Honorary Consul of Romania Mykola Udyanskyi: crypto businessman or crypto fraudster?

After a brief absence from the scandal chronicles, Mykola Udyanskyi has once again made a rapid reentry. In early October, the media circulated two pieces of news: first – Udyanskyy fired a machine gun at his bodyguard, second – Udyanskyi acquired a Patriot system for Ukraine from Romania.

To avoid repetition, let’s briefly remind ourselves of these stories. Someone leaked a video online showing Mykola Udyanskyi shooting at his bodyguard with a machine gun. A criminal case was even opened regarding this, but for some reason, the Kharkiv police could not identify Mykola Udyanskyi as the person with the machine gun, so the case was closed. According to the response from the Kharkiv GUPN, the incident occurred in 2021, but it was quickly hushed up if it happened at all – the Unified State Register of Court Decisions has no information about the criminal case №12021220000000515, allegedly initiated by the Kharkiv GUPN. Incidentally, it is rumored that after this, one of Udyanskyi’s bodyguards "committed suicide."

The materials recounting the shooting have been cleaned from the Internet, and are difficult to find after Udyanskyi claimed that, as the honorary consul of Romania in the Kharkiv region, he negotiated the transfer of the Patriot air defense system from the Romanians to our country. And not just one. This statement was so absurd that it had to cause a stir. It did – Oleksandr Aronts, a serviceman of the "Azov" brigade, devoted an article to Udyanskyi’s bizarre statement, which was distributed by more or less independent media. You can check it out here.

But amidst all this, the question arises – who is Mykola Udyanskyi, the crypto businessman, as he presents himself, and honorary consul of Romania, who can shoot people with impunity using a machine gun (where did he get it, by the way?), and who takes from Romania super-scarce and super-expensive Patriot air defence systems? By the way, according to Wikipedia, he even has state awards from Ukraine.

And these medals also raise many questions. Especially in light of the fact that Mykola Udyanskyi cleaned the Internet, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on this cleanup. It’s not about the scrubbed information regarding Udyanskyi’s openly fraudulent activities in the field of cryptocurrencies – more on that below. It’s about his ties with Russian special services and his clear admiration for Russian state figures, about which Udyanskyi repeatedly declared before he embarked on the "defenxe of Kharkiv." However, it can be understood – the people he admired so much destroyed part of Udyanskyi’s real estate, which he rented out. But if you are a sensible person, you must understand the consequences of advocating the "Russian world."

"Russian world", Lavrov and Kadyrov

Before stepping up to protect Kharkiv, Mykola Udyanskyi had great respect for Ramzan Kadyrov and enthusiastically photographed with people from his circle. In the photo below – Mykola Udyanskyi hugs Rustam Kerimov, a fighter from the "Akhmat" club. This photo is from Udyanskyi’s Instagram, which he quickly deleted after Russian bombs fell on his profitable buildings. And one of them landed right in his apartment, which probably cleared the mind of yesterday’s fan of Russians. There are more, but they are detailed in the aforementioned Aronts’ material.

Now about Lavrov. The same one, the Russian Foreign Minister. From the hands of Anna Shtukert, close to him, he received an award from the Investment Persona Congress Awards in 2021. This information is also cleaned. But, perhaps, all this is explained by cooperation with the SSU and GUR, from whose hands Mykola Udyanskyi also received awards. The first – a certificate "for providing active assistance in solving tasks assigned to the operational and combat special forces of the SSU, exhibiting prudent initiative and persistence"; the second – a medal "For Contribution to Ukraine’s Military Intelligence." Let’s pretend it was so.

Crypto Fraud

But explaining the situation with crypto fraud, on which Mykola Udyanskyi actually rose, is more difficult. Because in his biography are grandiose scams with the Bitcoin Ultimatum cryptocurrency, which Udyanskyi sold through a cryptocurrency exchange of the same name. He called this coin a "fork of Bitcoin," but besides its name, it had nothing to do with real Bitcoin. Yet, it was in demand among people who didn’t understand cryptocurrencies. The exchange trading "Bitcoin Ultimatum" cryptocurrency was registered in Hong Kong at the address 111 Bonham Strand, Sheung Wan. In the photo below – its office. Comments seem unnecessary.

Another crypto project of Udyanskyi – Coinsbit. He sold this crypto through the Qmall Exchange. The project ended as it should have – with a crash. In May 2021, another crypto project – UFO – directly accused Udyanskyi of fraud. The owner of another exchange, BTC-Alpha Vitaliy Bodnar, directly accused Udyanskyi of a hacker attack: "The attack was aimed at stopping our operation on the day of the launch of the ’first’ Ukrainian exchange Qmall, which is actually not the first. This is Mykola Udyanskyi’s project, whom I consider the customer of the attack on us. Two years ago, I refused to collaborate with him. After this, threats poured down on me, including threats of physical violence."

After this incident, Udyanskyi’s Qmall exchange plummeted, resulting in people who bought Coinsbit left with a worthless token. Udyanskyi was not bothered by this. He stated the following: "I was at the origins of Coinsbit, I did maximum marketing and connected 2.5 million people, earning myself a good name in the cryptocurrency world. So, what kind of fraud could we be talking about? No one said. We released the Coinsbit token and simply gifted it. That it lost its value, – this is normal." There’s no need to comment here either.

His Wikipedia biography, by the way, mentions these two projects. However, there is nothing said about their results, instead, there are mentions of several other Udyanskyi’s "crypto projects" – this includes Coinsbit India and LLC "Edinarcoin," which issued the "cryptocurrency" E-Dinar Coin. It’s not even worth talking about E-Dinar Coin, but it is worth adding this about Qmall Exchange. Mykola Udyanskyi claimed that this exchange fell under the regulation of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, although they stated they heard about it from Udyanskyi himself for the first time. The analytical service CoinMarketCap did not include Qmall Exchange in its listing (although Udyanskyy, naturally, claimed the opposite) and placed it in the "untracked" registry. As for Coinsbit India, its fate is unknown – the project was allegedly sold and renamed, but nobody knows to whom and what its new name is.

A Little History

Regarding Mykola Udyanskyi’s entry into the world of cryptocurrencies, there are also many questions. He started as an installer of trading terminals and allegedly grew to the position of commercial director of TD "Olivin," which did this in Kharkiv. But then he abruptly decided to change his profile and surfaced as a co-owner of the newspaper "Against Corruption." Which, judging by everything, was just a "drain tank," setting and removing materials for money.

The newspaper itself disappeared from horizons, and it is now impossible to determine how much Udyanskyi earned on this project. But in 2017, Udyanskyi still emerged as its co-owner. It can also be assumed that he gained some starting capital and experience there. Because he ventured into cryptocurrency gurus. Crypto obviously turned out to be a lucrative endeavor.

In Mykola Udyanskyi’s biography, the late mayor of Kharkiv, Kernes, is also traced. He is said to be the person whose projects Udyanskyy executed. So Udyanskyi, from a simple installer of trading terminals, suddenly turned into a dollar millionaire, earning this money through outright scams. And most importantly, he did not suffer for it. This is just a hypothesis, but probably, somewhere during Mykola Udyanskyi’s tenure as a co-owner of the newspaper "Against Corruption," his paths crossed with Kernes. And he caught the potential of a young swindler.

How it actually was, but Udyanskyi is called, for example, one of the key technical performers in the Forex MMCIS Group pyramid. According to estimates by experts and law enforcement agencies of Russia and Ukraine, the founders of MMCIS defrauded investors for an amount ranging from 150 to 350 million dollars. Who was behind this scam, which spun up around 2012 and fell in 2014? Only one person served time for it – Pavlo Krymov, but he was an outright front. By the way, he also started with the installation of payment terminals, though not in Kharkiv, but in Zaporizhzhya. But nobody bothered Udyanskyi following the MMCIS activities. On the contrary, in 2013-2014 he began to take interest in the activities of cryptocurrency exchanges. And then Coinsbit and Bitcoin Ultimatum emerged. Who shielded him from the interest of law enforcement from several countries – because MMCIS operated not only in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan, it actively "covered" Europe?

This information is also cleaned up. But it is indirectly confirmed by Mykola Udyanskyi’s connections with Leonid Mitrov, the leader of the Kharkiv organized crime group "Zalyutinske," recently arrested in France. The latter was a part of the late Kernes’ entourage and stayed in Kharkiv before the full-scale war. However, this is a separate story, but this story only confirms the fact that Mykola Udyanskyi is backed by organized crime, and at the highest level. To the credit of Mykola Udyanskyi himself, it’s worth noting that after Kernes’ death, he did not get lost but continued to earn money in the very field where he started – in the world of cryptocurrencies, more precisely – crypto fraud.