Annexation does not hinder earnings: former MP Volodymyr Prodyvus continues to do business in Crimea

Amber, criminal investigations, boxing, parliamentary office, participation in tenders and links to Russia. All these seemingly incongruous things relate to one person - Volodymyr Prodyvus, a former MP from the ’Party of Regions’. Some media outlets claim that he has a Russian passport, but there was no evidence of this. However, facts have been found that indisputably indicate that Prodivus is conducting business in occupied Crimea, having registered it under Russian law.

Volodymyr Prodyvus is known for being the head of Mostobud, the country’s main enterprise specialising in the design and repair of bridges. He was also a member of parliament from the ’Party of Regions’ in 2012-2014, and was the subject of several journalistic investigations linking him to the amber mafia. Officially, he is involved in department stores and markets in Vinnytsia, and in the company that produces "Regina" mineral water.

The name Prodyvus also appears on the infamous tapes of Major Melnychenko, which were recorded in the office of the then President of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma. The late General Kravchenko reports to Kuchma that Prodyvus is a thief in law and holds the entire economy of the Vinnytsia region: "So, the economy of the region has been seized by a certain Prodivus, a thief in law. So, the shops in the centre of Vinnytsia are his. The markets are his. The Regina water is his. .... The task is to destroy the economy of this Prodivus. Well, the bandit is in charge of the region. It grew year after year on the contradictions between Matvienko (former governor of the region - Ed.) and the governor. And it has grown!"

The personality of Volodymyr Prodyvus is quite scandalous. It was he who, while serving as an MP, appeared on a video of the Rivne amber miners’ showdown. It clearly shows him leading the process, not even hiding his face.

Prodyvus has another story to tell about amber. At the wedding of Viktor Medvedchuk, the stepson of the traitor and Putin’s godfather, Prodyvus presented the newlyweds with portraits of them made of this yellow precious stone.

In May 2022, when Russia had been fully invading Ukraine for three months, Prodyvus, who was then the head of the Ukrainian Boxing Federation, received an award from the Russian president of the International Boxing Association, Umar Kremlin.

However, the purpose of this article is to show the facts that Prodyvus is not only indirectly friendly to the ’Russian world’, but he actually contributes to the Russian budget with taxes, which are used by the soldiers of the aggressor country to kill Ukrainian citizens.

Officially, according to the registers, Volodymyr Prodyvus and his family members own more than two dozen companies. The business is very diverse - from commodity trading, to renting, construction and even pharmaceuticals. In this context, it was very interesting to investigate the history of Prodyvus’ companies registered in the now-occupied Crimea.

There are five Crimean companies in which Volodymyr Prodyvus was or is the founder. The first of them is Sprint LLC, which has been registered in occupied Simferopol since 2003 and, according to the registers, continues to operate to this day. The company’s activity is the construction of residential and non-residential premises.

As of May 2022, the founders of the Crimean Sprint LLC are Volodymyr Prodyvus, Svitlana Ostrovska, who has a Crimean residence permit, and Volodymyr Shcherbakov, who also lives in Simferopol.

In turn, Svitlana Ostrovska is the founder of Pryboy-2002 LLC, which is also registered in Simferopol and is engaged in leasing real estate. Registered in the city of Yevpatoria.

At the same time, according to Russian registers, the same Svitlana Ostrovska is the head of a clone company, Priboy-2002 LLC, which was re-registered under the legislation of the occupying country in December 2014. Moreover, according to the data, this company has positive dynamics and from 2015 to 2022 showed only growth. The compilers of the Russian register note that at least since 2017, the source of accounting reports has been Rosstat and the Federal Tax Service of the Russian Federation. Therefore, there is no doubt that Volodymyr Prodyvus’ business partner in Ukrainian companies is also operating in the occupied Crimea.

There is more. From 2015 to December 2020, a company identical to the one owned by Prodyvus in Ukraine also operated in Simferopol. We are talking about Sprint LLC, a construction company. In 2016 and 2017, the Russian justice system sued this company for debts.

At the same time, Prodivus’s third partner in the Ukrainian company Sprint, Volodymyr Shcherbakov, is associated with a number of other companies in occupied Crimea, which may be within the sphere of influence of Volodymyr Prodivus. At least one of them definitely belongs to those officially owned by the former MP and his wife.

Thus, since March 2015, Shcherbakov has been the head of the Crimean Park Hotel LLC. This company is registered in Simferopol and owns a hotel. According to Russian registers, the company has two founders - Prodyvus Volodymyr and Prodyvus Svitlana. The hotel with these founders operated in Crimea until October 2021. That is, at least another 7 years after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula.

Interestingly, both Prodyvus and his wife have individual tax numbers registered under Russian law. Otherwise, opposite their names, it would be indicated that they are not Russian citizens, but foreigners. So, this is a beacon that indicates that the Prodyvus may have Russian passports.

According to the Ukrainian registry, Park Hotel LLC was registered in 2005. The hotel is located in the resort town of Alushta. The Prodyvus family owned it at least from 2007 to 2021. In 2022, it was re-registered to another resident of Vinnytsia, where, as already mentioned, the former MP is known as a "criminal authority". According to Ukrainian databases, the LLC managing the hotel continues to operate as of 1 March 2024.

Interestingly, the above-mentioned business partner of Prodyvus, Volodymyr Shcherbakov, is also the head of the LLC "Bridge Construction Unit No. 122" in Crimea. Russian registries report that its founder is LLC "Management of Civil Engineering Mechanisation" from Ukraine. Prodyvus has long been considered the owner of Mostobud, which has won numerous contracts for the reconstruction and repair of bridges in Ukraine.

In Ukraine, Volodymyr Prodyvus also owns companies that produce mineral water under the Regina trademark. The co-founder of one of the companies, Rehina-PRO LLC, is a Crimean resident, Inna Dzhurai.

At the same time, Dzhurai is a private entrepreneur in Crimea, registered there under Russian law since 2015. Her business is real estate rental. This means that she simultaneously runs a Ukrainian company and pays taxes to the Russian budget.

Dzhurai is also a co-founder of the Ukrainian company Kafa-Pharm PRO LLC, where her partner is Volodymyr Prodyvus. The company was originally registered in Feodosia, but has been in a state of suspension since 2013.

At the same time, in 2014, a company with a similar name, Kafa-Pharm, was registered in Feodosia. As of today, it is still operating and employs 22 people. Its field of activity is the sale of medicines in pharmacies and, judging by the map, it is a chain of pharmacies that continues to trade in the occupied Crimea.

According to boxing official and head of the Ukrainian Boxing Federation, Kyrylo Shevchenko, Volodymyr Prodyvus left Ukraine at the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but returned for a while.

After hugging the head of the Russian boxing organisation, Prodyvus began to talk about patriotism and the fact that he had stopped doing business in Russia.

But documents will not lie. And, as we can see, neither Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian Crimea nor the full-fledged war of the invaders forced Volodymyr Prodyvus to renounce companies that pay taxes to the occupiers. However, if the information that he carries a passport with a double-headed eagle in his pocket is true, then such business practices are not surprising at all.

Author: Olena Dobrodiy