Today he hands out awards for achievements in cultural development, not recalling that he made his first capital by buying and reselling stolen cultural valuables.
Today he speaks on behalf of millions of Jews, although he once profited from the problems of repatriates. Half a century ago, Borys Fuksman smuggled diamonds out of the USSR, hiding them in his "secret place." Now, in his behind is a significant part of Ukraine’s economy, which he heated up with his partners for hundreds of millions, and Ukrainian cinema, which he, along with his brother Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi, buried.
Nothing sacred
Borys Fuksman, for obvious reasons, does not like to talk about his past, preferring to remain for everyone an "investor and philanthropist" with a brief business biography. Not even photos from his youth have been preserved – reportedly confiscated from the family album by investigators from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the prosecutor’s office, OBKhSS, and other bodies that were very interested in Fuksman. Later, he himself avoided cameras to not make work easier for the SSU, FBI, and FSB — until finally, in his later years, he legalized and often attended social events. Therefore, the main information about Fuksman in the 20th century comes from stories of his acquaintances — both business allies, including criminal ones, and law enforcers chasing him. Let’s add: even more about him could be told by the archives of the Soviet KGB and East German Stasi (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit).
Even the date and place of his birth are disputed. According to a concise biography, Borys Fuksman was born on February 12, 1947, in Kyiv. However, other sources suggest it occurred slightly earlier and in a completely different place: on February 10, 1947, in Riga, from where his family later moved to Kyiv. It is certain only that the Fuksman family was very close to the arts: his father, Leonid Fuksman, loved to paint pictures and even more loved to collect the works of other artists. He could not pass on his talent to his son but taught him not only to understand art but also to know the value of its objects. He also explained to his son the value of antiques, which also proved very useful to him in the future.
In 1966, nineteen-year-old Borya Fuksman, somehow avoiding three years of compulsory service in the Soviet army (or four years in the navy), entered the Kyiv Trade and Economic Institute (now the National University of Trade and Economics). He managed to combine his studies at this rather "elite" institution with another profitable business – selling imported clothes. However, it is worth knowing that Kyiv, like other USSR metropolises, was only a major market for their sale, while goods were brought through cities with direct broad contact with abroad – Moscow and trade ports, through the western border. Thus, Borys Fuksman had to establish contacts with his parents’ old acquaintances in Riga and make his own in Odesa. Usually, 9 out of 10 resellers worked only in one direction: buying imports from sailors and diplomats and reselling them to Soviet people eager for "brands." This provided a good "fee" in Soviet rubles, but nothing more. Fuksman immediately became one of those who worked in the opposite direction. This illegal business was the most dangerous because it involved not speculation but the export of values, works of art, precious metals, and stones from the country, as well as currency operations of large volumes.
It was said that at first, young Borys Fuksman tried to sell abroad the antiques, which were packed to the brim in storerooms of his Rodnyanskyi relatives – a well-known Kyiv family of hereditary documentarians. Its patriarch Zinoviy Rodnyanskyi (1900-1982) worked as the editor-in-chief of "Ukrkinochronika" first, then of the Kyiv Studio of Documentary Films. And despite the fact that according to the biography, he was twice repressed (in 1937 and 1948), he was each time released early and returned to creative-managerial work, which consisted in praising Soviet Ukraine. Following him were his daughter Larysa, grandson Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi (b. 1961), cousin sister Esfir Shub, the family also had relatives among literary critics, composers, and (much cooler) managers of stores of the Kyiv Consumer Cooperative. How exactly the Fuksman family relates to the Rodnyanski, no one has ever clarified, but according to the official version, Borys Fuksman and Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi are cousins.
Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi and Borys Fuksman
In other words, not Bondarchuks or Mikhalkovs-Konchalovski, of course, but by Kyiv standards of that time, the real creative elite of the country. And the Rodnyanskyi family, it was said, had accumulated a lot of "props" over the years that had antique value – but there was no channel for its disposal. Young thrifty relative Borya Fuksman offered them this service. However, it is clear that exporting antique dressers or candelabra out of the country was almost impossible, which could not be said about snuffboxes, paintings, and icons. Actually, Fuksman soon specialized in the latter.
When the "transportable" antiques ran out in the Rodnyanskyi family, Borya began buying them from others and especially became interested in icons. This was a specific product: shrines for millions of believers, they had no price in the USSR, but Western collectors gave a high price for them. For the crooks who purchased them in the villages or stole them from churches, they were merely "boards," but professionals who dealt with them put the export of icons on stream because it was easier than smuggling paintings or jewelry. According to Soviet laws, if the icon did not represent a cultural value to the state or did not fall under the category of antiquities, then it could be exported quite legally.
However, such icons were also of no value to collectors, so smugglers engaged in the export of valuable icons, turning them into "newly made" and obtaining permissions for export. It was a specific business in which an entire chain of "professionals" worked: starting with buyers and thieves in the USSR, and ending with the owners of antique shops in the West. Borys Fuksman "appeared" in it only as a middleman, albeit a nimble one, but not the main one. And very quickly he found himself on the hook with law enforcement agencies: it was said that his "suppliers" from the criminal fraternity turned him in. Criminal investigation and OBKhSS just wanted to imprison Fuksman, thereby putting another tick in the reporting.
However, his case interested the KGB, which had its interests, and offered Borys Fuksman cooperation in exchange for freedom and the prospect of working in a field that the average Kyiv reseller could not even dream of. And Fuksman agreed: a person who traded icons was unlikely to have remorse for working as a "mole."
This explains why in 1970, when Borys Fuksman graduated from Kyiv Trade and Economic Institute, he settled...as an assistant at the Kyiv Studio of Documentary Films. A person with such a diploma (and connections) could easily become the head of a base or department store director, make a career in Soviet trade, even in Vneshtorg. But instead, Rodnyanskyi relatives placed him at their film studio, to carry film boxes to the operator! This could only happen to someone who had received a "wolf ticket" or got involved in colossal legal problems. Of course, after three years Fuksman grew to the role of director of a documentary film with a budget of several hundred rubles, but that was the peak of his career in cinema that Rodnyanskyi could provide him. And, it seems, this job was merely a fictitious cover: at the time, a Soviet person needed to be registered somewhere to avoid charges of "parasitism."
Worse than KAPO
In 1970, the official emigration of Jews from the USSR began, and in the first three years alone more than 70 thousand descendants of Abraham, who decided to start a new life in what they considered more prosperous countries, left the country. In the ’70s, emigration took place parallel to the repatriation program, so exit visas were mainly given only to Israel, and only 11% of Soviet Jews moved to the USA, Germany, and the UK. There was one more reason for this: Israel provided repatriates with social assistance, while in America and Western Europe, emigrants had to rely only on themselves. Therefore, specific categories of emigrants immediately moved to the West: cultural workers, specialists, natural businessmen, holders of family or business connections, as well as Soviet "underground millionaires." The latter particularly suffered from problems with exporting their "hard-earned" capitals from the USSR, without which they would be no different from poor Mexicans. Besides, this was a common problem for all departing Jews: even when releasing a family of simple provincial teachers to Israel, the Soviet customs service carefully watched to ensure they did not take an extra gold chain or ring with them.
It was at that time that the joke about a Jew going to Israel with a portrait of Lenin in a gold frame appeared. But real emigrants, naive in their inexperience, tried to hide gold in heels and "sensitive places," some even bought dollars from Soviet currency speculators and hid them in books or underwear – risking being subjected to a severe currency operations article. Understandably, emigrants immediately demanded the illegal export of their property abroad – and smugglers immediately provided this service. Naturally, for very high percentages, reaching a third and even half of the sum. It was straightforward robbery of people in a hopeless situation: either give part to swindlers or leave everything in the USSR. Old Jews remembered Nazi ghettos and grumbled that resellers conducted similar tricks with food, profiting from hungry compatriots, were more unscrupulous and worse than the KAPO.
The first system of "emigrant transfers" operated as follows: in the USSR, the departing turned their property into transportable and quickly liquid means; smugglers helped to export it and then sell it for currency. Experienced smugglers preferred to use works of art and precious stones as such means. The former could be arranged for legally exported "editions," and the latter were easily hidden on the body – unlike gold, diamonds could not be detected by any metal detector, and they were much more expensive. And this is exactly what Borys Fuksman engaged in. He began with the "icon business": many first repatriates still tried to export ancient icons abroad, passing them as their religious relics — and the entire Soviet customs service laughed at the hordes of "Orthodox Jews" dragging suitcases of holy images.
In 1972, Borys Fuksman became a member of the "highest-grade" smuggling chain: it involved USSR and GDR diplomats who exported valuables to West Germany, as it is called, in containers – and there, antique dressers could be found! Reports suggested that this chain was arranged for Fuksman, who previously worked with common "riffraff," by the KGB – as their "mole."
The Committee had two interests in this case: first, to track the entire chain and all its participants, and secondly, to obtain information about the currency-ruble scheme being created by the CIA. The essence of this little-known scheme was as follows: in the USSR, emigrants sold all their property for rubles and gave them to a middleman, who issued them a "warranty letter," by which another middleman in Israel or the West paid them a sum in dollars, shekels, pounds, etc. The essence of the operation is that both middlemen worked for the CIA: this way, the Agency received the required amount of real rubles (for operating work) without the need to import counterfeit ones. In the same way, gold and valuables could be bought from emigrating people, also used to bribe informers and agents of influence. Accordingly, the second middleman paid the emigrants money from a special CIA fund intended to finance intelligence activities. The scheme was simple and acted ideally — in essence, there was nothing to officially present to its participants. The KGB needed to trace this mechanism and find a way to break it.
Whether the KGB covered this scheme remains unknown. However, Fuksman successfully infiltrated the chain of value smugglers! Moreover, its second participant, Odesa native Leonid Bluvshtein, who changed his last name to Minin, became his business partner. In 1972 Minin emigrated to West Germany — where he immediately opened an antique shop. The only emigrant income was insufficient for him, and Minin engaged in outright purchasing of items removed from the USSR – including stolen ones, which were exported for sale through various channels (including diplomatic). Of course, there were many more people in the chain, but their names and fate remained unknown.
Leonid Minin
In 1974, Borys Fuksman himself obtained permission for repatriation. However, he did not go to Israel but to Germany – where Leonid Minin was already waiting for him. It was said that this emigration for Fuksman and his family was personally arranged by the KGB, meanwhile thumbing their nose at the Ministry of Internal Affairs — whose agents unsuccessfully tried to arrest Fuksman shortly before his departure.
In Germany, Fuksman and Minin became official business partners, but with different shares and positions. Minin held all connections and contacts in his hands, using Fuksman just for parcels. That is why, between 1975 and 1977, Fuksman suddenly frequently visited the USSR as a tourist, under the pretext of acute nostalgia. In fact, he was working as a smuggling transporter, carrying the most valuable cargo – diamonds, hiding them in his rectum.
One can only guess how he managed to go through customs without giving it away! But the nickname "diamond butt" stuck with Borys Fuksman for a long time. It is also known that during these "tourist tours," Fuksman often appeared in Kyiv at the Rodnyanskyi families, and not only to drink tea with relatives. However, the Soviet authorities did not touch the Rodnyanski: cultural luminaries were allowed minor sins, but they did not cross a certain line.
Fuksman himself continued to be covered not only by the KGB but by the "Stasi" as well, which needed its person in West Germany. When, in 1977, the Ministry of Internal Affairs finally arrested Fuksman, who had fake documents of a Finnish tourist in his hands, the KGB arranged his deportation as a foreign citizen – after which, both officially and in a personal conversation, he was forbidden to appear in the USSR again.
However, Leonid Minin insisted that Fuksman continue working as the "container" for smuggling (fortunately, over the time of work, the "container" acquired significant scale), promising to create new documents for him – and threatening otherwise to break all relations with him and throw him out on the street.
With his trouble, Fuksman turned to his curators from the KGB and "Stasi," and they suggested a solution to him. In 1978, Fuksman planted a sought-after stolen painting and several smuggled valuables in Minin’s apartment, after which he "reported" him to the police. And during Minin’s arrest, he managed to divide their joint business according to his design, taking all the valuable paintings from the antique shop – and soon opened his art gallery on Immermannstrasse in Düsseldorf.
From that moment, Borys Fuksman began to promote himself as an art connoisseur, travel with exhibitions around Europe, and earn money by selling Russian painting and antiques. At the same time, the primary channel of antique supply from the east was provided to him by a new business partner — Michael Schlicht, who had previously studied at MGIMO, worked in the Ministry of Culture of the GDR, and was responsible for cultural cooperation with foreign countries. According to one version, they were introduced together by the "Stasi," whose informal employee was Schlicht. His task was similar to Fuksman’s assignment: to participate in smuggling chains and provide information about important people and deals. Over time, several smuggling channels from East Germany to the West ran through Schlicht. But the most important for Fuksman were the ties developed during this acquaintance and connections with officers and generals of the Soviet contingent in the GDR.
Michael Schlicht
Scam after scam
By the late 1980s, Borys Fuksman had settled so well in Germany that he was able to help others. The first was his cousin Sasha Rodnyanskyi, who was hired by Schlicht to work at the "Defa" studio. As soon as the Berlin Wall fell, Rodnyansky immediately dashed to the wealthier West Germany and, with Fuksman’s help, got a job at the ZDF television channel – since it was state-owned, no commercial success was expected from Rodnyanskyi. At the same time, in 1990, he became the producer of the “Innova Film” company created for him by Fuksman — which, however, produced almost nothing.
The rest Fuksman helped already not selflessly, as they were not his relatives. With the onset of mass emigration from the USSR to Germany, first of Jews and Germans, and then everyone who desired, Borys Fuksman opened an Emigrant Adaptation Center – where, for a fee, they were helped to find housing and work. At the same time, the prestige (and salary) of the future job depended on the payment amount for this service: it was said that Fuksman made a lot of money selling positions! And in the course of this activity, Fuksman met Vladimir Dvoskin – a twice-convicted (in the USSR) emigrant with very pronounced criminal tendencies and huge criminal connections at home, eager to engage in business of international scale. Initially, they organized a supply channel of alcohol and cigarettes to the collapsing USSR, but the relatively small profit in “wooden” did not satisfy Dvoskin.
In Fuksman’s contacts with the commanders of the Soviet contingent of troops, rapidly leaving Germany and virtually abandoning military warehouses, Dvoskin saw an opportunity for new business. And he persuaded Fuksman to make peace with Leonid Minin, who had by then become an "authority" in the Russian-Ukrainian mafia in Italy and was engaged in international arms trade. Minin immediately forgave the once-deceived partner when he learned about Fuksman’s promising connections, and soon "GDR Kalashnikovs" set sail in holds to Africa – in exchange for diamonds, for which Minin had long had a special passion.
Among Minin’s buyers was the “United Revolutionary Front” of Sierra Leone, whose members cut the hands of opponents to prevent them from voting in elections. At the same time, the guns appeared in the Russian-Ukrainian mafia in Italy, then in other criminal groups in Europe. It caught the attention of law enforcement in Italy and the USA.
However, in the arms business, Fuksman only provided the contacts of the sellers. In the scheme created by Minin, he had a different role. Dvoskin introduced him to his "buddy" Grigory Luchansky—a former Latvian Komsomol boss who "served time" from 1982 to 87 for embezzlement and misuse of funds, after which he became the director of the private enterprise "Adazhi," which was engaged in exporting fertilizers. The business ended with a scandalous investigation, after which Luchansky moved to Austria, where in February 1990 he registered the company "Nordex GmbH," which soon became infamous throughout the former USSR.
Grigory Luchansky
Around "Nordex," a company of interesting people formed, including Borys Fuksman, who was offered the position of its financial director. Here, he became closer to Vadym Rabinovych, who in the fall of 1993 became the representative of "Nordex" in Ukraine, as well as with Ukrainian Deputy Prime Minister Yefim Zvyahilskyi, who signed a major contract with the firm.
According to American intelligence services, through "Nordex" many criminal schemes were carried out, including money laundering of Minin’s arms business. Additionally, in 1994, a plane "Ruslan" purchased by the firm from Ukraine delivered Scud missile kits to Iraq. As a result, the leadership of the firm (Luchansky, Fuksman, Rabinovych) were banned from entering the USA and the UK for several years.
In Europe, "Nordex" attracted the attention of prosecutors and special committees due to the company’s capital rapidly growing (1.2 million in 1990 to 900 million in 1992) and then suddenly disappearing, dissolving into numerous offshore accounts. However, in Russia and Ukraine, "Nordex" became notorious for numerous scams when credits given to the firm and paid-for goods simply vanished—and behind all of this, of course, was its financial director Borys Fuksman. Eventually, the leaders of "Nordex" began to cheat not only their business partners but each other as well: in 1993, an entire ship with Ukrainian goods supplied to the company in exchange for oil disappeared somewhere. It was later revealed that Fuksman and Rabinovych, having colluded, whisked the ship away behind Luchansky’s back, and when this became known, the collapse of "Nordex" (in 1995) only accelerated.
Well, cheating and betraying partners was not new for Fuksman. Becoming the financial director of "Nordex," Fuksman used his connections and opportunities to now line up his relatives and acquaintances for a profitable business in the former USSR. Thus, with his help in 1991, Michael Schlicht arrived in Moscow, who soon opened the company "Gemini Film International," which acquired the rights to distribute American films in the CIS and to distribute Russian and Ukrainian cinema in the West. It was reported that for the service of getting established in Moscow, Fuksman received 15% of Schlicht’s "Gemini Film." Conflicts arose later between them: in 2001, Schlicht, having firmly established himself, decided to reclaim this share and used his connections in the FSB, achieving a ban on Fuksman’s entry into Russia. In response, Fuksman sent him a "greeting from the Russian mafia in Europe" warning him not to appear in his native Germany anymore.
"Pluses" and Minuses
In 1993, it became clear that the television career of his cousin Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi in Germany had not worked out. He returned to Ukraine with an ambitious project to create his own television channel and offered the idea to Oleksandr Zinchenko: Zinchenko picked up the idea but realized it later with other people in the form of the "Inter" channel. Then Rodnyanskyi turned to his cousin Fuksman and his partner from "Nordex," Vadym Rabinovych, for support. Initially occupied with "making cabbage" on a large scale, they first treated the project lukewarmly, not seeing much interest in it. But with the collapse of "Nordex," they began looking for new business areas, including advertising.
And so, on September 3, 1995, a new television company began broadcasting in Ukraine (until 1997 on channel UT-1, then on its own) under the name "1+1," or, as it was popularly called, "Pluses." Initially, its main owner was Borys Fuksman’s company "Innova Film" (50%), with a 20% share going to Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi, who became the channel’s general director, and 30% going to Vadym Rabinovych. And almost immediately, the cousins outsmarted the experienced Rabinovych like a complete sucker: first, they extracted 2 million dollars from him for the development of the company (expanding air time), and then forced him to sell them his share of the stock for 2.5 million dollars.
In doing so, the trademark method of blackmail used was the Fuksman setup: criminal compromising material was leaked on Rabinovych, and more was threatened. Rabinovych chose not to fight for the channel, as he was at that time busy "squeezing out" Luchansky’s half of the shares of the company "Ostex AG," which he then turned into his "RC-Capital-Group."
Vadym Rabinovych
Thus, having concentrated 100% of the shares in their hands, Fuksman and Rodnyanskyi immediately sold half for 10 million to the American company "Central European Media Enterprises Ltd," owned by former US Ambassador to Austria Ronald Lauder (currently—President of the World Jewish Congress). Thus, the popular Ukrainian TV channel in reality belonged to citizens of Germany and the USA.
Meanwhile, the revived Rabinovych decided to take a little revenge on Fuksman, publicly accusing him of "ratting." According to his statement, Fuksman was cheating partners (in this case, Ronald Lauder), transferring hundreds of thousands of dollars a year received from advertising to accounts of his offshore firm "Irving Trading," and declaring the channel unprofitable. And this was aside from the fact that Rodnyanskyi, who managed the channel, was freely wasting the enterprise’s money as he pleased, throwing it around on foreign business trips.
This served as a spark for an investigation, the outcome of which temporarily banned Fuksman from entering Ukraine. However, his cousin Rodnyanskyi, skilfully pretending to be a creative person not involved in financial matters, continued to manage the "Pluses" until 2008. And it was he who in 2007 arranged for "1+1" show "Dancing with the Stars" the new passion of Borys Fuksman—the young Kyiv notary Iryna Berezhna. Two years later, Iryna gave birth to a daughter Daniella, still concealing the identity of her father—who, as everyone believes, is Borys Fuksman.
Iryna Berezhna with Borys Fuksman
In 2004, Fuksman sold 26% of the channel’s shares to Surkis, and offloaded the rest of his holdings to Lauder. In 2008, Rodnyanskyi also sold his shares to Lauder before leaving the channel. However, a year later, Lauder sold "1+1" to Ihor Kolomoiskyi.
Meanwhile, Oleksandr Rodnyanskyi moved to Moscow, where he opened the company "A.R. Films," engaged in film distribution and the creation of video games, as well as producing Russian films. It was said that the reason for this was not only the larger scale of the Russian film market and the practical coma of the Ukrainian one: in principle, Fuksman and Rodnyansky could have become the fathers of new Ukrainian cinema, investing in it, but they did not find common ground with the Ukrainian authorities of the Yushchenko era.
The final straw was their personal conflict with Kateryna Chumachenko-Yushchenko due to their refusal to promote Viktor’s lengthy monologues for free. Rodnyanskyi’s reorientation (and Fuksman’s money) to Moscow had serious consequences: films in Ukraine began to be made by visiting Russians, rather than local studios. Moreover, due to Rodnyanskyi’s efforts, mid-90s Ukraine’s most promising film studio named after Dovzhenko was ruined and burdened with unimaginable obligations (he bought the rights to all its future films). That is why Ukrainian cinema remains at the amateur stage, and Rodnyanskyi can be seen in the USA today, where he brings new Russian films for presentation.
Meanwhile, his joint project with his cousin of the Kyiv hotel "Hilton," which they began reconstructing with an eye on Euro 2012, ended up with nothing to show. Since then, luck in business seems to have turned away from Borys Fuksman. For example, in 2008, the magazine "Focus" estimated Fuksman’s fortune at 224 million dollars, in 2009 at 261 million, but by 2011 only at 156 million, and in 2013 at merely 116 million.
This was more than surprising: during a global crisis, Fuksman’s capital increased, only to then decrease by more than half. However, it was said that Fuksman, taught by almost half a century of experience, only reveals part of his business for public viewing. Moreover, he directed some of his money to other projects, including seriously engaging again in trading art objects. Additionally, Fuksman’s money is scattered around the world: from the USA, where he sponsors "Our Heritage" Russian culture festivals and co-owns several companies, to Russia, where he invests his millions not just in Rodnyanskyi’s films.
Borys Fuksman presenting awards at the "Our Heritage" Russian Culture Festival
But what still ties Borys Fuksman to Ukraine, where he now visits only occasionally between presentations in New York and exhibitions in Berlin? Probably only the fact that he is the co-president of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine and in this capacity sometimes appears in Ukrainian politics. After all, there seems to be nothing left to "squeeze out" in this oligarch-ravaged country...
Serhiy Varys, for SKELET-info