Komarnytskyi forced the Dnipro

Komarnytskyi forced the Dnipro

10% of the "Dnipro" hotel, whose privatization became exemplary for the authorities in the summer, went to the structures of the "new overseer" of Kyiv, Denys Komarnytskyi

"The ’Dnipro’ hotel was the best option, it had perfectly clean documents, it could be quickly put up. It was a kind of trial, to see how the market would react," stated Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in a recent interview with "Ukrainska Pravda", citing this successful privatization case as an example that investors are ready to invest money even in a crisis.

The privatization of the "Dnipro" hotel indeed became the main achievement of the State Property Fund in 2020, at least in financial terms. The auction, held under the spotlights of TV cameras, was conducted on July 15. It involved 29 bidders. The starting price was 80 million UAH. During the auction, it skyrocketed to 1 billion 111 million 111 thousand 222.22 UAH. The winner was participant №23, the little-known LLC "Smartland".

According to the Unified State Register of Legal Entities, LLC "Smartland" was registered in 2013, with the founders being LLC "Ice Town" (82.29%) and Maksym Tereshchuk (17.71%), who is also listed as its director. The owner of LLC "Ice Town" is listed as Oleksiy Ihunin.

It was evident from the beginning that more influential people stood behind them. For example, the Kyivpost publication reported, citing a government source, that among the buyers of the "Dnipro" was the betting company Parimatch. There were also rumors that the buyers were from Russia, specifically a group of Russian businessmen led by Aleksandr Babakov, whose interests in Ukraine are lobbied by Borys Baum, an advisor to the President’s Office on gambling issues.

A week after the sale, to "stop the speculations" about who bought the "Dnipro", entrepreneur Oleksandr Kokhanovskyi named himself the "real" buyer, stating he would create an "esports center" there. He refused to publicly name who else besides him participated financially in the purchase of the hotel, which, as it later became known, was planned to be made with borrowed money.

On September 16, 2020, an extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of "Bank Sich" agreed to allocate a credit line to "Smartland" for 1.05 billion UAH at 9% per annum for 10 years. On the same day, the shareholders of "Bank Sich" agreed to attract refinancing of 1.50 billion UAH from the National Bank. Essentially, the state sold the hotel for money that it essentially provided to the buyer. In the fall, the High Anti-Corruption Court obliged the NABU to open a criminal case regarding this matter.

And although reliable information about all the beneficiaries of the privatization of the "Dnipro" is still lacking, it can now be confidently stated about at least one of them. As it became known to “OLIGARCH”, at the beginning of this December, AMC "Delta Plus" joined the founders of LLC "Ice Town", 100% of whose capital is registered to Kyivan Oleksandr Shestakov through LLC "Nikos-line".

This AMC is associated with a group of companies involved in the National Police’s investigation №12019100060003089  from 2019, which claims that it is involved in the sale of real estate objects (property rights) to individuals of several real estate objects of LLC "Varda Spetsbud Montage".

"Varda" became known nationwide this summer after MP Geo Leros stated that he handed over copies of documents from the computer of former Kyiv City Council deputy Denys Komarnytskyi to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau and Bihus.info. These are copies of documents that were on the computer in Komarnytskyi’s office and were seized by the SSU during a search in October 2019 - "account statements, schemes, arrangements, conceptual corruption agreements, shadow flows, and schemes." And billions of hryvnias received at fictitious tenders in Kyiv.

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Then Bihus.Info published a list of three dozen companies, most of which were marked as "ours," including "Varda Spetsbud Montage" (its individual contracts at Kyiv tenders amounted to nearly two billion hryvnias).

Journalists call Komarnytskyi, who was the right hand of Leonid Chernovetskyi, and a friend of his son Stepan, the new "overseer," who, after the presidential election in 2019, displaced Vadym Stolar from this position.

According to documents, one of the companies of the "Komarnytskyi group" belongs to Yuliya Tyshchenko – a restaurateur and deputy Mykola Tyshchenko. Moreover, it is alleged that Tyshchenko and Komarnytskyi discussed the attack on Leros over the phone. Tyshchenko himself is considered close to Zelenskyy.

Therefore, the transfer of a 10% stake in the "Dnipro" hotel, which is already being planned to be converted into a casino (an application has been submitted for the registration of the TM "Dnipro Casino"), to those who govern the city and are well-versed in show business, looks logical and justified.

Vladyslav Borovikov
«OLIGARCH»