FBI digs under "Gazprom"

What is behind the arrest of the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash

The arrest in the Vienna of the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash puzzled many. Why did Firtash fall under the distribution, in the recent past, one of Gazprom's main business partners? Why, at the request of the American FBI? Why in March, at the peak of the Ukrainian crisis? And does his release mean € 125 million, that there will be no continuation? The New Times conducted an investigation

Dmitry Firtash earned the first money on vegetable trading in the late 80s. And after 15 years he became the gas king of Ukraine

The Vienna quarter of Margareten, popular among advanced youth, had not known such a crowd for a long time. At 8 o’clock in the evening of March 12, he was unexpectedly flooded by dozens of police officers, employees of the Austrian Bureau for Combating Organized Crime, and even fighters of the counter -terrorist unit. They all set them the task: to arrest the Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, the holder of the fourth largest state in Ukraine - $ 3.3 billion. The police asked him to stop when he was surrounded by his bodyguards on Schindgasse Street - here is the office of his company Centragas Holding GmbH here, one of the shareholders of the famous gas trader Rosukrenergo AG. Firtash’s guards did not interfere with his arrest - they simply moved aside. After that, the oligarch obediently got into the police car, which delivered him to Josefstadt prison.

What do they care

Firtash was detained at the request of the Americans. According to the official version of the FBI, the American state of the American state, Illinois, issued a warrant to his arrest in the summer of 2013. The reason is that Firtash is involved in the “Breecution case and criminal conspiracy”, testimonies for him were received from a certain person serving time in the United States.

After the arrest of the boss in Vienna, the holding of the boss’s release, which belonged to Firtash, issued a press release with the clarification: the FBI claims are probably related to the 2006 investment project outside Europe and America. Dot. However, according to unofficial information, the reason for the claims was allegedly taking place of $ 18 million to the Minister of Indian Country Indian State Andhra-Pradesh for access to the development of a titanium field. And the indications for both Firtash and the Indian Minister seemed to give a friend of the latter, arrested in the United States.

It’s not quite, however, it is clear what the United States can have to the bribe, which the Ukrainian oligarch gave to the Indian Minister. As one of the legal advisers accredited by the New York government explained to The New Times, Firtash, most likely, falls under the American law on corruption abroad. True, for this it should directly relate to American citizens or companies.

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The reason for the claims was the allegedly taking place of $ 18 million to the Minister of Indian State Indian State Andhra-Pradesh for access to the development of a titanium deposit

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The path to wealth

The arrest in Vienna is not the first in the life of Dmitry Firtash. In the summer of 1995, he was detained in Chernivtsi on suspicion of smuggling of a large batch of alcohol. There was little chance of liberation: the police, the prosecutor’s office and the security service of Ukraine (SBU) were simultaneously engaged in the case, however, his business partner and future second wife Marina Kalinovskaya managed to agree with everyone, the case was closed for unprovenness. At the same time, the head of the Chernivtsi regional administration to combat organized crime, Ivan Mirny, subsequently became the head of the personal protection of Firtash (today the peaceful - deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine from the Party of Regions).

The passion for entrepreneurship in Firtshha (stress on the second syllable), presumably, was hereditary: in Soviet times, the family raised tomatoes and carried them to sell to the Baltic states and Belarus. After school, Dmitry learned to be a locomotive driver, served in the army, married almost immediately after the demobilization, but did not work in his specialty, but again began to grow tomatoes. Then he divorced Pestsov, in 1989 he moved to Chernivtsi, where he got a job as a driver in the fire department of the Chernivtsi shoe factory, and already in 1991 he began to work with Zinovius and Marina Kalinovsky, who traded food. The Kalinovsky and the coolest restaurant in Chernivtsi was owned - “European”, where in the best years Valery Syutkin and Natasha Koroleva performed in the best years. It was here that in 1996, one of the local criminal authorities Oleg Matiego, having drunk at the birthday of Zinovy ​​Kalinovsky, shot Dmitry Firtash in the Paha region.

Kmil company (Kalinovskaya Marina and Love), in which the young Firtash quickly took up the role of the second person after the owner, by the end of the 90s it did not matter. However, in Kyiv, where, after a short residence in Germany, Firtash and Kalinovsky moved, businessmen overgrown with new ties: in 2000, Kmil received a license for the supply of natural gas for unregulated tariffs. The start of the future gas empire was given.

Soon, Kmil managed to become one of the intermediary companies in the system of food marks from Ukraine in Turkmenistan-in exchange for Turkmen gas. Moreover, in payment for their services, intermediaries also received not money, but gas, which was then sold to Ukrainian enterprises. At the same time, Kmil began to cooperate with another major gas trader - ITER company Russian billionaire Igor Makarov. In order to introduce Firtash, and at the same time bring the company from the jurisdiction of Ukraine, the partners created the Cyprus company HighRock Holding LTD, in which Firtash after a short time became a holder of 84% of the shares.

Dmitry Firtash and mother Maria Grigoryevna in his native village. Synkiv, Ternopil region, Ukraine. July 15, 2011

Dangerous ties

Meanwhile, in neighboring Russia, the team of the new President Vladimir Putin began to take the main assets of the country to his hands. In 2001, Vladimir Gusinsky went on exile, Mikhail Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003, it was this time that the Rossiya battery, which the American Ministry of Finance called the “personal bank of Vladimir Putin”, was the same as the US Bank, according to Russia, Russian gas money was withdrawn to offshores. In 2002, Moscow decides to remove old players from gas supplies to Ukraine, in particular, Iter. Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukraine sign an agreement on the creation of a joint Russian-Ukrainian enterprise for the transportation of Turkmen gas-it became Euratransgas, which was controlled by Dmitry Firtash. It is interesting that the supply scheme has not changed at the same time, only the participants in the game changed: Euratransgas still used the services of intermediaries for food supply to Turkmenistan, among which, by the way, was already familiar to us by Firtash Highrock Holding Ltd.

According to experts surveyed by The New Times, it was Euratransgas that became the main reason for the initial attention of the FBI to the person of Dmitry Firtash. The name Semyon Mogilevich, included in the ten most wanted by the American justice of criminals*is associated with this company.

There is no direct evidence of the criminal adhesion of Firtash - Mogilevich (did the FBI suddenly appear?). However, the Israeli lawyer Zeev Gordon, who was simultaneously lawyer Mogilevich, was engaged in the registration of Euratransgas. And among the shareholders of Highrock Holding LTD was the Cyprus company Agatheas Trading, whose director from 2001 to 2003 was the former wife of Mogilevich Galina Telesh. According to one of the sources of The New Times in Washington, since the beginning of the zero years, Dmitry Firtash was closed in the USA, and the Americans began to closely monitor his activities.

Million a day

Nevertheless, practically none of the sources surveyed by The New Times believes that the arrest of Firtash is really associated with the "Indian bribe" or even Persona Mogilevich. As the director of the East European Gas Analysis consulting company, Mikhail Korchekin, explained the New Times, most likely the FBI has finally accumulated evidence of the illegal activity of the Ukrainian company Rosukrenergo, created in 2004 as an Euratransgas arranged. It was through Rosukrenergo that the Russian energy gazprom energy gygiant withdrawn part of the export profit. And Firtash in this chain is a key person. When the creation of Rosukrenergo was announced, Korcekin explained to the magazine, Gazprom promised its shareholders that the new intermediary company would invest part of the profit in the development of Ukrainian gas transmission infrastructure. However, all profit was paid to the owners of Rosukrenergo. Initially, the Ukrainian owners of the company were not disclosed: it was only known that 50% of the shares belonged to Gazprombank (from which Gazprom bought them for € 2.4 billion in 2006), and 50% - the “daughter” of Raiffeisen Investment, the Austrian company Centragas Holding.

Thus, Ukraine de jure did not participate in the supply schemes, the name of Firtash was not mentioned anywhere. However, in 2006, the US Department of Justice conducted an investigation, which turned out: the beneficiaries of Centragas Holding - Dmitry Firtash (owned 90% of the company's shares) and his partner Ivan Fursin (10%). For example, in 2008, the net profit of Rosukreenergo amounted to $ 764.56 million, that is, Firtash and Fursin received about $ 1 million per day.

In 2009, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko decided that Gazprom and Naftogaz Ukraine may well work with each other directly, without intermediaries represented by Rosukrenergo. But Firtash did not leave the gas business at all, continuing to supply Turkmen gas to Ukraine and Europe. In addition, at the end of 2013, in the wake of endless negotiations on the price of Russian gas for Ukraine, Gazprom unexpectedly announced a 30 percent discount of 5 billion cubes of gas, which were supplied to Kyiv for pumping under underground vaults. The buyer of gas at a discount was another company Firtash - Ostchem Group.

“All this looks extremely suspicious: Gazprom, it turns out, uses any opportunity to give intermediaries, instead of earn money directly, which is more responsible for the interests of its shareholders,” says Mikhail Korchekin. - 53% of the owners of the Gazprom depository receipts live in the United States, they will be interested to know how the monopoly “defended” their interests all these years. If Firtash, having fallen on the hook of the FBI, will talk, Gazprom, it is possible that a wave of claims will swing. ”

From left to right: the chairman of the Firtash Foundation Foundation Lada Firtash, Chairman of the Group DF Council Dmitry Firtash, First President of Ukraine Leonid Kravchuk, Executive Director of the London Stock Exchange Raffael Georusalmi and Ukrainian businessman Grigory Surkis. The grand opening of trading on the London Exchange. 17 October 2013

To Africa, hunting

However, the commercial acrobatics of the gas monopoly does not answer the question why Dmitry Firtash was arrested on March 12, 2014, on the eve of the referendum in the Crimea.

Although the path to America was closed for a long time, he freely traveled around the world. And in October last year, the Firtash Foundation charity foundation, which is led by the third wife of businessman Lada, held a pompous event in London with the participation of representatives of the British establishment. The couple of Firtash even opened the day of trading on the London Exchange on October 17. It was unlikely that all this was possible if the threat of arrest was already hanging over the oligarch.

The source of The New Times in the American Congress shares the opinion of Mikhail Korchekin that the March arrest of Firtash could be associated with the activities of Gazprom. At the same time, the American interlocutor is convinced of the political background of the misfortunes of the oligarch.

The editor -in -chief of the Ukrainian newspaper Mirror Week Julia Mostovaya agrees with this. “Firtash is a borderline, this is an oligarch who has Russian capital in almost all businesses,” she explained to the magazine. - So this is a signal to both Ukrainian oligarchs, primarily Rinata Akhmetov and Gazprom.

A source in the Congress recalls that the Rosukrenergo of Gazprombank was then controlled by Yuri Kovalchuk, a defendant in the US sanctions list. “Perhaps they want to achieve evidence from Firtash that Rosukrenergo was actually just a cover for the withdrawal of Russian gas money abroad, like the Russia's battery,” the interlocutor of The New Times thinks. “This means that if Firtash speaks, the FBI may have direct evidence of the corruption of the Russian elite.”

53% of the owners of the Gazprom depository receipts live in the United States, they will be interested to know how the monopoly “defended” their interests all these years

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By the way, from 2002 to 2008, which RosuKrenergo flourished, Gazprom’s board of directors was headed by Dmitry Medvedev. The source of The New Times in Kyiv told the magazine that Dmitry Firtash had the warmest relationship with the future president of Russia, who was often invited to visit Ukraine, and once even brought to Africa to hunt. Documentary confirmation of this fact, however, could not be found.

In addition to the details of the withdrawal from the Russian Federation, Dmitry Firtash can tell about possible violations of European antimonopoly legislation in the field of gas supply - after all, his company, including RosUKrenergo and the Emfesz Hungarian gas trader, could be used to detour gas quotas. If we take into account that since 2012 the European Commission has been investigating Gazprom, which may cost it a fine of € 10 billion, additional information is not superfluous at all. “Of course, the FBI is not related to European antimonopoly legislation, but this topic may become another tool in the fight against the Kremlin,” the interlocutor of the magazine in the US Congress suggested.

That the oligarch is more expensive

Not all sources of The New Times in Washington supported the version of the political background of the arrest of Firtash. A source close to the State Department called the Febeers "idiots who got into the time and not in their own business." According to him, most likely, we are talking about some old investigation against Firtash, and in the light of Ukrainian events, the prosecutor responsible for him "decided to go down in history with a high-profile process against the Ukrainian oligarch."

“Prosecutors in the United States often go into politics,” the interlocutor of The New Times, recalling the ex-mayor of Rudolf Juliani*, who in the 1980s acted as an prosecutor against one of the leaders of the New York Mafia Joseph Bonnano. According to the official, the State Department was not aware of the actions of the FBI, and now the process cannot be stopped: "Firtash will hang on us dead load."

He seems to be “hanging” for a long time: the extradition process can drag on for two years. All this time, Firtash, released on bail, will be forced to stay in Austria, from where, however, he will be able to manage his business empire. And the FBI employees with the consent of the Austrian authorities and Firtash himself are to interrogate him. Who knows, maybe freedom for the oligarch will be more expensive than gas secrets.

Photo: press service of Dmitry Firtash, Alexander Tekhinsky/Kommersant