A co-owner of the "TIS" group, Odesa resident Andriy Stavnitser, is making titanic efforts to shield the Russian criminal millionaire from Monaco, Oleksiy Fedorychev, who is his senior partner at the private port, withdrawn from state control during the turbulent ’90s. However, there is suspicion that Stavnitser wants to abandon Fedorychev and has surrounded him with his obliging lawyers...
How to Steal a Port
This story was a prime example of corruption and deceit from the very beginning. At the end of perestroika, the alpinism instructor Oleksiy Stavnitser arrived in Odesa with his two sons from the Caucasus. He befriended Eduard Hurvits, the head of the October District Executive Committee of Odesa, and his entourage, which included a diverse group ranging from movement members to Georgian thieves-in-law and Chechen Dudayev supporters.
Stavnitser also had his own complex connections, which helped him establish a trusting relationship with the Deputy Chief of the Primorsky District Executive Committee of Odesa, lawyer Oleh Kutateladze, Hurvits’s group consigliere. Media claims suggest that Oleh Kutateladze is related to the Moscow thief-in-law Serhiy Kutateladze (Bayka), but he, of course, denies this.
In 1994, Hurvits became the mayor of Odesa, and Kutateladze became a co-owner and the head of the supervisory board of the company "Transinvestservice" ("TIS"). He is listed as the head of the company’s legal department and is among the founders of all related commercial entities "TIS-Container Terminal," "TIS-Coal," "TIS-Ore."
The second co-owner is Oleksiy Stavnitser. His sons, the elder Yehor, who in 1972 was given the mother’s surname Hrebennikov, and the younger Andriy, born in 1982, who became Stavnitser, were still learning to live life, as the family was considering emigrating to Israel at the time.
Next comes a typical scheme of those years. Since Soviet times, Stavnitser had connections in Austria through mountaineering. Partners were assisted in registering the company Austria International Consulting GmbH, allowing them to enter the "Pivdennyi" port via the state enterprise "Lyman," creating a joint venture that was exempt from most taxes.
The director of the "Lyman" state enterprise, Homchenko, was made an offer he could not refuse. He did not even risk refusing. The statutory fund of the newly created joint venture received warehouses, piers, railway stations, and other valuable assets valued at $109.61 million according to the 1994 valuation.
Yet, for some reason, during the transfer of state property into the statutory fund, the share of "Lyman" was valued at only $15 million. How did $94 million get lost? Investigators believe that there was a criminal conspiracy among officials of the State Property Fund, the subject appraisal entity, and the joint venture founders (Stavnitser and Kutateladze).
Moreover, in 1994, the joint venture illegally obtained 121 hectares for permanent use for production purposes. In 2001, the land plot expanded to 133 hectares for the placement of facilities for transshipping chemical and metallurgical cargo. And in February 2002, the joint venture "Transinvestservice" was re-registered as LLC "Transinvestservice." The share of the State Property Fund, previously set at $15 million, turned into 27 million hryvnias.
Two years later, in 2004, the SPF exited the project altogether, and the partners bought out its share, significantly undervalued. Thus, the state port became private property.
We recount all this based on the investigation of criminal case No. 42017100000000637, initiated only in 2017. Within this investigation, there were searches in state institutions and "TIS" structures, but ultimately Stavnitser "resolved the issues."
Criminal Cases and Schemes
Railway. By 2007, "Ukrzaliznytsia" received $2.5 per ton of cargo transported by TIS. But suddenly, a mythical railway station "Chornomorska-TIS" appeared, and the management of the "Odesa Railway" refused to accept payment for services of wagon supply and servicing. This amounted to 60 million UAH per year at the time the criminal case was opened, over ten years, more than half a billion.
It is believed that former Deputy Director of "Ukrzaliznytsia" Viktor Chornyi and former Head of the Odesa Railway Illya Levytskyi are involved in the corruption scheme. This was Andriy Stavnitser’s first independent project after working as a dispatcher at the family firm and then becoming a director.
Tugboat. In 2016, the company P&O Maritime, effectively represented by Stavnitser, approached Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan with a proposal to purchase tugboats from the Odesa port, claiming they were being used inefficiently. The cost of 12 tugboats was evaluated at $50 million, with 50% of the payment made immediately by the buyer and another $25 million over ten years.
It later turned out that the "inefficient" tugboats were bringing in $17 million a year. The scheme harmed the Odesa port by 4 billion UAH over three years, potentially tripling in ten years. The project was derailed by a port union protest.
Ship Fees.At this time, there was an active investigation phase of a third criminal case (led by the SSU) concerning the underpayment of 72 million UAH in ship fees.
The Ministry of Infrastructure (headed by Andriy Pyvovarskyi at the time) issued Order No. 281 dated 24.07.2015, redirecting part of the ship fees received from shipowners from the budget to so-called "marine agents"—namely, to the accounts of LLC "TIS – Container Terminal" and LLC "TIS – Ore." This was justified on the grounds that these firms were the owners of the operational waters of piers No. 18-22.
In July of this year, the Main Department of the SSU initiated criminal proceedings 22016000000000269 under part 5 of Article 191 (misappropriation, embezzlement, or conversion of property through abuse of official position), as private firms cannot legally be the keepers of the waters of seaports. The waters are the exclusive property of the Ukrainian people.
Interestingly, during a search at Yehor Hrebennikov’s home, cash (USD 566,000, UAH 469,000, and EUR 35,600) and documents of the offshore company Niokron Brok Corp. (Panama) were seized. The company’s office is based in Moscow. These are the traces of Oleksiy Fedorychev—chief co-owner of "TIS," a senior partner of Andriy Stavnitser, his brother Yehor, and Oleh Kutateladze, who at this point introduced his son Vitaliy into the business.
Citizen Fedorychev
It was Fedorychev that NABU targeted after Stavnitser had closed almost all criminal cases against "TIS" and they, along with Kutateladze, began pressuring SSU investigators Lebedyev and Yashchenko, investigators from the Lyman Police Department where the "Pivdennyi" port is located, and anyone else who dared to challenge them.
Subsequently, "pawned officers" calmed down. Lyman Police Department Chief Volodymyr Panchenko closed the proceedings due to a lack of criminal elements. Prosecutor of Kominternivska Local Prosecution Office Iryna Kartseva didn’t object to lifting the arrest. Judge Nataliya Vinska unfroze all the accounts of the "TIS" group of companies.
Then NABU appeared, consolidating all incidents from 2016-2018—pertaining to the "privatization" of the port, ship fees, the "deal" with "Ukrzaliznytsia," etc.—into one major case, with the primary suspect being Russian Fedorychev residing in Monaco, neighboring Yuriy Ivanyushchenko (Yenakiyevskyi) with Hungarian and Uruguayan passports.
A former football player for Moscow "Dynamo," who at one time owned the football clubs "Dynamo" (Moscow) and "Rostov," left the USSR in 1987. In December 1994, he registered Fedcom in Monaco, engaged in trading railway sleepers, later moving into fertilizers, servicing operations for "Uralkali," and selling sulfur to "Astrakhangazprom."
He was noted in the Russian special services database as a representative of the Lyubertsy organized crime group abroad (in the early days of his activities), with traces of connections to Semen Mohylevych (allegedly helping Fedorychev obtain a Hungarian passport while living in Hungary), essentially a typical representative of the Russian mafia in Europe.
In 1997, Oleksiy Fedorychev was implicated in a weapons and drug trafficking case. However, French police eventually lost interest in him. In 2012, his private aircraft with the registration number 9H-FED was detained in the Canary Islands carrying 1988 kg of cocaine. And there are several such episodes.
In Odesa, Fedorychev appeared in the mid-’90s with a proposal to transship export grains. Later, he acquired shares from the Norwegian firm Norsk Hydro, who Stavnitser and Kutateladze lured into investing in the port’s reconstruction but later phased out of business.
But Fedorychev is not Norwegian. He quickly settled into "TIS" and pushed the companions out. Now he holds 45.47% of the enterprise, with another 4% through his firm Fedcominvest. He holds substantial shares in all other companies of the group.
Time for Action, Time for Fraud
NABU took on Fedorychev in a case about the sale of state barley and wheat to Arab countries at prices significantly below market in collusion with the former Chairman of the State Food Grain Corporation, Petro Vovchuk. The damage to the state is estimated at $60 million. Incidentally, this too is a Stavnitser project, for which he launched an annual grain forum, Grain Ukraine, in Odesa.
Vovchuk fled, was detained in Lithuania, but was never taken into custody in Ukraine. Notifications of suspicion were sent to Fedorychev via DHL courier service, but neither the "suspicion" notices nor subpoenas were received (acknowledged only by the janitor Didier). On February 5, 2020, NABU managed to secure a behind-the-scenes arrest ruling from the High Anti-Corruption Court, which Stavnitser’s hired lawyers successfully appealed in the Appeals Chamber of HACC.
Stavnitser even managed to get his partner included in the presidential decree of May 14, 2020, which lifted sanctions (imposed by NABU in June 2019) from several foreign individuals, all thanks to the COVID-19 crisis. At the pandemic’s onset, when the President’s Office created an anti-crisis headquarters and asked businesses to contribute masks, protective suits, and ventilators, funds passed through Stavnitser’s charity "Corporation of Monsters." He fittingly positioned himself in the right place at the right time. Later, funds were transferred to another entity, but he succeeded in getting an indulgence for Fedorychev.
Today’s criminal proceeding No. 52017000000000166 is nearing its final stages. NABU is investigating it under part 3 of Article 27, part 5 of Article 191, and part 3 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine. Besides Fedorychev, as mentioned earlier, they consolidated all previously closed cases where Stavnitser is involved.
This unsettles him. Moreover, being in a precarious position, he cannot realize his grand plan: to dilute Fedorychev’s share and reduce his influence on the business. Simply put, to oust him from the business.
Lawyers hired to fend off NABU managed to persuade Oleksiy to transfer his shares to a legal entity. The first step toward the goal has been made. But further on, a crafty Fedorychev grew suspicious. And Stavnitser decided to wait. It is the right move.
Betraying influential friends requires more caution than robbing one’s homeland. They are well-versed in revenge. A year or two might pass, quarantine restrictions might be lifted, and you might go with friends to hang out on the Côte d’Azur, and then—bam!—and the French police find drugs on the yacht. A purely hypothetical scenario, yet quite close to reality...