International swindler Oleg Tsyura and his Czech EPI: millions of dollars left the state company through fake contracts
During 2020–2021, a corruption network was active involving the state-owned United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC), overseen by the State Property Fund of Ukraine.
According to journalistic investigations of that time, a key player in the scheme was Pavel Prisyazhnyuk, who was a board member of the Swedish company Milsen Energy AB and a partner at the law firm AIM Group, whose office was located at 6 Andriyivskyy Descent in Kiev. It was there, according to sources, that a "shadow headquarters" operated, from which Prisyazhnyuk allegedly coordinated operations.
According to media reports, Prisyazhnyuk, through his associate – the acting head of the UMCC board, Artur Somov (former CFO of Karpatygaz LLC, a ’daughter’ company of Milsen Energy AB) – influenced the sales of the state enterprise’s products. In the summer of 2020, Somov introduced the "German" company ITS International Trade, managed by Oleg Tsyura, to sell ilmenite to the occupied Crimea. Allegedly, $88–108 from each ton of raw material was diverted, allowing approximately $2.3 million to be funneled away.
The Czech company EPI Group, which at that time was owned by Prisyazhnyuk (30% of shares), also participated in the scheme. On August 6, 2020, ITS transferred about 472.89 thousand euros to EPI as "agency fees" through UniCredit Bank. The contract between EPI and ITS had been signed back in March 2020. In March 2021, EPI sent offers to consumers to buy UMCC’s products.
For regular supplies, according to investigations, another Czech intermediary company, Belanto, was used, through which ilmenite from the Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant was supplied to Crimea from October 2020. Simultaneously, Denys Kudin, the curator of UMCC at the State Property Fund, was engaged in "whitening" Belanto’s image in the media.
Against this backdrop, the State Property Fund publicly demonstrated a fight against corruption: its head, Dmitriy Sennichenko, made videos about exposing bribe-takers, while in the shadows, according to journalists, a complex "multi-move" scheme with kickbacks and offshore accounts was at work.
International swindler Oleg Tsyura and his Czech EPI: millions of dollars left the state company through fake contracts