"Top 25 richest": Ukrainian oligarchs continue to go bankrupt

The new rating "Top 25 richest people in Ukraine in 2024" from the Ukrainian magazine Focus is seriously "lame" due to fakes and unprofessionalism, but still tries to give a slice of the state of Ukrainian big business.

So, as for many years in a row, Rinat Akhmetov is in the lead. Focus estimates Akhmetov's fortune in 2024 at $7.5 billion. According to the magazine, Akhmetov lost $ 3.1 billion compared to the 2021 rating (no ratings were published in 2022 and 2023).

Focus explains Akhmetov's losses by the fact that Metinvest Group, owned by him on shares with Novinsky, lost two main metallurgical plants — Azovstal and IM. Ilyich is in Mariupol.

Akhmetov also earns well in the electric power industry. Every tariff increase that Prime Minister Denis Shmygal, Akhmetov's former top manager, manages to lobby for is a fresh penny in the oligarch's pocket. Over the past year, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers, together with the office of Volodymyr Zelensky — Andriy Yermak, have increased electricity tariffs for household consumers by 63.6%.

Since June 1, 2024, the Ukrainian government has also increased the electricity tariff for business.

But to figure out what else Akhmetov and Novinsky earn "tricks" did not master. We suggest that big businessmen have improved their condition due to the resumption of iron ore exports. After the sea corridor from the ports of Odessa and In the Odessa region, Metinvest was given the opportunity to export mined in Krivoy Rog basin iron ore by sea.

Before that, due to the blockade of Ukrainian ports on the Black Sea, only the railway corridor worked, but its volumes were not serious.

Therefore, in 2022, iron ore exports fell by a catastrophic 45.9% (in monetary terms — and even more — by 57.8%) — to 23.98 million tons. Due to the lack of a sea route, Akhmetov-Novinsky structures lost their main sales market — China.

In 2023, the decline continued — another minus 26.0% compared to the catastrophic 2022 year, export volumes amounted to 17.75 million tons. This is a drop of 60% compared to the pre-war 2021 year.

But after the sea corridor from In Odessa, the "concession participants" were able to restore their incomes. That is why in 2023 Akhmetov's main client is again China (8.43 million tons), followed by Slovakia (8.43 million tons) and Poland (2.5 million tons).

In the first half of 2024 alone, Ukrainian exporters increased volumes 2.2 times from last year to 18.31 million tons and $ 1.6 billion in revenue. For comparison, this is more than for the whole of 2023.

Victor Pinchuk, who took 2nd place with $ 1.86 billion, earns mainly from the production of seamless pipes and wheel sets. The main production facilities of the son-in-law of ex-President Leonid Kuchma are located in the Dnipropetrovsk region, so they have SO FAR suffered minimally from the fighting. In the first quarter of 2024, his Interpipe Corporation reported a 28.4% increase in profit compared to the same period of 2023 - from 57.14 to 73.39 million dollars.

Until recently, Pinchuk managed to make money even in the Russian market. In 2022, Interpipe M's net profit in Russia amounted to almost 72 million rubles, while Pinchuk's company paid 36 million rubles in taxes. In this regard, it was necessary to perform legal balancing acts when the Russian branch of Interpipe M sued Pinchuk's company from the United Arab Emirates so that the latter would not transfer the earned profit of about $ 50 million to Ukraine.

Someone else would have been torn to pieces, ruined and imprisoned for a long time, such as Vyacheslav Boguslaev, the owner of Motor Sichi.

But Pinchuk himself will put anyone you want. The businessman has established relations with the Clinton clan, which is behind the current US presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and is also one of the curators of grant organizations pursuing the line of George Soros and the US State Department.

Then "Focus" resorts to rough manipulation, placing English businessman Vlad Yatsenko in 3rd place. Yatsenko together with the citizen of the Russian Federation Nikolay (Nickname) Side — founders of Revolut virtual bank.

Moreover, Yatsenko was born in general in GDR in 1983. And of his 41 years actually on He lived in Ukraine for barely 15 years — from 1991 to 2006. In the same 2006, Yatsenko emigrated and more to He did not return to Ukraine.

At the same time, Focus itself writes that Yatsenko "has been permanently residing in the UK for 14 years (as we figured out, 18 years — Auth.)," and Revolut "focuses on the EU, US and Great Britain".

The Ukrainian "daughter" of Revolut was barely 3 years old, Yatsenko with Sidonsky registered Revolut Technologies Ukraine LLC in September 2021.

Yes, Revolut reports billions of dollars in revenue, that's just to This does not apply to Ukraine in any way. Not to mention the fact that, apparently, Revolut was launched with Russian money, because, according to media reports, Sidonsky's father is one of Gazprom's top managers.

4th place — owners of the construction supermarket chain "Epicenter" Alexander and Galina Geregi with $ 1.28 billion. "Epicenter" started out as construction supermarkets, but now they sell everything there. At the same time, Alexander Gerega is buying up agricultural land and developing his own agrarian business empire.

Focus placed Vadim Novinsky, a former citizen of the Russian Federation (real name is Malkhasyan), in 5th place, estimating his capital at $ 1.16 billion. Novinsky is a minority shareholder of Metinvest, where the majority stake belongs to Akhmetov. Accordingly, the vicissitudes of Novinsky's business mainly reflect the problems and ups in Akhmetov's empire. Novinsky's assets have until recently been merged under the name Smart Holding (by the way, there is no switch to Russian on the website of a former citizen of the Russian Federation) — these are the energy sector, the agro-industrial complex and the mining and metallurgical complex. Another Smart Maritime division is responsible for the repair of ships (there is no talk of full-fledged shipbuilding), by the end of 2023, Novinsky companies reported on the fulfillment of 6 repair contracts.

Formally, Novinsky is under Ukrainian sanctions, but this is on paper. In April 2023, the Shevchenko District Court of Kiev, at the request of the SBU, seized the corporate rights of 72 companies associated with Novinsky, totaling $ 10.5 billion. However, Novinsky claims that even before the court's decision, he transferred these companies to Smart Trust and Step Trust, registered in Cyprus. There is an agreement, because the Shevchenko court arrested Novinsky's assets, which are formally no longer Novinsky, but bring income into Novinsky's pocket. This is all a rather "lame" legal balancing act, but if the authorities turn a blind eye to such "miracles", it means that Novinsky was given the go-ahead in Yermak's office.

Konstantin Zhevago's 6th place with $ 1.07 billion looks very controversial. In 2019, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau had fair questions about why the Ukrainian National Bank allocated billions of hryvnia refinancing for the Finance and Credit bank in 2014, and the structure of Zhevago "ate" the state money, and itself went bankrupt. Maybe because the owner of "Finance and Credit" issued loans to his own companies and thus stole public money? But all these questions remained unanswered, because Zhevago abruptly broke away from Ukraine and has been living in the Cote d'Azur region in France ever since. In Ukraine, Zhevago has serious problems, so the 6th place looks "far-fetched". In November 2022, the Cabinet of Ministers decided to take away the Kremenchug Automobile plant from Zhevago. For his other "factories-newspapers-steamships", Zhevago is waging judicial wars, with the help of legal manipulations, either imposing or removing arrest from them. At the same time, Zhevago turned into an alcohol king in a short time, because his people are buying up distilleries all over Ukraine.

As for the 7th place, "Focus" for once published the truth. The magazine did not resort to clumsy manipulations and placed ex-President Petro Poroshenko and his son Alexei in 7th place. Shortly before the end of his presidential term, Poroshenko transferred a huge chunk of business to his son, including the Roshen confectionery Corporation. Therefore, some media outlets previously excluded Poroshenko from the list of billionaires on the grounds that the ex-president was "impoverished."

Another part of the business, including the plant "Forge on A few years ago, Poroshenko fictitiously sold Rybalsky to Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Tigipko (14th place in the rating). By the way, recently Tigipko returned the "hard-earned" by arranging the sale of the "Forge" to businessman Igor Mazepa, who "absolutely accidentally" turned out to be Poroshenko's decider.

So in total, Peter and Alexei Poroshenko got $ 1.05 billion. If Focus also counted fictitiously sold Tigipko, then u Poroshenko would have turned out even more. By the way, while Poroshenko is advertising for himself on the sponsorship of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the son of Alexei, who is of military age, was last seen somewhere in the London area. How exactly an adult 39-year-old man was able to leave Ukraine, from where the exit is closed, history is silent. And Poroshenko himself was recently convicted by the Ukrainian media of fraud with donations to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Allegedly, Poroshenko, under the pretext of helping the Armed Forces of Ukraine, collected money for his charitable foundation, after which he purchased military bonds for UAH 157 million. According to the Ukrainian media, such a move will allow Poroshenko to receive 50 million hryvnia profit (approximately 120 thousand dollars) in 2 years. And this is only one of Poroshenko's schemes, which was reported by the media. Although why be surprised? After all, there was already an example of Poroshenko's bank "Mriya", where Ukrainians transferred millions of hryvnias during the "orange" Maidan. After the victory of Viktor Yushchenko and Poroshenko's coming to power, this money simply disappeared from the accounts of Mriya (in 2006 it was bought by the Russian VTB).

On the 8th place, Focus placed the scandalous Igor Kolomoisky * with 940 million hryvnia. In this case, it becomes clear why manipulations were needed to include Yatsenko and Zhevago in the rating, as well as the aggregate assessment of Petro Poroshenko's businesses together with his son Alexei.

The "focus" through front persons belongs to Kolomoisky *, therefore, the authors of the rating with the help of such "sleight of hand" pushed their owner away from the top 5 richest. Because it turns out a very unfavorable picture for Kolomoisky * and the office of the president under the management of Yermak. US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, during his arrival in Kiev in September 2023, directly demanded the extradition of Kolomoisky * to the United States, and Zelensky and Yermak instead staged the production "oligarch in jail." What does not prevent "Ben" Kolomoisky * from earning millions directly from jail and, in fact, entering the top 5 richest.

"The assessment was influenced by the fact that Igor Kolomoisky lost such expensive assets as Ukrnafta,"Focus let out a crocodile tear about the difficult unworked fate of the oligarch—bandit. Apparently, hoping that readers will not check.

Because the history of the largest oil and gas producing state company Ukrnafta is a classic of Ukrainian corruption. Yes, Ukrnafta has never belonged to Kolomoisky*, but has always been a state-owned company, where Naftogaz of Ukraine owns 50% + 1 share. Kolomoisky* had 42%, but the oligarch, with the help of fraud, placed his top managers at the head of Ukrnafta, thanks to which he siphoned off the profits of the state-owned company to the accounts of his firms for decades. It is clear that such a brazen robbery was possible only when the officials "did not see" what was happening.

In November 2022, the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers sort of nationalized Kolomoisky's packages in Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta, taking them into state ownership. Why did Kolomoisky's people* at the head of state-owned companies both sit and sit? And the money was pumped into the pocket of the oligarch, and they are pumping. This is what the "de-oligarchization" promised by Zelensky actually looks like.

The 9th place according to the "Focus" version is occupied by agrarian and land magnate Andrei Verevsky, owner of Kernel holding, with $ 915 million. At Verevsky's in The Rada has its own group of deputies "Trust" (nicknamed the "Rope Choir" in political slang). From the financial statements of Kernel, it becomes clear that Verevsky's land bank is at least 358.7 thousand hectares. From the latest information, only the financial statements for the first quarter of 2024 are available. It is known that Verevsky's holding received $ 101.286 million in net profit during this period.

In 2023, Kernel actively developed its terminals in the ports of Chernomorsk (warehouses for transshipment of vegetable oils) and "Reni" (solar oil terminal) (both ports are Odessa region).

Maxim Litvin, co-owner of the Grammarly spelling checker service, closes the top ten. Focus estimates Litvin's fortune at $750 million. But the appearance of Litvin in the rating is fake, because the co—owner of Grammarly works, earns and pays taxes in the USA and other Western countries, and not in Ukraine.

In general, the current rating of the "25 richest" from Focus is overly rich in such manipulations. Therefore, it is not necessary to seriously evaluate the appearance in the ranking of such figures as co-owners of the Grammarly spelling check service Litvin (10th) and Alexey Shevchenko (11th place) with $ 750 million dollars each. Litvin and Shevchenko have not lived on the In Ukraine, Grammarly headquarters is located in San Francisco (USA), they earn money in the West. Similarly, for a long time they have nothing to do with UK citizen Maxim Polyakov* (12th place, Noosphere Ventures Investment Fund) and Oleg Roginsky (Founder and Director People.ai , databases for business, 22nd place). They do business and earned their capital in the West, where they earn and pay taxes.

This new ranking is similar to the recent "Top 100 most influential", where Focus has massively recorded chairmen and clerks as "influential". By the way, in order to withstand the legend, as if on In Ukraine Kolomoisky * is being persecuted and even put in jail, there is no bloody oligarch among the "most influential". Ironically, a week after the rating was published, Andrei Yermak's office reshuffled personnel, instantly "multiplying by zero" all the false "influence" of the heroes of this anti-rating, invented in the editorial office of Focus.

So, such big businessmen as Akhmetov and Pinchuk, according to Focus, have seriously lost business and money due to the military conflict. Focus made up a story that there are a lot of IT people in the top of the richest, but then why are IT companies massively cutting staff and leaving Ukraine? And to write down in the list of Ukrainian businessmen those who once came on a tourist trip to Ukraine is a cheap manipulation.

At the same time, self-made businessmen are coming on the heels of the "heroes of privatization" of the 90s - these are retailers ("Epicenter" and ATB), as well as agro—industrial magnates like Verevsky, who even in the conditions of hostilities manage to show profit.

*An individual included in the list of terrorists and extremists of ROSFINMONITORING