How Peter the Great captured the funeral services market in Kyiv
Why Alla Landar created a whole funeral empire of companies and individual entrepreneurs
How Kyiv City State Administration officials and doctors promote Alla Landar's funeral business
How Peter the Great profits from customers by setting sky-high prices for services
How Alla Landar leads a luxurious lifestyle despite the official loss of Peter the Great
Over the 30 years of its existence, a private company with the meaningful name “Peter the Great”, with the help of corrupt officials, has effectively monopolized the funeral market in Kyiv, allowing the company's founder and director, Alla Landar, to earn enormous profits from the families of deceased Kyiv residents by charging prices for her services that are many times higher than market prices and not bearing any responsibility for it.
How Alla Landar, a supporter of the Party of Regions and hater of Maidan, threatens war veteran Oleksandr Skoryk
"Reduced the revs, don't sleep if you want to live." Such threats were received by the veteran defender of "Azovstal" Alexander Skoryk, who was recently appointed to the position of deputy director of the communal enterprise "Spetskombinat", which deals with the burial of the dead in Kyiv. These and other threats like "Ritual services are not yours, warrior! Leave the business of business!" he began to receive after he began to contact the law enforcement authorities regarding the activities of the private enterprise "Peter the Great", which has held a monopoly position on the capital's ritual services market for twenty years and defiantly uses it, collecting insane amounts of money from the relatives of the deceased and making money on the grief of people super profits
“This is worse than orcs,” blogger Andrey Fedorov comments on the situation. A private company named after a Russian emperor and a heavy nuclear missile cruiser — the flagship of the Russian fleet — and which, at the end of the third year of a full-scale war, has still not changed the name of its business, seems to be principled in this matter. And this is not surprising, because the owner of the company, Alla Landar, judging by open data on the Internet, is an ideological supporter of the “Russian World”, which during the time of Yanukovych actively cooperated with and supported the Party of Regions and spoke out against Euromaidan. Until 2012, Alla Landar was an assistant to the people's deputy from the Party of Regions, Igor Prasolov — a top manager in Rinat Akhmetov’s business and later the Minister of Economy in the Azarov government.
In 2014, activists accused her of obstructing the activities of organizations that provided assistance to injured Maidan activists. Alla Landar has also been repeatedly seen in close cooperation with representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate Church. Because of all this, today some media and public activists suspect that the head of the Peter the Great company may be cooperating with enemy intelligence services.
But this is not the most disgusting thing that Alla Landar is accused of. The greatest indignation of Kyiv residents is caused by the fact that the company "Peter the Great", thanks to the conquest of a monopoly position in the market of ritual services through corruption, literally "undresses" the families of the fallen defenders of Ukraine, setting exorbitant prices for their burials. Because they know that the families of fallen soldiers receive UAH 15 million in compensation from the state. "Unfortunately, for some, the burial of soldiers is just a profitable business. The more people die, the more profits the mafia will receive," said veteran Oleksandr Skoryk.
How Peter the Great captured the funeral services market in Kyiv
After a person dies, doctors or police officers “dump” information about it directly to the funeral company, which begins to call the relatives of the deceased and impose their funeral services on them. This is how most private companies that provide funeral services in Ukraine work, corrupting doctors and law enforcement officers. This method of work often leads to the fact that several private companies begin to fight fiercely for the right to bury a “client”.
So, in order not to share business with anyone and not to “catch” the deceased, the private company “Peter the Great” decided that the relatives of the deceased, who are in a state of shock from the death of a loved one, should be put in conditions where they have no choice but to order funeral services from “Peter the Great”. And for this, all you need to do is be present in person at every hospital and morgue, and agree with the management of these institutions that they send relatives of the deceased to Alla Landar's company. Yes, having a monopoly position on the market, you can set prices much higher than market prices.
The private enterprise "Private Firm "Peter the Great" was founded back in 1994 - a time of continuous criminal showdowns, total poverty and, accordingly, high mortality. The idea of creating a profitable business providing funeral services was then conceived by Alla Landar's father, Petro Pogrebny, who had been a party functionary of the Communist Party of the USSR since he was 25. In the early 90s, he was engaged in the construction business, holding the position of general director of the agricultural scientific and production association "Budmaterial". According to him, he launched the funeral business to help employees organize funerals.
One can only imagine the quality of the worldview and mental state of a person who calls his business by his own name with the epithet "Great" with a hint of "monarchic grandeur", which still lingers in the photos of Pogrebny's daughter. As of 2009, according to the media, the company "Peter the Great" was already very firmly on its feet, occupying a leading position in the capital's funeral services market. But with the arrival of Leonid Chernovetsky to the post of Kyiv Mayor, he began to redistribute the market. Pogrebny decided to defend himself in the public sphere, accusing the city authorities of the fact that all income from funeral services began to go only to private companies controlled by it. The conflict with the Kyiv City State Administration ended successfully for Pogrebny: apparently, he understood that the only way out to maintain his position in the market was to become a friend and partner of the authorities, not their enemy.
It is not known what exactly he promised Chernovetsky, but in September 2009, the Main Department of Health of the Kyiv City State Administration issued Order No. 337, which approved the “Temporary Procedure for Determining the Death of People Who Died at Home and Keeping Their Bodies in Medical and Preventive Institutions of the City of Kyiv.” According to this order, doctors and municipal services were ordered to deliver the bodies of the deceased only to four of the nineteen pathological departments of Kyiv hospitals — No. 1 (Kharkivske Shosse), No. 9 (Ryzka Street), No. 12 (Pidvysotskogo Street), and No. 8 (Kondratyuka Street). It was in three of them that “Peter the Great” had already rented premises to sell its services, and a little later such a branch of the company appeared in the pathological department of the fourth hospital. So, the entire flow of clients in one fell swoop ended up in the hands of Petro Pogrebny.
But later, in 2011, Pogrebny died, and his daughter Alla Landar continued his monopoly-building business. Having learned from her father that in order to gain business privileges, one must be friends with the authorities, Alla Landar began to actively use any means to become as close as possible to state institutions.
A year before her father's death, she created the public organization "Kyiv City Committee for the Protection of Business", co-founders of which, together with her, were two other businessmen close to the authorities. These are Mykola Kryvorot, the owner of a large number of MAFs, the bar "Tusa Bar" in the center of the capital at 12 Khreshchatyk, as well as a restaurant at 50 Khreshchatyk, whose personal number in the GetContact application is associated with the following tags: "Nikolai, lawyer of the Kyiv City State Administration", "Nikolai, lawyer of the MAF Khreshchatyk", and Yuriy Artemenko, the owner of Nadiyapastrans LLC, which is engaged in passenger transportation, which is also a business subordinate to the Kyiv City State Administration.
In order to successfully build a monopoly, you need to have close ties with the body that is fighting it. So on September 30, 2011, Alla Landar became a member of the Public Council under the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine. Since 2012, she has also become a member of the Public Council under the State Service for Regulatory Policy and Entrepreneurship Development, and since September 4, 2013, a member of the Council of Entrepreneurs under the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, where the minister at that time was already the “regional” Igor Prasolov, Alla Landar’s former “boss.” Now she has become not just an ordinary businessman, but a businessman with a bunch of important regalia.
Why Alla Landar created a whole funeral empire of companies and individual entrepreneurs
Alla Landar's funeral empire is not just one PE "Private Firm "Peter the Great", it is an extensive system of a number of enterprises and individual entrepreneurs of Landar's relatives. In addition to "Peter the Great" as the main company, the Landar empire also includes PE "Peter the Great-Fastiv", created in 2007, LLC "Internet Bureau of Ritual Services", registered in 2015, owned by Alla Landar's brother, Yuriy Pogrebny, and his wife - a Lithuanian citizen, Erika Pogrebna-Poske. In addition, in 2017, another LLC "8 200" was registered under Alla Landar, which is actually an operating company through which ritual paraphernalia is traded in stores.
Virtually her entire family is involved in Landar's business. Although, most likely, the participation of family members ended with the registration of individual entrepreneurs in their names, which are now managed by Alla Landar herself. This is, in fact, the sole proprietorship of Alla Petrovna Landar, registered in 2002, the sole proprietorship of her son Vladislav Volodymyrovych Landar, created in 2015, the sole proprietorship of Elizaveta Igorevna Landar — her son's wife (2018), the sole proprietorship of Yuri Petrovych Pogrebny — Alla Landar's brother (2018) and his wife — Erika Pogrebnya-Poshke (2016).
The structure of Alla Landar's funeral business. Infographics Osint Global
All of them have a main activity either organizing funerals or providing catering services. Most of the legal entities and individual entrepreneurs of the Landar funeral empire are registered at one address - at 20 Kolomyysky Lane in Kyiv, behind which is located Alla Landar's office in a three-story building with an area of 1,110 square meters of a former kindergarten, which the owner of "Peter the Great" acquired through the courts.
This system of almost a dozen legal entities and individual entrepreneurs was created with two goals. First, tax optimization - it is much more profitable to pump income from organizing funerals through individual entrepreneurs than through LLCs or PEs, which must pay value added tax, personal income tax, etc. Thus, Alla Landar's legal entities systematically demonstrate minimal profits, or even losses, in their financial statements. For example, PE "Private Firm "Petro Velikiy" for 2015-2016 reported revenues at the level of 3 million UAH, and net profit - only from 10 to 100 thousand UAH per year. In 2017-2018, income grew to 4-5 million UAH, but at the same time net profit is shown as negative at the level of 180 thousand UAH of losses. The same in 2019: turnover of 5 million and a loss of 360 thousand UAH. In recent years, the situation has not changed: with revenue from UAH 4.3 million to UAH 7 million, "Peter the Great" sometimes earns a profit of UAH 78-300 thousand, and sometimes loses a whole million hryvnias.
The same story with PE "8 200". The company receives income of no more than 1.2 million UAH per year, and its net profit is now 28 thousand UAH (2023), then 1700 UAH (2022). The other two companies of Alla Landar do not display financial statements at all.
But it's a completely different story with individual entrepreneurs. Alla Landar's individual entrepreneur, while her enterprises are either losing money or earning a pittance, earned UAH 9 million in 2023. Her son's individual entrepreneur — UAH 5.5 million, his wife Elizaveta's individual entrepreneur — another UAH 7.5 million. Her brother Yuriy Pogrebny's individual entrepreneur brought UAH 2.9 million to the family treasury over the past year, his wife Erika's — another UAH 1 million.
So, it becomes clear that in this way Alla Landar avoids paying taxes in every possible way: VAT payers almost do not show any profits, while the network of related individual entrepreneurs brings in millions and tens of millions of hryvnias annually: in 2020, they earned a total of 5 million UAH, in 2021 - 8.4 million UAH, 2022 brought them 9.4 million, and in 2023, the individual entrepreneurs of the Landar family immediately became rich by 26 million UAH. That is, by pumping money through individual entrepreneurs, the queen of burials Alla Landar increased her income 5 times, without paying VAT on it in the amount of almost 10 million UAH in the last four years alone.
How Kyiv City State Administration officials and doctors promote Alla Landar's funeral business
The second reason for keeping so many individual entrepreneurs and private enterprises is to create the illusion of competition in competitions for obtaining premises in hospitals and morgues, which is what Alla Landar's business is based on. Together, "Petro Velikiy", LLC "8 200", LLC "Internet Bureau of Ritual Services" and individual entrepreneur Alla Landar rent premises in 17 medical institutions in Kyiv. Among them, the Main Military Hospital on Pechersk, the Amosov Institute of Cardiovascular Surgery, the Kyiv Emergency Hospital, the Clinical City Hospital No. 6, the Main Bureau of Forensic Medicine on Dorohozhychi and many others are known to many Ukrainians. In general, according to our calculations, Alla Landar's businesses have their representative offices in almost half of all the largest medical institutions in the capital.
Premises in hospitals are rented out based on the results of competitions. So, most often, companies or individual entrepreneurs of Alla Landar's family play the so-called "competitions" at these auctions. For example, in 2021, PE "Petro Velikiy" received a lease of premises with an area of 122 square meters in the Kyiv City Clinical Hospital of Emergency Medical Care on Bratislavskaya Street 3 in a fight with its own LLC "8 200". Or in 2022, individual entrepreneur Erika Pogrebna-Poshke (wife of Alla Landar's brother) won the auction for the lease of premises in Children's Hospital No. 7 on Pidvysotskogo Street, 4B, in which her opponent was individual entrepreneur Alla Landar.
In all cases, the results of such fictitious competitions and agreements with Alla Landar's structures were coordinated by the deputy directors of the Kyiv Department of Communal Property, Yuriy Beregovyi and Oleg Shmulyar. The latter has been repeatedly suspected of systemic corruption and negligence in the lease of communal property, which led to losses of millions of hryvnias.
And it is not surprising. Who knows how much gratitude they systematically turn a blind eye to the connections of companies and individual entrepreneurs who play pretend competition and as a result give the premises of Kyiv hospitals to Alla Landar literally for pennies by the capital's standards. In particular, for a premises with an area of 20 square meters on the territory of the Main Military Hospital on Hospital Street in the center of Kyiv, Alla Landar pays only 1,197 hryvnias 29 kopecks per month. This is despite the fact that the average rental cost per 1 square meter in Pechersk is at least 500 hryvnias. That is, the Kyiv budget only in this specific example is short of at least more than 100 thousand hryvnias every year. Or, for example, a premises of 18 squares in a children's hospital in Pechersk went to Alla Landar at a price of 1,600 hryvnias per month.
The fact that the management of the Department of Communal Property of the city of Kyiv has actually served the interests of Alla Landar's funeral business for many years is also confirmed by the story when in 2018 officials gave premises in the hospital to the company "8 200", which was created only three months before participating in the auction.
In addition, by a suspicious coincidence, in January 2020, a month before the start of the coronavirus epidemic in Ukraine, almost all of Alla Landar's lease agreements were reviewed and all of them were successfully extended for periods up to 2027-2047, which once again indicates that officials of the Kyiv City State Administration are in every way facilitating Alla Landar's business, openly ignoring the norms of competition law and providing her with promising premises for rent for pennies, which allows the "queen of funerals" to evade not only paying taxes, but also renting premises at market prices.
How Peter the Great profits from customers by setting sky-high prices for services
By the way, about the coronavirus. The monopolization of the market by the company "Peter the Great", not surprisingly, manifested itself here as well. It is clear that the epidemic of the deadly virus is a time for the funeral business to increase its earnings. As Radio Liberty journalists discovered at the time, the Kyiv crematorium during the COVID-19 epidemic accepted those who died from the coronavirus only from the hearses of "Peter the Great", whose cost of services for this, of course, increased to 23 thousand hryvnias, which exceeded the market price several times.
The crematorium explained this by the fact that only Alla Landar's company was granted official permission by the city authorities to transport and deliver the bodies of those infected with the virus. That is, once again, in clear collusion with the city authorities, conditions were created under which the relatives of a person who died from coronavirus, who wanted to use the services of the crematorium, had no other choice but to pay huge amounts of money to Alla Landar's company just for delivering the body to the crematorium.
Even the Antimonopoly Committee took up this situation at that time, having received information that the PF "Peter the Great" had increased the prices for funeral services for relatives of those who died from coronavirus by 3-5 times with the onset of the epidemic. During its inspection, the AMCU established that Alla Landar's company did not indicate the cost of services in its price lists, so it probably set them each time at its discretion, thus infringing on the rights and interests of consumers. As blogger Andriy Fedorov noted, the company "Peter the Great" sets prices based on the client's ability to pay: the richer he looks, the higher the price will be for him. By the way, even today the company's website does not indicate any price for any of the presented goods or services - it seems that each client will really be charged his own "check".
On average, for a funeral at "Peter the Great" today, clients are charged over 30 thousand hryvnias in the segment they themselves call "budget". For comparison: at the funeral home "Grail" a VIP package costs 23 thousand hryvnias. The fact that the price of funeral services at "Peter the Great" is significantly overstated is also indicated by the fact that in the tenders that this company receives from city institutions, it indicates completely different prices. For example, in the tender of the Kyiv City Pension for Labor Veterans, which ordered the provision of ritual services and transport, "Peter the Great" offered a price of only 17 thousand 100 hryvnias for one burial. Which, by the way, may also be an overstated price, because Alla Landar's company won the tender without any competition - it applied itself, it won itself, so it could have indicated any price.
Why not go where it’s cheaper, you might ask. Because direct access to clients — relatives of the deceased — in the city’s hospitals allows employees of Alla Landar’s company to “scare” them almost from the first minute of their loved one’s death. The clients of “Peter the Great” interviewed by Osint Global said that the funeral service employees started calling them even before their relative’s body got to the morgue.
That is, the hospital employees “pour” the data about the death and the contacts of relatives to the Landar people almost as soon as possible. And they, in turn, begin to tell them that the burial procedure goes only through them and that they have to pay so much for it. It is clear that in most cases, people shocked by the news of the death of a loved one are the last to think about looking for other funeral service providers at a lower price. So, such conditions allow Alla Landar to “snatch” money from people to the maximum — above all existing prices on the market.
At the same time, on the network you can find many comments and reviews of forced clients of “Peter the Great” about the terrible quality of the services provided by them. “They bought an expensive lacquered coffin, and brought (the body) to the cemetery in the cheapest blue one. It is clear that they had to bury it in the one that was, but no one returned the money,” Olga Morozova, one of the clients of the “Peter the Great” company, said in March 2024.
It is in the conditions of the market and competition that consumers pay more money when they want to receive higher quality services. In the artificially created conditions of monopoly in which “Petro the Great” operates, services can be provided at significantly inflated prices. At the same time, as one of the dissatisfied clients Larisa Yasko points out, she was not given any invoices or receipts from Alla Landar’s company for the services provided. Therefore, payment was probably made in cash outside the cash register. Perhaps that is why the PE “Private Firm “Petro the Great” officially ended 2023 with a loss of one million hryvnias.
And an interesting and characteristic fact in this sense: according to the results of 2023 among private firms providing funeral services in Kyiv, by the criterion of revenue, the firm “Petro the Great” took second place among all other private funeral firms in Kyiv with a result of 6 million 381 thousand hryvnias. In first place with a result of 7.5 million UAH was LLC "Syavio", which, unlike Alla Landar's business, does not have any rented premises in medical institutions at all and does not have such privileged conditions and direct access to clients as "Petro Velikiy" has with its, at the same time, the highest prices on the market. But with all this, this company somehow managed to overtake the Landar company in terms of revenue. Which only says one thing - Alla Landar is hiding her real profits from the state.
How Alla Landar leads a luxurious lifestyle despite the official loss of Peter the Great
And hidden income, from which taxes are not paid, can, of course, be invested in a luxurious lifestyle. It is therefore not surprising that in almost all of Alla Landar's photos that are publicly available, we see her against the backdrop of luxurious interiors and wearing expensive jewelry - such as, for example, a ring for 140 thousand hryvnias, or a Ulysse Nardin Lady Marine Diver watch, which, according to the most modest estimates, costs from 500 to 600 thousand hryvnias, depending on the configuration.
Landar owns three houses at once. One is in Khotov near Kyiv, which she was given as a gift in 2016, the second is in the village of Samhorodok, which she inherited. But Alla Landar lives in the third one, a large house with an area of 535 square meters in the elite town of Lisnyky near Kyiv, which she purchased in 2015.
According to the most conservative estimates, such real estate in this town costs about half a million dollars. Another approximately 300 thousand dollars should have been spent on repairs in a house of such area, so Alla Landar had to spend at least 800 thousand US dollars on her housing. Although, again, according to the financial statements of her regularly unprofitable enterprise, you can’t say that she can afford it.
In 2021, the owner of the funeral home "Peter the Great" with the income of her individual entrepreneur in the amount of UAH 5 million indicated in her property declaration the amount of UAH 16.5 million in income. In 2013, with the income of her individual entrepreneur in the amount of UAH 9 million, she declared UAH 15.4 million in income. Similarly, her son Vladislav Landar in 2022 declared income and assets of over UAH 14 million, although the income of his individual entrepreneur officially amounted to only UAH 3 million 700 thousand.
That is, Alla Landar and her son in recent years had up to UAH 11 million per year in income, the origin of which is unknown and may be related to the circulation of cash for the services of "Peter the Great".
It is clear that no one wants to lose their monopoly position in the market of profitable funeral services, thanks to which they can set overpriced prices for services. It is not surprising that as soon as veteran Oleksandr Skoryk began to stir up this hornet's nest, he immediately began to receive threats. According to him, in October 2022, the Petro Velikiy enterprise initiated the creation of the Alley of Heroes. But to install the plaques with the names of the fallen Ukrainian defenders, it chose, to put it mildly, a strange place - near the morgue on Orangery Street. Before that, kiosks of private funeral service companies - competitors of Alla Landar - stood on this site. "By a strange coincidence, the competitor's pavilion suddenly burned down at night. These are the methods of the ritual mafia," Skoryk noted. It's like some callbacks from the 90s.
And with all this track record, instead of criminal proceedings for tax evasion and fines for creating a monopoly in the market of funeral services, Alla Landar also receives state awards. Thus, in 2021, at the request of the Chairman of the Kyiv City State Administration and Kyiv City Mayor Vitali Klitschko, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, by his order, awarded the director of PE "Petro the Great" Firm Alla Landar the honorary title of "Honored Worker of the Service Sector of Ukraine". Such surrealism: an honored worker of the service sector of Ukraine who "strips" super-profits from the families of the fallen defenders of Ukraine.