billions of the Defense Ministry
The Crimean scheme at Odesa Port
Seized money of the Yanukovych regime
What will happen to Parimatch?
After the imposition of sanctions on the Parimatch international holding in Ukraine in March 2023, the company began redistributing spheres of influence. According to sources in the holding, an agreement is being prepared in the near future to transfer approximately one-third of Parimatch's shares to a group of people with a dubious reputation. The holding company suspects that the potential new owners want to divide the company from the inside in favor of the interests of third parties. Osint Global found out what is happening with the once largest Ukrainian bookmaker and who can become its new major shareholder.
According to today's information, the founder of Parimatch and its majority shareholder, Eduard Shwindlerman, intends to transfer half of his shares (which is approximately 35% of the shares of the entire holding) to Oleksandr Melnychuk, Vladyslav Klishchar and Oleksandr Belyaev. It is about the transfer and not the sale of shares. Instead, under the terms of the agreement, Melnychuk and Klishkar promise Shwindlerman to resolve the issue of lifting sanctions from Parimatch in Ukraine and returning the company to the Ukrainian market.
However, the holding itself is afraid of this deal and suspects that, considering who is behind the potential new major shareholder of the holding, the case smells like a big scam.
Maksym Lyashko, the current general director of the Parimatch holding, actively lobbied for this agreement and convinced Shwindlerman to go for it. He has been working in the holding's structures since 2016: he was the director of KP-Reklama LLC, which was the operating company of Parimatch, whose accounts received funds from payment system terminal operators with transit to players' virtual accounts. In 2016, Lyashko headed the legal team of the Parimatch holding, and in 2018 he became a partner of the holding. Since 2021, he is also the CEO and member of the supervisory board of Parimatch Tech.
Vladyslav Klishchar and Oleksandr Melnychuk expressed their desire to buy a part of Parimatch founder Eduard Shwindlerman. They presented themselves to Parimatch employees as CIA employees and European intelligence services. At the same time, they were presented to Parimatch shareholders as investors with connections in the US, European and Ukrainian governments. There is practically no information about Oleksandr Melnychuk in the public domain, as a result of the analysis of the data of open state registers, we can come to the conclusion that this person leads the most secretive way of life. Since 2015, there is no information about Oleksandr Melnychuk's official employment in Ukraine, however, according to some data, he is an employee of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
Oleksandr Melnychuk is registered in the Czech Republic at the address: Libocká 698/40a, Praha, 16200, Česká republika. Using this registration address, in June 2022, Melnychuk co-founded the Czech company ILS INVESTMENT GROUP .r.o., which is engaged in real estate leasing, trade mediation, consulting and technical services.
In addition to Melnychuk, the co-founders of this company, according to the Czech Register of Legal Entities, are Kryvyi Rih native Oleksandr Belyaev and Vladyslav Klishchar from Bila Tserkva, who is also registered in the Czech city of Brno. Czech lawyer Petr Vališ accompanies the activities of Klischar, Melnychuk and Belyaev.
Stolen billions of the Defense Ministry
The second partner of Oleksandr Melnychuk from the Czech ILS INVESTMENT GROUP s.r.o. Vladyslav Klishchar turned out to be an even more interesting character. From 2007 to 2012, he was an official assistant to People's Deputy from the Party of Regions Oleksandr Yedin. From 2013 to 2014, Klishchar worked at "Ukrposhta" as the deputy head of the branch office.
According to the Slovak Register of Legal Entities, in the period from December 2022 to September 2023, Vladyslav Klishchar was a member of the supervisory board of the Slovak company SEVOTECH, which is involved in a high-profile case of embezzlement of money from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.
According to the Hromadske investigation, in October 2022 the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine signed a contract for the purchase of 100,000 artillery mines with the Lviv Arsenal company. And, in turn, a few months before that, it concluded a contract for the supply of 100,000 mines for the amount of UAH 1.5 billion with the Slovak company Sevotech. Both of them played the role of "spacers" in the scheme, since the Croatian company WDG promet, created just in time for the agreement in August 2022, stood behind them. Its founder, director and sole employee is Matias Zubak, the son of the famous arms dealer Dzvinko Zubak, who at one time became famous for supplying arms to Croatia to circumvent the UN embargo.
The final supplier of goods in this chain of companies was the Croatian plant Elmech Sintermak, but later it withdrew from the deal due to non-payment of money that was "lost" on its way to it from the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The Ministry transferred UAH 1.34 billion to Lviv Arsenal on November 17, 2022. On November 25 and December 12, "Lviv Arsenal" transferred 3.6 million dollars and 9.14 million euros to the Sevotech company in two payments. It was at this time that Vladyslav Klishchar became a member of the supervisory board of this company, after which the money further along the chain did not go anywhere. Allegedly, WDG promet and Sevotech decided to buy ammunition from other companies in Bulgaria and Cambodia, but until now, already a year later, the supply has not been fulfilled.
Vladyslav Klishchar's wife, Nataliya Minska, is a citizen of the Russian Federation and a resident of Moscow. According to the data of the Ukrainian register of court decisions, from 2011 to 2014, Klishkar and Minska were officially married and divorced in 2014. Although, all things considered, this divorce was fictitious, since to this day Vladyslav Klischar and Nataliya Minska probably live together and continue to be a couple, judging by Minska's Facebook page.
According to the Russian Unified State Register of Real Estate, Nataliya Minska owned a plot of land and half of a house in the Moscow region, and to this day she owns two apartments and a garage in Moscow. From 2003 to 2018, she was registered in the Russian Federation as an entrepreneur and engaged in the rental and management of residential real estate.
The Crimean scheme at Odesa Port
The son of Vladyslav Klishchar and Natalia Minska, 29-year-old Leonid Klishchar, as of 2018, worked at Agro Gas Trading LLC, which was involved in a high-profile criminal scheme to embezzle budget funds from the Odesa Port Plant, in which the former head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, Dmytro Senichenko, is accused , who worked at "Ukrposhta" in the same period of time as Vladyslav Klishchar, where they probably could have met and established relations for further cooperation.
Pavlo Prysiazhniuk also appeared in this scheme, who, from September 2020 to March 2021, together with Vladyslav Klischar, was one of the founders of EPI Group s.r.o. Together with Dmytro Sennichenko, Prysiazhniuk was declared wanted by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau in the case of the seizure of funds of JSC "Odesa Port Plant" and JSC "United Mining and Chemical Company".
"NABU and SAP established that in October 2020, the organizer of the criminal association (probably Dmytro Sennichenko — ed.) succeeded in appointing a "loyal" acting director of OGHC JSC (probably Artur Somov - ed.). He, for his part, in compliance with the instructions "from above" during 2020-2021, on behalf of the state-owned enterprise, deliberately concluded four contracts for the sale of titanium raw materials (ilmenite concentrate) with a Czech company under the control of the adviser to the chairman of the FSMU at discounted prices. This product was then resold at market prices. As the investigation established, ilmenite concentrate was supplied to enterprises in Russia and to the territory of the temporarily occupied Crimea," the NABU said in a statement.
The Czech companies that received the goods and resold them to the occupied Crimea company "Ukrainian Chemical Products" - the titanium plant of the oligarch Dmytro Firtash - turned out to be, as the journalists found out, Belanto trade s.r.o. and EPI Group s.r.o., where the founders at that time were Vladyslav Klishchar and Pavlo Prysiazhniuk, and the director of EPI Group s.r.o. until the middle of 2022, there was Leonid Klishchar, the son of Vladyslav Klishchar.
According to the investigation, in this scheme with the participation of Firtash, Pavlo Prysiazhniuk was allegedly the key guarantor of the agreements, he is marked as a person with the support of the deputy head of the Office of the President Rostislav Shurma and his brother Serhiy Kryvyi. In addition, in the above-mentioned fragments of the interrogation of the witness in the OPZ fraud case, Pavlo Prysiazhniuk is similarly mentioned as a person from the President's Office who was assigned to deal with economic issues.
Seized money of the Yanukovych regime
However, and this is far from all that is known about the potential new shareholder of Parimatch, Vladyslav Klischar. An interesting story remained in the archives of the criminal proceedings from 2017 on the fact of abuse of office by officials of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, in which Serhiy Lekar, former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs during the Yanukovych presidency and ex-deputy minister of internal affairs Vitaly Zakharchenko was the main suspect. It follows from this story that Vladyslav Klischar's connection with the Party of Regions, as it turned out, was much closer than just the role of an official assistant to one of the "regional" people's deputies.
The doctor was accused of involvement in the supply of special equipment from Russia, in particular light-noise and gas grenades, which were used to disperse Euromaidan activists in Kyiv on February 18-20, 2014.
In Lekar's apartment in the center of Kyiv on Lev Tolstoy Street, as a result of a search, law enforcement officers seized more than 3 million US dollars, 870 thousand euros and 3 million 178 thousand hryvnias, as well as silver and gold bars and placed them under arrest. The investigation tried to establish the origin of this money, and Lekar, in turn, tried in every way to convince the investigation that the money was legal.
And Vladyslav Klishchar, his friend Oleksandr Shpak, the owner of the restaurant "Antwerpen", the head of the public organization "Committee for Assistance to Law Enforcement Bodies of Ukraine" and the actual confidant of Serhiy Lekar, as well as Semen Yufa, a well-known swindler with a rich criminal history in the 90s, helped him in this. 1990s, involved in dozens of criminal cases involving fraud, money laundering and money laundering, non-payment of taxes, founder of the financial pyramid "Mercury Cooperative", which earned hundreds of millions of dollars from tens of thousands of gullible Ukrainians.
All three testified in the criminal proceedings and convinced the investigation that the money found in Lekar's possession belonged to them. In particular, Klishchar and Yufa indicated that they had given their money to Oleksandr Shpak for safekeeping, and he, in turn, to Serhii Lekar. For example, according to Klischar's testimony, he allegedly handed over 290,000 euros to Shpak, earned by his mother from the sale of real estate in Kyiv in 2014.
Shpak, in turn, justified the availability of money by an investment in the amount of 9.2 million Czech crowns issued to him by Lion International Trading Company, and tried to confirm it not with contracts, but with a letter from this company. However, as a result of its investigation, the investigation came to the conclusion that the ability of "Lion International Trading Company" to issue such investments to private individuals is questionable. Moreover, as it turned out, the owner of 50% of this Czech company at that time was Vladislav Leonidovych Klischar.
As a result of discovering this, as well as after receiving data on the incomes of three witnesses, which in total amounted to an amount 10 times less than that found with Lekar, the testimony of witnesses from this criminal proceeding was interpreted by the prosecutor's office as false. That is, in fact, the actions of Vladyslav Klischar and his accomplices were recognized as an attempt to deceive the investigation and contribute to the evasion of responsibility by the ex-top official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Yanukovych era.
The product of the friendship between Vladyslav Klischar and the above-mentioned Oleksandr Shpak and Semen Yufa was also the removal from state ownership of a strategic state enterprise and its takeover. We are talking about the Bilotserki factory of rubber technical products. Since 2016, Vladyslav Klishchar has been the director of this enterprise, which in 2018, on the 244th attempt, was sold by the State Property Fund at the starting price of UAH 1.28 million to the company "Alfa Ekologiya", where the owners of the 50% part are the same Oleksandr Shpak and his daughter, who immediately appointed their friend Semyon Yufa as the director of the plant. Why there were as many as 243 unsuccessful attempts to buy the plant, and why on the 244th occasion the company of Klishkar's friend and business partner managed to buy the plant for ridiculous money - history remains silent.
Robbery in the center of Kyiv
In addition to connections with the Russian Federation, embezzlement of money at state-owned enterprises and defense orders, the Klishchar family also has a rich criminal history. According to data obtained from the closed column of the Unified Register of Court Decisions, in 2015 Leonid Klishar and his father Vladyslav Klishar were involved in criminal proceedings for a brazen robbery in the center of Kyiv.
As the investigation established at the time, on December 29, 2015, around 8:30 p.m., they were in a black Range Rover car with the state number АА4226ЕС, stopped at a traffic light on Protasiv Yar Street, got out of the car, approached the Daewoo Lanos car that was standing behind them, they broke out the rear right window and the front driver's window, pointed an object similar to a machine gun at the driver of the Lanos, and stole a bag with money from the interior of the car, after which they got into a Range Rover and drove towards Solomyanska Square. According to law enforcement officers, the bag contained 70,000 dollars, which the victim borrowed from his friend and took home.
As a result of the "Interception" plan, a police patrol car overtook the car of the Klishchars, who abandoned the car and disappeared with a bag of money. In September 2016, the apartment of the Klishchars on Stadionnaya Street was searched, where, according to data from court decisions, the stolen property was found and returned to the victim. However, the further fate of the criminal proceedings, as well as what punishment the robbers received and whether they received it, is unknown - no court verdicts or resolutions on the closure of this case could be found.
What will happen to Parimatch?
Why should these people have a stake in Parimatch? The answer to this question may lie with the son of Vladyslav Klishkar, Leonid. According to the tags of the GetContact program, which shows how the user is signed in the phone books of other subscribers, the mobile number of Leonid Klishchar, in addition to being associated with staying or working in the capital of the Czech Republic, is also associated with the coordination, curation and, probably, the launch of the offices of the "Ukrainian National lotteries" (UNL), as well as "Sportloto".
Given that a month ago, the chairman of the tax committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Danylo Hetmantsev, initiated bill No. 10101, according to which it is proposed to give lottery companies a 10-fold benefit for obtaining a license for bookmaking and casino operations (19.8 million UAH per year instead of 120 thou million hryvnias), it seems likely that the lottery operators intend to obtain a database of players, as well as all the necessary software for the work of the already "deceased" bookmaker Parimatch to enter the gambling market.
Such a version is seriously considered in that part of Parimatch, which sees the future agreement between Shwindlerman and Melnychuk-Klishchar-Belyaev as a probable
scam: after entering Parimatch, these people can simply "dump" the founder of the holding, and instead of fulfilling their obligations, withdraw the necessary bases to "UNL" and "Sportloto".
And taking into account the past of this group of people, their reputation, participation in corruption schemes, involvement in a number of criminal proceedings, as well as connections with the Russian Federation and ex-functionaries of the Party of Regions, this version looks quite likely.
According to the information of some Parimatch shareholders, it is known that during the negotiations with Shwindlerman, Melnychuk, Klishkar and Belyaev noted that from their side the company SARN Energy will be included in the deal - it is proposed to make it the formal owner of Parimatch shares in the person of Deputy Chairman Armen Aghasaryan.
Not surprisingly, this company left many traces in the same Czech Republic, where Vladyslav Klischar and his partners are particularly active. According to the Czech media, the American company SARN, which positions itself as a consulting firm that allegedly has ties to the American administration and is able to lobby for any business issue in the USA, managed to deceive many Czech businessmen.
In particular, the media noted that the Czech-Armenian businessman Armen Agasaryan (also known as Armen Agas) of SARN Energy promised to provide new business opportunities for the Czech CSG group - for radars manufactured by Retia or Pandur armored vehicles manufactured by TDV - but never did. And, failing to fulfill its part of the agreement, SARN began demanding money from CSG for its consulting services. They responded by asking for documentation of what services SARN had provided for CSG, but SARN refused to do so, responding only with threats and, apparently for more pressure, filing a civil lawsuit in Delaware.
Media reports note that such cases at SARN are not isolated, but rather a systemic phenomenon where an American company demands money from a European business in this way. The Czech publication "Parlamentnilisty" writes that in this way SARN Energy even tried to blackmail the Slovak state after the case with the fraudulently acquired shares of Transpetrol.
It turns out that Parimatch today quite justifiably distrusts its CEO Maksym Lyashko, who is trying to bring alleged fraudsters into the holding. Today, according to the company's employees, Maksym Lyashko has already prepared the entire base of the business census, restricts partners and employees from making decisions and from receiving any information, and also generally provides maximum assistance in transferring a third of the holding to Vladyslav Klishchar, Oleksandr Melnychuk, and Oleksandr Belyaev.
Continuation in the second part of the investigation…