Russian friends of Andriy Sadovyi’s associate. How Russians hide their assets in Lviv

LVIV.MEDIA journalists received documents that suggest that Lviv Insulator Company LLC remains under the control of Russian businessmen even after the full-scale invasion. And its formal beneficial owner with Estonian citizenship has signs of a fictitious person.

This investigation was made possible thanks to cooperation with our colleagues from Delfi Estonia and the Lithuanian Center for Investigative Journalism Siena.

The story of the investigation began on September 12 last year, when the Lviv Regional Prosecutor’s Office published a news item on its website “Corporate rights and property of the enterprise worth almost half a billion hryvnias owned by Russian citizens were seized.” According to the prosecutor’s office, there is a certain enterprise whose founder is an Estonian company, and the beneficial, i.e. ultimate, owners are a group of Russian citizens. These Russians control the finances from the sale of glass products and evade tax. In addition, these Russians are “involved in the material support of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation,” according to journalists.

From the ruling of the of the Halych District Court, we learn that the prosecutor’s office seized the property and corporate rights of Lviv Isolation Company LLC. Ltd.“Lviv Insulation Company was established in 2002 on the basis of the Lviv Insulator Plant, which was founded in 1965 and is still in operation. It is one of Europe’s largest manufacturers of glass insulators. They are used on high-voltage power lines in 35 countries. In other words, this company is an important manufacturer for Lviv and Europe and one of the few industrial enterprises that survived the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The city authorities do not hide their attitude to this enterprise. In September 2019. Andriy Sadovyi on the occasion of the Entrepreneur’s Day thanks Oksana Dynik, Director of Lviv Insulator Company, LLC, for quality production and new achievements. By the way, Ms. Dynik has been a member of the Lviv City Council for two years in a row. He is a member of the Samopomich faction, a party founded by Andriy Sadovyi.

The following month, Andriy Sadovyi will attend at the opening ceremony of the company’s new workshop and delivered a welcoming speech.

However, Lviv Insulation Company LLC receives not only gratitude and warm words from the mayor. Since 2015, the company has beenhas been a permanent member of the of the program to promote the development of Lviv commodity producers, which allows LIC LLC to pay 40% less for the lease of city land. For some reason, the company disappeared from the list of participants in this program in 2023. In a commentary to LVIV.MEDIA, Andriy Sadovyi said that he did not know why LIK LLC stopped participating in this program, but stressed that the program would continue to exist:
“We had a lot of companies applying for and receiving support from the city, and we will continue to provide such support.”

So, publicly, everything looks very decent. A successful company with European owners. The mayor of the city loves her. And the company is headed by Sadovyi’s associate. Why did law enforcement cling to him and what Russians did they find there?

Oksana Dynik, the general director of Lviv Isolator Company LLC, insists that the company is owned by Estonian citizens. Here is her dialog with a journalist from LVIV.MEDIA:

– According to the legal documents we have, the ownership structure is an Estonian company, and there are non-residents of our country.

– Are there currently any Russian citizens among the owners of the Estonian company that owns Lviv Isolation Company LLC? If not, what countries are they citizens of?

– There are no Russian citizens, there are Estonian citizens.

– Were they there, and if so, when did they leave the company?

– There have always been Estonians, an Estonian company has been the owner of Lviv Insulator Company for a long time.

Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi is also convinced that Russian business is not involved in LIK LLC: “I talked to Ms. Dynik, who is the director and who is a deputy in the Lviv City Council. Today, the owners of the company that owns the insulation plant are Estonian citizens, and this is a confirmed fact.”

Lviv Insulator Company LLC is indeed fully owned by the Estonian company GIG Holdings. So the people who control GIG Holdings also control the Lviv company. According to the Youcontrol analytical system, in October 2019, the final beneficiary of the Estonians was a Russian, Sergey Petrov.

Screenshot from the dossier of Lviv Insulator Company LLC in the Youcontrol system

However, the Estonian register shows that he was not the only one who controlled the company. Since 2018, GIG Holdings has been controlled by a number of people with Russian citizenship: Sergei Petrov, Vladislav Butin, Vadim Gubin, Pavel Podkorytov, Denis Tasakov, and Andrei Ryzhikov. The same people and their relatives are co-owners of the company.

Controllers of GIG Holdings from the e-Business Register

Through GIG Holdings, they control not only the Ukrainian company, but also the Russian Yuzhnouralsky Rebar and Insulation Plant. This follows from the financial statements of the Estonian company for 2020. With a single owner in GIG Holdings, Lviv Insulator Company and Yuzhnouralsky Rebar and Insulator Plant are actually among the three largest and most powerful glass insulator manufacturers in the world. According to our data, Lviv Insulator Company actively traded with a related Russian company until 2023.

Excerpt from the financial statements of GIG Holdings

The structure of owners and controllers of GIG Holdings changes dramatically in 2022. This event coincides with news from the Ukrainian parliament. On March 15, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine registers
a draft law
that would change the rules for the forced seizure of property of the Russian Federation and its residents. He proposed the confiscation of Ukrainian assets not only from the state structures of the aggressor country, but from all Russian citizens in general. Within a week after that, Russian citizens disappeared from the register of owners and controllers of GIG Holdings, and thus Lviv Insulator Company LLC. They are being replaced by Estonians Olga Dubovitskaya and Terje Aru, a British citizen Marina Buraga, and probably already a Polish citizen Sergei Petrov.

The Russian owners of GIG Holdings cease to participate in the company on March 18.

This ownership structure existed for several months. This is confirmed by an order dated August 25, 2022, for Lviv Insulation Company LLC signed by the company’s director, Oksana Dynik. The same people are here. Only instead of Sergei Petrov, Sergiusz Petrosh appears. We assume that this is the same person who changed his citizenship and name.

Addendum to the order by which Oksana Dynik establishes a new ownership structure of the Lviv Insulator Company

Subsequently, Petrós and Buraga gave their shares to Terje Aru. And now GIG Holdings, and thus Lviv Insulation Company, is owned by Estonians Olga Dubovitskaya (70%) and Terje Aru (30%). Olga Dubovitskaya has a decisive influence on the company. Who is she, and is she really the real owner of the Lviv company?

Russian Olga Dubovitskaya became an Estonian citizen recently, in May 2021. Her Estonian passport states that she was born in Russia.

A copy of the Estonian passport of the owner of GIG Holdings. Date of issue – May 20, 2021

According to an extract obtained from the automated Rospasport system three weeks ago, Olga Dubovitskaya was a Russian citizen and lived in Yekaterinburg. The system recorded Dubovitskaya’s receipt of a Russian internal passport in 2003 and its replacement with a new one in 2013 in connection with her 45th birthday (at this age, Russian citizens are obliged to replace their old passport with a new one). This passport has been listed in the system as invalid since April 29, 2022.

However, according to the Rospasport system, Dubovitskaya has a valid foreign passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation issued on September 26, 2019. It seems that she did not renounce her citizenship.

The Rospasport system contains information about the valid passport of Russian citizen Olga Dubovitskaya

However, Dubovitskaya has never been a stranger to Russian owners, whom she replaced in the registry. Documents obtained from the same automated system, Rospasport, show that she was married to Pavel Podkorytov. And from the Estonian real estate register, we can establish a connection with another previous Russian beneficiary. Since 2018, Dubovitska has been co-owning a house in Tallinn with Serhiy Petrov, who later became a Pole named Sergiusz Petrosh.

Entry from the Estonian real estate register. Since 2018, Olha Dubovytska has owned a house in joint ownership with Serhiy Petrov / Sergiusz Petrosz.

The house at Tallinn, Lepiku tee 38, owned by Sergiusz Petrosz and Olga Dubovicka. Screenshot from google.com/maps

Thus, the beneficial owner of Lviv Isolator Company LLC is a person who obtained Estonian citizenship less than a year before the transaction and has family and property ties to the former owners. All of these facts probably indicate that Dubovitskaya simply came in handy when it became necessary to quickly “rewrite” or “transfer” risky assets to an Estonian citizen. We wanted to inform Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi about these facts, but he did not want to listen to us: “I need a decision from the Ukrainian authorities, who will tell me that a crime has been committed. Then I will react.”

The names of the Russian owners of the insulation company are well known in Russia. At one time, Vasily Buraga, Vladislav Butin, Vadim Gubin, Sergei Petrov, Pavel Podkorytov, Andrei Ryzhikov, and Denis Tasakov were top managers of the Russian company Uralinvestenergo and partners of businessman Andrei Akhtyamov. In 2004, Akhtyamov accused them of raiding his company. According to the Russian law enforcement agencies, they forged the register, stole shares and moved the holding’s assets offshore. Gubin and Podkorytov were arrested in 2005, and the other five escaped… to Ukraine. In 2008, Ryzhykov, Tasakov, Buraga and Butin were detained by the Crimean police. Later, Ukraine handed them over to Russia for trial. Only Sergey Petrov managed to avoid arrest.

In addition to the Lviv business, these Russians also have businesses in their homeland. And they not only pay taxes to the aggressor state, but also fulfill Russian defense orders!

According to the Russian State Register of Legal Entities (EGRUL), Vladislav Butin, Denis Tasakov, Vasily Buraga, Ksenia Ryzhikova (presumably the daughter of Andrei Ryzhikov) and Nina Podkorytova (mother of Pavel Podkorytov) are co-owners of YUNAKO-Invest LLC.

Owners of UNAKO-Invest LLC. Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities

Owners of UNAKO-Invest LLC. Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities

Owners of UNAKO-Invest LLC. Extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities

On the website of Unacowebsite lists companies that are part of this group. Among them is Stroydormash. We come across the name of this company in thein the decision of the of the Lviv Court of Appeal. Here is a quote from the ruling: “The
group of companies “UNACO-Invest” includes a number of enterprises that are under the influence of citizens from the Russian Federation and are involved in the material support of its armed forces … during 2016-2022, “Stroydormash” and “Uralsky Compressor Plant” … were participants and concluded more than 13 contracts with the military formations of the Russian Federation”.

Denis Tasakov was the director of the Ural Compressor Plant at the time. Last year, he was involved in a public scandal. The plant’s workers were delayed in getting paid, and they went on strike.
Commenting on Tasakov admitted that he was working for the Russian army:
“I would like people to come to their senses. I don’t want to apologize to anyone, because everyone should understand the situation. In the Great Patriotic War, no one asked about salaries, but we have a state defense order, and it is now in danger of being disrupted.”.

By the way, it was Denis Tasakov who was part of our seven businessmen who “supervised” the production of insulators at the Ukrainian Insulator and Russian Rebar and Insulator enterprises. According to the minutes of the extraordinary general meeting of the members of Lviv Insulator Company LLC of March 10, 2015, it was Tasakov who personally appointed Sadovyi’s associate Oksana Dynik as the company’s director.

Minutes of the meeting at which Denis Tasakov appoints Oksana Dynik as the General Director of LIK LLC

Appoints Oksana Dynik as the General Director of LIK LLC

After all, he confirmed this to us in a phone conversation:

– Does the name Oksana Dynyk mean anything to you?

– Well, she was the director of a Lviv factory…

– It remains so.

– All right, then.

– And how did you meet?

– It was a long time ago.

– How and where? Can you tell us the circumstances?

– In 2012, she is a specialist, she graduated from a higher education school, I think, in Lisichansk, I don’t know, an institute. She is a good specialist…

– Where did you two meet? Where exactly?

– In Lviv.

– What did you do in Lviv?

– There used to be a plant in Lviv, and I was the manager there.

When asked whether he supports Russia’s war against Ukraine, Denis Tasakov answers in the affirmative:

– Do you support the “special military operation” or not?

– That’s a good question. Yes!

Well, Russians work in Lviv without any problems and have benefits from the local authorities to earn money. Andriy Sadovyi’s associate manages their business. Only after the full-scale invasion did the Russians quickly “transfer” this business to a straw man. And at the same time, they continue to run Russian enterprises that work for the defense industry, which kills Ukrainians, including Lviv residents. And Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyi does not want to hear or see this.