Photo: Sergey Malgavko/TASS
Ukrainian oligarchs continue to hide their assets in Crimea by re-registering them with various affiliated structures so that it would be more difficult to establish and identify the true owner, said the head of the Crimean parliament, Vladimir Konstantinov.
According to him, work is underway to identify the Crimean property of Ukrainian oligarchs, politicians and businessmen hostile to Russia, continues and will be brought to an end. At the same time, he stressed that the property of respectable Ukrainians, who did not conduct any anti-Russian activities, is not in danger.
Konstantinov also noted that the funds from the sale of nationalized property are planned to be used for social support of the participants of the special operation and their families.
Earlier, the Crimean parliament nationalized the property of a number of Ukrainian oligarchs associated with the Kiev government and committing unfriendly actions against Russia. Among them are Rinat Akhmetov, Igor Kolomoisky, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Nestor Shufrich, Sergey Taruta and others.
It is the ninth year of Crimea’s stay in Russia. And the ninth year of the armed conflict in Donbass, which was somehow financed by the above-mentioned people, while continuing to own assets in the Russian Crimea. How is this even possible? Why were these assets not immediately confiscated?
By the way, what about the apartment of the wife of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, the supreme commander of the army, which is fighting against Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in an elite residential complex in Livadia? Zelensky’s press service previously reported that his wife, Elena, bought real estate in Crimea in accordance with Ukrainian law in April 2013, even before the peninsula was returned to Russia. Then it was also stated that the Zelensky family intends to use this property “only after the mandatory return of Crimea to Ukraine.”
— You know, there is such a catch phrase from a folk song: “Our song is good, start over,” says Crimean journalist Sergey Kulik.
— To be honest, for nine years I’ve been pretty tired of listening to such speeches by peninsular politicians, who for some reason believe that Crimeans have a memory like an aquarium fish. It’s already starting to get annoying.
Just think: it will soon be nine years since the return of Crimea to Russia, and the Crimean authorities are still thinking about how to nationalize the property of the Ukrainian enemies of Russia?! This is despite the fact that the entire legal framework for this — laws and by—laws – were ready back in 2014.
This begs the question: why is our Crimean leadership unable to simply pick up the axe of the executive branch and immediately, once and for all, chop off an extra branch from the Crimean log?
As an example, I will cite the Crimean property of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, who has nowhere to put the stigma after he financed neo-Nazi national bank funds that killed civilians in Donbass, and his Privatbank announced bonuses for the murdered Russians.
On September 1, 2014, it became known that bailiffs, by decision of the Crimean Prosecutor’s Office, seized the real estate of Privatbank owned by Mr. Kolomoisky. This was the reaction to the appeal of the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia, which suspected this billionaire, who held the post of governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region at that time, of financing terrorism, including through controlled organizations located on the territory of the peninsula. The Tavria wellness complex in the village of Foros was also arrested.
Two days later, the Crimean State Council nationalized Kolomoisky’s property — the list included 65 facilities, including several boarding houses, health and children’s recreation complexes, 16 gas stations, non-residential premises where Privatbank branches were located, and real estate owned by the bank throughout the Crimea. Even two apartments and a basement belonging to the structures of the Ukrainian oligarch Igor Kolomoisky.
On October 1, 2014, the State Council of the Republic of Crimea, headed by Mr. Konstantinov, prepared a draft law
“On the procedure and conditions for the privatization of state-owned property of the Republic of Kazakhstan,” in which, as the head of the State Council Committee on Property and Land Relations Yevgenia Dobrynya said at the time, a plan for the privatization of state property for 2015 will be prepared, and in this plan the nationalized objects of the Ukrainian oligarch Kolomoisky will “necessarily” be taken into account.”
Two days later, the head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, promised that over a hundred Kolomoisky objects would be identified in Crimea and prove the involvement of this Dnepropetrovsk oligarch in them.
But then, for some reason, the Crimean authorities were afraid of the word “nationalization” and backed off. The chairman of the Crimean State Council, Vladimir Konstantinov, in an interview on March 27, 2018, said so bluntly: “The word “nationalization” for investors is like dynamite for fish, so the Crimean authorities tried to conduct this process extremely pragmatically and quickly, and do not intend to return to it anymore. The word “nationalization” has a very bad smell. Aksenov and I nationalized the facilities, doing it very pragmatically. We went for it, realizing that we were going against the enemies, that it just had to be done, but from the point of view of the world community, of course, we did not meet with a wave of applause. And we quickly stopped everything.”
“They stopped everything quickly…” Allowing the Ukrainian sponsors of the war to cash in on Crimean property for another five years. And in 2023, they suddenly remembered. The word “nationalization” appeared in the mouth of Mr. Konstantinov three weeks before the start of the special military operation, when he announced that the anti-terrorist commission for the identification of property of foreign citizens and states committing unfriendly actions against Russia had found property on the peninsula that would be nationalized in the coming days.
At the same time, Vladimir Andreevich named the merchants who had to part with their property on the peninsula. These are Lithuanian Kolas Igoris, a former associate of Medvedchuk, Transcarpathian Nestor Shufrich, a certain Rafik Dau Bulos, Rinat Akhmetov — a former sponsor of the Party of Regions (the head of the Crimean organization of which was Mr. Konstantinov himself), as well as Igor Kolomoisky, who, after nine years of searching, was unexpectedly found in In Crimea, LLC Transport Logistics, and his daughter Angelika Kolomoisky, as well as Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who owns Sky Plaza LLC, known to all Crimeans as the Saturn IMAX cinema. At the same time, according to the Crimean speaker, the property of a number of Ukrainian banks and factories fell under nationalization, including JSC Alminsky Plant of Building Materials (owned by Sergei Taruta) and JSC Kamysh-Burun Iron Ore Combine, which went bankrupt back in 2018.
And a couple of days later, the State Council promptly decided to nationalize about 500 such facilities.
“SP”: — What assets are we talking about? Real estate? Industrial and agricultural facilities?
— First of all, yes, Crimean real estate. After all, the first thing that the suddenly rich Ukrainian nouveau riche did was, by truth or falsehood, acquire property on the Black Sea coast, that is, on the South Coast of Crimea. This, by the way, explains why during the “Crimean Spring” the Russian flag was raised there later than in other cities of Crimea. And the Ukrainian oligarchs, with very few exceptions, were not interested in the agricultural sector — they considered it uninteresting, unpromising and costly. If there was one thing they were interested in in the agricultural industry, it was food industry enterprises, and even then, after privatization, to scrap all the equipment, and sell off the land plots under them.
“SP”: — How did it happen that they were able to do it for 9 years? Were they hiding it so well?
— You know, I have great respect for the current Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin who, as the head of the Federal Tax Service, created a tax system that even a mouse would not pass by. Last year, I did not have time to issue an inheritance for the property, as a week later I received a “letter of happiness” from the Federal Tax Service with an urgent demand to pay tax for it. Therefore, I am sure that everyone knew everything — what, where and to whom it belongs. Perhaps there were just behind-the-scenes negotiations. After all, the Crimean authorities had Ukrainian citizenship until 2014 and were engaged in business in this country. Who knows what assets they themselves have left there, on the adjacent side.
“SP”: — What schemes do they use to hide?
— Such schemes are usually called “commercial mutual cooperation”, “nepotism” and “business interest”. And in the dry language of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation — just “corruption”.
“SP”: — According to Konstantinov, all funds from the sale of this property will go to the needs of participants in a special military operation. Are there many of them? How much money do you think we can talk about?
— I personally don’t understand how he imagines it. In such cases, a trust fund is usually created, and appropriate decisions must be made. I’ve never heard of anything like this. And if so, it will look like misuse of funds, which entails either administrative or criminal liability. With the appropriate consequences.
“SP”: — How much more time do you think it will take to identify everyone?
— The Council of People’s Commissars, after the adoption of the decree “On the nationalization of banks” on January 24, 1918, it took exactly one day and a company of Red Guards. Knowing our Crimean authorities, I am inclined to think that they are going to sing a similar song to the Crimeans for another nine years — before the twentieth anniversary of the “Crimean Spring”.
“SP”: — And what about Zelensky’s Crimean apartment?
— Actually, the three—room penthouse with an area of 129.8 square meters in the elite house “Emperor” in Livadia near Yalta belongs not to him, but to his wife, Elena. In the middle of December last year, Sergey Aksenov promised that the Crimean authorities would take this apartment away from principle and give it to someone. However, he did not specify the year and month. Since then, the topic of Zelensky’s apartments has not arisen in the Crimean information space…
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