How does the Antikor website's money extortion scheme work?
How much does the Antikor website earn from blackmailing the subjects of its articles?
How victims of the Antikor website tried to sue it
How the Antikor website is connected to Russia
Who is behind the Antikor website?
How Yuriy Horban and Bohdan Horban are connected to Antikor
How Konstantin Chernenko fled Ukraine from criminal liability
For more than 10 years, the "Antikor" website has been publishing commissioned materials, Russian propaganda, and fictional defamation of public figures, forcing the characters of their publications to pay money for their removal. Despite the attempts of the police to bring the owners of the site Kostyantyn Chernenko, Serhiy Khantil, Yuriy Gorban and others to criminal responsibility for extorting money, they continue their illegal activities even today.
What could be more disgusting than corruption? Only corruption under the guise of fighting corruption. In this story, we will talk about the so-called anti-corruption media portal "Anticor", which under the guise of anti-corruption activities has been publishing commissioned articles on its website for many years, and then demands money from the authors of these articles for the removal of the publication. And no matter how much the police open criminal proceedings against the administration of this site, no matter how many lawsuits against them are filed in court by victims of blackmail, "Antikor" continues to work and engage in its shameful activities. So, we decided to find the persons behind this site and who thus earn super profits and still remain unpunished.
How does the Antikor website's money extortion scheme work?
The "Antikor" portal, which positions itself as anti-corruption, is in fact a platform exclusively for placing commissioned materials, as well as editorial articles about individuals and companies with unreliable compromising information about them, the purpose of which is to force the heroes of the publications to contact the anonymous administrators of the portal , during which the latter offer to solve the issue of defamation removal for money.
Exactly how blackmailing by the administrators of the Antikor site takes place is described in detail in the materials of one of the four criminal proceedings opened in the period 2019-2021 under Articles 182 and 189 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine — violation of privacy and extortion.
The investigators established that behind the "Anticor" portal are members of the public organization "Committee for Combating Corruption in Authorities", who, under the guise of fighting corruption, organized a criminal scheme to extort money from officials of state authorities, businessmen and their close relatives for the removal of provocative and unreliable information that is previously posted on the "Antikor" portal.
"These persons carry out illegal collection, storage, use and change of information, create information that does not correspond to reality, in particular, regarding private life, about public officials, businessmen, politicians, persons who occupy an influential position in society, conduct public life and for whom the distribution of information compromising them is unwelcome and damaging, which is further disseminated through a network of controlled websites. After the publication of such information, they contact the persons about whom the information was published and demand payment of funds for the destruction and termination of the publication of such information," says the materials of the criminal proceedings.
As long as the hero of the publication does not contact the editorial office at [email protected] with a request to remove the article and pay money for it, the slander will continue to spread through the website. But even after paying the money, after some time, materials about this person appear on the website again according to the principle "if you paid once, pay a second time."
How much does the Antikor website earn from blackmailing the subjects of its articles?
Previously, it was known from numerous publications in the mass media that the site takes quite a small amount of money for placing materials of a commissioned nature - from 50 dollars for a news item to 300 dollars for an article. Today, according to market participants, the "Antikor" site charges from 150 to 200 dollars, in rare cases - up to 2,000 thousand dollars, for placing a custom publication. However, the site owners receive their main income not for posting, but for removing articles. The price for it starts at 3,000 thousand dollars.
The materials of the criminal proceedings say that as of 2018, the portal administrators offered to pay them 6,000 US dollars for the removal of the publication, in 2021 this amount was already 0.37 bitcoins, which was then equivalent to 14,000 US dollars.
In order to check whether "Antikor" continues to engage in extortion today, and how much money the site earns from it, we decided to conduct our own experiment and wrote a letter to the address of the @Joshgrant1 account specified in the description of the "Antikor" Telegram channel, asking how delete the publication on the website and the post about it in the Antikor Telegram channel and how much it will cost. For the experiment, we chose a "fresh" article from October 14 "Where did the protégé of Russian bandits, People's Deputy Valery Dubil disappear after the Russian invasion?".
The answer came from another account @denpop1, where the interlocutor introduced himself as Denis, an employee of an unnamed advertising agency. In his answer, Denys proposed a "year-long campaign" of cooperation, which includes the removal of unwanted publications, the posting of two of his articles on the website, and an obligation not to publish negative materials about the People's Deputy in the future. For all this, "Antikor" offered to pay 12 thousand dollars for a crypto wallet.
How victims of the Antikor website tried to sue it
Some victims of "anti-cow" blackmail went the other way - through the court. But most often it did not help, because the owners of the site skillfully hid information about themselves, which the courts in most cases could not find and prove, actually, who should be responsible for the spread of slander on the "Antikor" site.
The scale of Antikor's activity is evidenced by 1,060 court documents in the Unified Register of Court Decisions related to this site. For example, ATB LLC, first deputy chairman of Ukravtodor Roman Kosynskyi, hotel owner Vyacheslav Yutkin, and politician Gennady Korban, to whom Antikor 573 negative articles are devoted at once. In most cases, the courts rejected the claims due to the fact that it was not possible to establish and contact the owners of the site.
However, there were also examples of successful cases. At first, the General Director of State Enterprise "Ukrspirt" Mykhailo Labutin failed to achieve justice in court, also due to the fact that no evidence was established that the owners of the site are its owners, but the court nevertheless obliged "Antikor" to deny the facts stated in articles about Laboutin. The material was removed, but… three years later it reappeared on the site. The level of arrogance of the portal administrators is amazing.
For two years, "Antikor" was sued by "Pharmagate" LLC, about whose bribery the site published two articles at once, and as a result, their lawsuit to declare the information unreliable and refute it was satisfied. However, the articles have still not been removed from the site.
In May 2024, businessman Yevhen Chernyak, chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Global Spirits alcohol holding, won a court case against Antikor, about whom an article was published on the website with information that his brand of vodka "Khortytsa" continues to be sold in Russia. Chernyak's lawyers proved in court that this information is unreliable, but it did not help - the article is still "hanging" on the website.
How the Antikor website is connected to Russia
Accusing businessman Chernyak of continuing to work in the Russian Federation, the Antikor portal itself should answer for its pro-Russian activities over the years. This site has repeatedly disseminated Russian propaganda narratives and outright anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
For example, back in 2014, an article entitled "Civil war in Ukraine eats up the rest of the budget" was published, which stated the following: "It was the Ukrainian punitive forces that invaded the territory of the southeast, and therefore the responsibility for any kind of damage is borne by Kyiv". In another material, "Antikor" called the Revolution of Dignity a "coup d'état" and the participants of the Maidan - "militants who set fire to Berkut."
As 368.media writes, in 2016, Antikor published an article with a quote from Russian actor Gosha Kutsenko, who spoke delusional about the fact that "in Ukraine, they wash themselves with the blood of their grandmothers and grandfathers." In 2018, the site spread the thesis of the Russian propagandist Solovyov, who compared Ukraine to a jackal and declared that "dead Nazis" live in it. In the same year, the "Texts" portal conducted a study, according to which "Antikor" was included in the TOP-10 Ukrainian sites specializing in the distribution of fakes.
It is likely that the owners of "Antikor" do not hesitate to take money not only from the customers of slander against Ukrainian public figures, but also from the Russian special services, which have been trying to destabilize the domestic political situation in Ukraine for 10 years by spreading anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
However, the following facts may also indicate that Antikor's cooperation with the Russian Federation may be closer than simply publishing commissioned articles with Kremlin narratives. First, as of 2021, the domain of the Antikor site moved to the dedicated IP of the Russian hosting company Variti — 185.203.72.75. According to Website Reports, such Russian information "dumps" as Novostiua.org, Glavk.info, Kompromat1.info and Oplatru24.ru worked together with Antikor under one Google Ads Publisher ID (4336163389795756). Back in 2018, the media wrote that Antikor actually works from the territory of Russia, and the content of Antikor and related resources is available to Russian readers.
At the moment, the site uses protection against Ddos-attacks of Russian origin Variti, that is, all traffic and all visits to the site pass through anti-ddos servers controlled by a Russian company. Moreover, for a long time Antikor responded to incoming e-mail messages from the e-mail box [email protected], created on the basis of a Russian service.
Who is behind the Antikor website?
On the Antikor website, of course, there is no name listed - neither the owner, nor the editor-in-chief, nor the journalists. Only e-mail and address are indicated in the contacts: str. Hlybochytska, 13, sec. 1, office. 2. The residential complex "Lviv Quarter" is located at this address. It is not possible to find the office of the "Antikor" portal there.
Since December 12, 2016, the owner of the trademark "Anticor" has been the company Teka-Group Foundation, registered in the Republic of Panama and founded, in turn, by the Belizean offshore Hamilton Management Ltd.In other words, they hid the ends as far as possible.
But the applicant for trademark registration was one such Chernenko Kostyantyn Yevhenovich, registered at 87 Bosobroda Street in the town of Pryluky, Chernihiv Region.
According to the investigators, Kostyantyn Chernenko, a 42-year-old native of the city of Pryluky, owns and controls the Antikor site: it is from his bank accounts opened at Monobank and Raiffeisen Bank Aval that payments for services are made from intermediaries for the rental and maintenance of server equipment to ensure the functioning of the "Antikor" web portal.
Until 2012, Kostyantyn Chernenko was engaged in trade from trays and in the markets - it was with this type of activity that his FOP was registered. From 2007 to 2012, he was also an assistant to Vyacheslav Koval, People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 6th convocation. He is also known for the fact that at one time he headed the Prylutskyi city branch of the "Front of Change" public organization.
In July 2012, Chernenko became one of the co-founders of the aforementioned NGO “Committee for Combating Corruption in the Government”. Along with him, its founders were Viktor Sayko and Serhiy Khantil, who will be discussed below. In 2013, the Antikor site began its work, which almost immediately began to bring good income to Chernenko. In April 2014, he bought an apartment in Brovary with an area of 61 square meters for almost 37 thousand dollars, and a few months later, in July 2014, he also bought a Toyota RAV4 SUV.
Chernenko has a 7-year-old son, Timofy, from his common-law wife, 36-year-old Maria Zolkina, who works as a political analyst at the Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation and a partner of the LD Agency lobbying agency.
The second established person involved in the activities of Antikor is Serhii Mykolayovych Khantil, a native of Pryluka, who, together with Chernenko, appears in the criminal proceedings against Antikor as a member of a criminal group for extorting money from politicians and businessmen, as well as as a registrant of the "Antikor" site - in the materials of court cases.
In fact, he is Chernenko's confidant and assistant. Their connection is traced to the fact that for some time, according to operational information of law enforcement agencies, the e-mail address [email protected], registered by Serhiy Khantil, was used to extort money from the heroes of publications on the Antikor website. When registering this box, Khantil used the mobile number +380937444516, which was actually used by Kostyantyn Chernenko. Almost all of Serhiy Khantil's career is connected with the NGO "Committee to Combat Corruption in Authorities" and the "Antikor" website.
In addition to them, the investigators also identified several other persons who are reasonably suspected of belonging to the criminal activities of the "Antikor" website.
57-year-old Lesya Zhuravska worked as a chief accountant at Prylutsk TV and radio company TIM, PE TV and radio company Intellectual Cable Systems, as well as OJSC Budmash, OJSC Ukrnafta and LLC Alliance Plus. She also plays the role of an "accountant" in the activities of the "Antikoru" criminal group: according to the investigation, money was transferred to bank accounts opened in her name from intermediaries who were engaged in actual contact with victims of blackmail.
Mykhailo Fedorovych Betsa was identified among such intermediaries, who, according to data on his Facebook page, worked at Ukrainian Media Holding LLC of Yanukovych-era oligarch Serhii Kurchenko. In addition, Mykhailo Betsa is the founder of the advertising agency "Baing Press", which is probably the agency whose representatives respond to letters with offers to remove unwanted articles for $12,000.
In the materials of the criminal proceedings against Antikor, the names of Oleksandr Kanivets, the brother of Konstantin Chernenko's wife, as well as D. Shpakovich, M. Sarai and V. Osadchii, from whose accounts in PrivatBank systematically sent money to Konstantin's accounts, also appear as intermediaries Chernenko and Lesya Zhuravska.
How Yuriy Horban and Bohdan Horban are connected to Antikor
However, as it turned out during the investigation, these are not all persons related to the activities of the Antikor site. The author of the petition on the website of the President of Ukraine dated February 2, 2022 "On the application of sanctions against the publication Antikor, which spreads Russian propaganda", Roman Kamaldinov, noted that "it follows from the court cases that the founder and head of Antikor is Yury Horban, and Chernenko is the editor-in-chief. The company's lawyer is Bohdan, the son of Yuri Gorban. And Serhiy Khantyl is involved in court cases as a site registrant."
It is not possible to directly confirm that the founder and head of "Antikor" is really Yury Horban: in the materials of the criminal proceedings, his name is mentioned as involved in the portal's activities, but without a defined role. However, his direct connection with other members of the group of people behind Antikor is clearly traced.
Yuriy Horban is also a native of Prylutsky district of Chernihiv region, as well as Chernenko, Khantyl and Zhuravsk. He worked as a journalist for almost his entire professional life: back in the 90s, he worked as a correspondent for the Ukrainian Radio news service, as a graduate editor of the Ukrinform information agency, as an editor and special correspondent for the 1+1 TV channel, and also worked for the STB TV channel. From 2016 to 2018, Horban was the deputy editor-in-chief of the online publication "Ukrainian Interest".
It is known from his Facebook page that today he works as a press secretary at the "Democratic Initiatives named after Ilko Kucheriv" foundation, which is engaged in researching the public opinion of Ukrainians, and in which (or is it a coincidence?) the common-law wife of Kostyantyn Chernenko, Maria Zolkina, works.
It is not known when exactly Gorban started working for the fund, as well as what he did after 2018, when he left the publication "Ukrainian Interest". Considering the well-known fact about the low level of wages in the Ukrainian media, it is impossible to honestly accumulate a lot of money while working as a journalist in Ukraine. However, in August 2019, Gorban bought a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser Prado SUV worth at least $60,000. Is it by chance not for money from the Antikor site?
Direct confirmation of Yury Gorban's close relationship with Kostyantyn Chernenko and Serhiy Khantil were the photos published on the Instagram page of Bohdan Gorban, son of Yury Gorban. In these photos, dated September and December 2017, you can see Bohdan Gorban and his father together with Kostyantyn Chernenko and Serhii Khantil at the same table in one of the most expensive restaurants in Kyiv, Vino e Cucina and in the Toscana Grill restaurant.
In addition, it is clear from the social networks of Gorban Jr. that he has been in close contact with the registrant of the Antikor trademark, Kostyantyn Chernenko, since 2015, and in some court decisions based on the claims of victims of extortion by the Antikor website, 28-year-old Bohdan Gorban really acted as a representative and the defender of the site.
It is interesting that in 2019 Bohdan tried to get a job at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine as the deputy head of the Department of External Communications, and in 2020 as the chief legal adviser of the department of legal support and representation in courts (logically, because the site has extensive experience in court representation, that deals with extortion), but both times the competition did not pass.
At the same time, he is an assistant to two People's Deputies of Ukraine from the "Trust" group, Oleksandr Sukhov and Serhiy Velmozhny, who at the time of their election as deputies were both advisers to the chairman of the Serhiy Shakhov Foundation charity organization. Serhiy Shakhov is a People's Deputy of Ukraine of the 8th and 9th convocations, a member of the "Our Land" party, who since March 2023 has been wanted by the NABU on charges of illegal enrichment and concealment of two elite houses, 27 plots of land, 13 apartments in Kyiv, 8 parking spaces and two cars for the total amount of UAH 88 million.
An eloquent fact: it is impossible to find at least one negative publication on the "Antikor" website about the people's deputies of Sukhiv or Velmozhny, for which Bohdan Gorban works. The site, which pours dirt on almost every public figure in Ukraine with the intention of "warming" money from them, for some reason bypasses these two people, limiting itself to only neutral news that, for example, "Deputy Velmozhny fell ill with the coronavirus."
According to the declarations of Bohdan Gorban, in 2016-2018, when he closely communicated and cooperated with Chernenko and Khantil, he actively invested money in the purchase of expensive watches, such as Audemars Piguet (from 10 to 300 thousand US dollars), Hublot (from 7 to 70 thousand US dollars,) and Ulysse Nardin (from 5 to 190 thousand US dollars). This despite the fact that his salary in the Verkhovna Rada apparatus in 2018 amounted to only 152,000 hryvnias per year, and the income of his public relations agency was 182,000 hryvnias for 2018.
Judging by his Instagram page, Bohdan Gorban has a close relationship with Olena Musiyovska, who is also an assistant to People's Deputy Serhiy Velmozhny and appears in the media as a businesswoman and PR manager. Judging by her social networks, Musiyovska leads a luxurious lifestyle, drives a 2022 Mercedes-Benz CLA 200 and relaxes in expensive restaurants of the capital together with Bohdan Gorban.
The analysis of all available open data regarding the "Antikor" website and the persons associated with it leads to the conclusion that the main actors behind the illegal activity of this portal for blackmail and extortion of money from citizens of Ukraine, and the beneficiaries of this activity are Yuriy and Bohdan Gorbani, Kostyantyn Chernenko and Serhii Khantil. All others are helpers and intermediaries who, most likely, simply receive their percentage of money received from extortion victims.
How Konstantin Chernenko fled Ukraine from criminal liability
According to Osint Global, one of the main figures of the criminal group of extortionists "Antikor", Kostyantyn Chernenko, left Ukraine on January 18, 2021 and never returned home. From that time Serhii Khantil became the main operator of the portal.
A month before fleeing Ukraine, in December 2020, Chernenko, according to the Real Property Rights Register, sold his apartment in Brovary, which he bought for $37,000 in 2014, to his common-law wife Maria for $74,300 Zolkinius This is a classic scheme of legalization of illegally obtained money, when the property is resold to a family member, so that the "leftist" profit has a legal source. It is obvious that with the help of such a fictitious transaction with his common-law wife, Chernenko was preparing legalized capital for living abroad.
According to our data, today Kostyantyn Chernenko can live either in Turkey, or in Germany, or in Poland, where, according to the data received, on September 14, 2020, the company "INFACT SP. Z O.O.", in which the shareholders were Kostyantyn Chernenko (80% — 40 shares with a total value of 4,000 zlotys) and Galina Zolkina (20% — 10 shares with a total value of 1,000 zlotys), probably a relative of Chernenko's common-law wife. According to the Polish registers, the company is engaged in the activities of advertising agencies and is registered in Warsaw.
The company's latest financial report indicates a drop in net sales revenue of 49.74% in 2023, while the company's net profit fell by 145.27%. A negative growth of 74.37% was also recorded in its total assets. Most likely, before leaving the country, Chernenko created this firm to legalize in Europe the money received from the illegal activities of the Antikor portal.
Considering that the first criminal proceedings against "Antikor" under the article "Extortion" were opened in August 2019, and the second - on December 4, 2020, most likely, Kostyantyn Chernenko, as the person whose connection with "Antikor" has the most evidence (application for registration of a trademark on his behalf, his bank accounts from which services for maintenance of Antikoru server equipment were paid), decided to hide from possible criminal liability and continue his activities from abroad.
By the way, Maria Zolkina, Chernenko's common-law wife, judging by her social networks, also lives abroad - in Great Britain.
Perhaps it was Konstantin Chernenko’s flight abroad that prevented four criminal proceedings opened on the facts of extortion of money from citizens by the administrators of the Antikor website from reaching the court and the logical conclusion of bringing the guilty to justice (despite the fact that as part of the pre-trial investigation, lots of information and evidence). However, the name of Kostyantyn Chernenko is not listed in the search database for citizens hiding from authorities.
As part of criminal proceedings No. 12020100060003326 dated December 4, 2020, the Pechersk District Court of the city of Kyiv even imposed an arrest on the intellectual property rights of the domain name of the web resource antikor.com.ua, however, in March 2021, the senior police investigator who led this case , for unknown reasons issued a resolution to close the mentioned criminal proceedings.
In this way, the criminal group of persons identified by the law enforcement officers by name, which under the guise of anti-corruption activities is engaged in systematic extortion of money from the citizens of Ukraine, continues to exist in the same form and composition to this day, which we verified personally with the help of a journalistic experiment. Hopefully, this publication will attract the attention of law enforcement agencies and force them to renew the investigation and, after all, bring the perpetrators to justice.