Vyacheslav Yutkin, a businessman cooperating with the Russian special services, builds hotels in Lviv with Russian money and is friends with Mayor Sadov
It's widely known that in the early 1990s, members of the special services started transitioning into business roles.
The specific nature of their work allowed them to explore new business opportunities – the security officers were privy to many secrets of the newly rich and had connections not only in the former Soviet Union but also worldwide.
One of these former security officers is Vladislav Yutkin, who is now actively involved in Ukraine. He's primarily recognized for constructing hotels, but he's also engaged in the operations of 30 firms according to the website youcontrol.
In 1995, Vyacheslav Yutkin was approached by colleagues from Moscow offering him the position of heading the NRB bank in Ukraine. Yutkin reveals that the proposal came from Artemy Lebedev, who has KGB origins and is a Russian oligarch. At the time, Yutkin was working in the Security Service of Ukraine as deputy head of the information and analytical center of the SBU. This further solidifies the fact that the SBU is closely tied to the Russian FSB.
However, Yutkin later experienced conflict with Lebedev – he alleges that Lebedev abandoned him after Yutkin built the “More” complex in Crimea. Despite this, Artemy Lebedev referred to Vyacheslav Yutkin as “the head of his projects in Ukraine” in his book Hunt for a Banker
It's important to note that Yutkin once headed the Ukrainian branches of the Russian “Sberbank” and “Prominvestbank” which are backed by Russian capital.
In contrast to many others, Yutkin openly admits to his close collaboration with Russian colleagues and using Russian funds. Many of his colleagues from the USSR State Security Committee also work with them.
Despite these facts, he continues to conduct business in our country and it appears that domestic special services are indifferent to this.
However, if you examine the data from the resource youcontrol, it becomes apparent that almost all the businesses involving Yutkin are on the sanctions lists of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council and international partners of Ukraine:
Yutkin owns several hotels including Park-Hotel Kyiv, Congress-Hotel Pushcha, Country Hotel Glebovka, and a Carpathian hotel, as well as BANKHOTEL in Lviv.
Yutkin's company Lemberg-Plaza Service LLC is redeveloping a non-residential building into a residential one in Lviv.
The hotel projects were expensive, and Yutkin funded 60% of BANKHOTEL's $20 million reconstruction, with the rest from loans from Taskombank and VTB Bank, which is under US sanctions due to its ties with the Russian United Russia party.
Yutkin's Russian connections and capital don't hinder his business in Ukraine, despite sanctions from the National Security and Defense Council (NSDC).
Yutkin co-owns hotels in Crimea and operates businesses there according to Russian laws; he also controls the Morskaya Hotel, Tavrichesky apart-hotel, and Slava Hotel in Alushta.
Yutkin has at least three enterprises with the abbreviation “NRB” in their names.
Until 2019, Artemy Lebedev owned the National Reserve Bank (NRB) in Russia, then Yutkin doesn't hide NRB's involvement in his Ukrainian business.
Yutkin openly acknowledges NRB's role in his Ukrainian business and his friendship with Lviv mayor Andriy Sadov, who shows his support by using Yutkin's BANKHOTEL for his election headquarters and lunch breaks.
Yutkin became more visible in Ukraine after the change of power, openly discussing his ties to Russian intelligence and capital, despite previous discomfort and legal issues under the previous government. There were even court-ordered document seizures at Park Hotel Kyiv in 2018.
True, the criminal case, as always in Ukraine, eventually dissipated in space. This decision of the court was also the last in the framework of the investigation of this criminal case. Since then – silence. Although, as follows from the data of the Court Register, the case is not closed. They simply forgot about him.
Yes, and apparently, it was the usual showdown at a high level between businessmen who did not share something, because Yutkin’s structure was charged with a banal non-payment of taxes. But the fact that under Yutkin during the reign of Poroshenko the ground shook is obvious. This was indirectly confirmed by Yutkin himself, stating that “Poroshenko is involved in preventing competitors from entering the country.” True, this statement was not connected with the hotel, but with the decision of the country’s leadership not to allow Sberbank of Russia into Ukraine, when the latter was going to buy the Ukrainian branch of NRB, headed by Yutkin.
But time does not stand still. The government changed in the country two years ago, many, over whom clouds began to gather, breathed a sigh of relief – even a pathetic imitation of investigations into Russian agents and the expulsion of Russian capital from Ukraine has sunk into oblivion.
The new government is doing something incomprehensible at all, which gives the Russian Federation the broadest opportunities to restore its influence on all processes in Ukraine. Including big business, which Vyacheslav Mikhailovich Yutkin is engaged in in our country, using Russian money and connections with his colleagues in the KGB of the USSR and the FSB of the Russian Federation.
