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July 27, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 3
thing illegal in the business, but declined to name its owners.
Two separate sources in Vinnytsia who requested anonymity used the same ominous phrase to describe Chabanyuk’s backers: “bandits from the 1990s”. Investigations by bne IntelliNews and Vin- nytsia Agency for Investigative Journalism showed he was linked to Vinnytsia’s politically influential professional boxing scene.
“There are no bandits anymore,” Chabanyuk an- swered. “Now they are all public figures.”
“This is the first time I have seen this name,” head of the Vinnytsia fiscal service Osmolovsky claimed in the 2017 interview, referring to Chabanyuk.
But in the weeks following the October 2017 police raid on Osmolovsky’s underlings, it was ‘all change’ in the structure of the shadowy auto- motive import scheme: Chabanyuk was removed from his Ukrainian directorship at Skif-Ukraina in December 2017, and the UK shell firm Madison Motor Factors Limited was wound up.
Then in early January 2018 during the Orthodox Christmas season, Chabanyuk’s wife found him dead at home. Doctors diagnosed the 43-year old had died of cardiac arrest. No investigation was opened into his death.
A source requesting anonymity told bne IntelliNews and Vinnytsia Agency of Investigative Journalism Cha- banyuk had been seen maltreated and manhandled out of his office into a waiting car on the same day.
Chabanyuk’s widow Inga declined to give an inter-
view. “I don’t want the same to happen to me as happened to him,” she explained.
Offshore owner
bne IntelliNews got on the trail of Chabanyuk due to his ownership of Seychelles-registered offshore firm Berly Trade, according to leaked files obtained by Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.
Founded in July 2014, after the change of govern- ment in Kyiv, millions of dollars in government- level corruption money flowed through Berly Trade and three sister Seychelles firm registered at the same time, Itaco Alliance, Mirex Trade and Avers Trade.
The head of Ukraine’s state defence holding Uk- roboronprom, Yury Tereshchenko, moved funds via Berly Trade to buy his son a luxury apartment in London, while first deputy prosecutor Mykola Ger- asimiuk moved funds via Itaco to purchase real estate in Croatia. In both cases the money moved via the offshores was likely originally obtained as bribes, according to the OCCRP investigation.
Drug money to Turkey, funds for state tenders and money to secret accounts in Switzerland all moved through these firms, as well as payments to China and elsewhere for imports.
All four Seychelles offshores banked with Latvia’s ABLV. Ukraine has requested their financial information from the Latvian authorities. In February 2018 US anti-money laundering regulators Financial Crimes Enforcement Network accused ABLV of ‘institutionalised money laundering,’ referencing the OCCRP investigation among others. As a result ABLV has closed.