The entourage of Yermak entered the business of the construction mafia and Putin’s godfather

Journalists doubt that Artem Kolyubayev represented himself in suspicious commercial structures.

Business partner of the Head of the President’s Office, Andriy Yermak, Artem Kolyubayev, began actively becoming a co-founder in companies associated with MP Vadym Stolar, elected from "OPFL", and ex-deputy Viktor Medvedchuk, suspected of state treason, since 2019, according to an investigation.

Kolyubayev is a Ukrainian film producer who is linked to Yermak through joint films.

Journalists note that after Kolyubayev’s appointment to the OP, he began actively entering the Stolar-Medvedchuk business.

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In the spring of 2021, he headed the Council for State Support of Cinematography, which deals with the allocation of funds for Ukrainian cinema.

Simultaneously, in December 2019, Kolyubaev became a co-owner of KUA "Esset Financial Group", which provided million-dollar financial assistance to firms involved in building residential complexes from the ENSO development company in Kyiv.

The company was previously attributed to MP Vadym Stolar, elected from the "Opposition Platform - For Life".

Journalists found Stolar’s trace in almost all structures that ensured ENSO’s activities.

In March 2020, Kolyubayev joined the "Kvantor Project" fund, which conducted financial transactions with another fund - "Stream Invest". The beneficiary of the latter was then Serhiy Turchynov, a business partner of Stolar.

In October 2020, Kolyubayev became the owner of the "Appeliot" fund, which, according to the media, also participated in ENSO’s affairs by selling apartments in one of the residential complexes.

A copy of the draft purchase agreement for one of the apartments, which came into the possession of journalists, states that Oleksandr Devyatko acted on behalf of the fund, who was also on the supervisory board of the "Stream Investment" fund.

The latter belongs to Vadym Stolar’s wife Inna Maystruk, actively investing funds in the construction of all three residential complexes by ENSO.

At the time when Kolyubayev was actively entering companies related to ENSO developments, the entourage of Viktor Medvedchuk, suspected of state treason, also joined the process.

At the beginning of 2020, another fund investing in construction - "Evo Invest" - transferred from Stolar’s entourage to Estonian businessman Oleksiy Chulets. According to "Schemes", Chulets’s companies delivered bitumen from the Russian "Novoshakhtinsk plant," then controlled by Medvedchuk, to Ukraine in 2018-2020. Chulets’s subsidiaries in Russia were closely intertwined with the companies of Belarusian oligarch Mykola Horobets, close to Medvedchuk.

Since autumn 2020, the "Astera" fund, acting as co-owner, joined firms ordering all three residential complexes from ENSO, which was owned by the Cypriot offshore Limedell Limited (also associated with Medvedchuk).

In its audit report, it is noted that in May 2020, her subsidiary - NewCoal Trading AG - began operations in Moscow, and it was through NewCoal Trading AG that American fuel giant ExxonMobil bought Russian oil for the American market from the same "Novoshakhtinsk plant" that year.

Accordingly, Yermak’s partner entered a business controlled by the entourages of Stolar and Medvedchuk.

According to Bihus.Info, Kolyubayev’s official earnings as of mid-2019 would not have allowed him to independently invest significant funds in such construction companies. The media doubts that Kolyubayev represented himself in the above-mentioned structures.

Kolyubayev’s name was first mentioned in connection with companies close to ENSO in the spring of 2018, when he became a member of the supervisory board of the "Skilling" fund. At that time, this board was headed by Oleksandr Kovtun. A person with the same name later became the director of the aforementioned fund of Stolar’s wife, "Stream Investment". Furthermore, social network analysis suggests that Kolyubayev was already acquainted with the family of ENSO company CEO Ramil Mekhtiyev.

However, this acquaintance and formal representation in one of the funds cannot explain the fact that the film producer actively began entering other legal entities as an owner or co-owner precisely when Stolar became an MP and Yermak headed the OP.

Stolar left Ukraine on the eve of a large-scale invasion and, according to "Ukrainian Pravda", was on the Cote d’Azur in France. In January 2023, Stolar unexpectedly returned to Kyiv and, according to "UP", received guarantees of retaining his MP status until the end of the term. In June, the media reported that Stolar allegedly decided to exit his construction business.

However, there is no movement at the mentioned ENSO sites, and the company recently announced a new pause in construction.

Against this background, Kolyubayev left some related companies but instead created new ones independently.

At the end of November, Kolyubayev became the founder of the "Distrikt" fund, which has not yet become widely known. The director of "Distrikt" is indicated as a person who had previously been involved in Stolar’s entourage’s construction processes, hinting that the fund’s activities will be related to construction.

For four days, journalists attempted to obtain comments, but Kolyubayev, after reading the messages, ignored them. ENSO’s phones were completely turned off, and the official co-owner of the company, Andriy Rudenko, was promised to be asked questions, but by the time the story went live, no one had contacted the journalists.