Even though it's time to accept this, Ukrainian oligarchs seem quite odd, making their fortune in Ukraine and then escaping from the justice system, and then complaining about various problems in Ukraine and the difficulties of being a "refugee from the regime".
An example is Oleg Bakhmatyuk, a Ukrainian big landowner, known as the "egg king" and a former banker with gas industry connections, who is hiding in Vienna to avoid Ukrainian law enforcement's interest. For nearly three years, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) has been accusing Bakhmatyuk of misusing 1.2 billion hryvnias from a loan he got from the National Bank in 2014 for his VAB Bank. The bank went bankrupt, but the loan was not repaid. In 2020, the High Anti-Corruption Court arrested Bakhmatyuk in absentia, but he is in Austria trying to delay meeting with NABU detectives and is also fighting off creditors, to whom UkrLandFarming, the main asset of the oligarch, owes more than two billion dollars.
At the same time, Oleg Romanovich is giving interviews claiming that all the charges against him are baseless, and he has an impeccable reputation as a businessman. Well, who would doubt that.
However, when you look at his biography, you can't help but think of the classic phrase said by one of the American millionaires – “I am ready to tell you about the origin of all my money, except for the first million.” But in Bakhmatyuk's case, he is hardly willing to tell the true story of not only his first million, but all the rest.
The only thing he doesn't hide is that his business can only recover from the crisis if he clears his name from the accusations of NABU. For many years, those accusations have been suffocating UkrLandFarming financially.
NABU and Bakhmatyuk have completely different explanations for this situation. According to Bakhmatyuk, the accusations are baseless, and Zelensky’s team is pressuring UkrLandFarming to be sold to people close to the president for next to nothing.
However, Bakhmatyuk’s problems related to the funding of VAB Bank began even under Poroshenko's presidency. According to Oleg Romanovich, he got 1.2 billion hryvnias from the NBU with a plant in Ivano-Frankivsk as security, which was worth more than 20 million dollars, exceeding the loan amount several times. But a simple calculation shows that the plant cost no more than half a billion hryvnias.
That’s not all – NABU claims that this cost was overestimated by 25 times – a pre-trial examination found that the real value of the property put up for collateral was UAH 72.62 million, not the UAH 1.8 billion declared by VAB Bank. However, the bank got the money and did not return it, just like the previous three billion hryvnias received from the NBU for the same purposes.
In November 2014, NBU announced that VAB Bank was not able to pay its debts. It's important to mention that Bakhmatyuk is also involved in the bankruptcy of another bank, Financial Initiative. The NBU says that the number of depositors of both banks, which Oleg Bakhmatyuk caused to go bankrupt, was about 400 thousand people.
In 2019, when the bankruptcy case of VAB Bank was restarted, Bakhmatyuk and his sister, Natalia Vasilyuk, who was the head of the Supervisory Board at VAB Bank, were also put on the wanted list. She is accused of committing crimes mentioned in the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
In 2011, Bakhmatyuk became the owner of VAB Bank, after the former owner of the bank, Sergey Maksimov, agreed to sell the shares of the bank to Bakhmatyuk only after spending a day in a pre-trial detention center.
The problems with law enforcement were not just about the money not being returned for refinancing. The Ukrlandfarming group, which is registered in Cyprus, includes the Ukrainian management companies Avangard and Ukrlandfarming, which oversee more than 400 companies.
In 2015, Avangard constructed two egg factories in Kherson and Kamenetz-Podolsk. According to Avangard reports, it cost $500 million, and the group was supposed to receive a refund from the state of about UAH 300 million, for which the relevant documents were submitted. But the State Treasury questioned the authenticity of the documents confirming the costs and transferred the case to the NABU, which delayed the payment of fictitious VAT costs.
Oleg Romanovich has been involved with VAT for a long time – the scheme for the return of fictitious value added tax was refined back in the days of Kuchma, when Bakhmatyuk was involved in gas condensate trading. Then he left the Itera company and started his own business in the Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Dealing with VAT, Bakhmatyuk switched to 'gasification of the settlements of the region' and received money from the state for this within the framework of the program for the gasification of settlements in Western Ukraine. In 2005, the state allocated 410 billion hryvnias for the gasification of this region. However, only a few gas pipelines were built, but not with budget money. The funds for the implementation were collected illegally from local residents.
During the same time, Bakhmatyuk started to enter the agricultural business – he purchased the Avangard poultry farm, which became the core of his egg production and gave the name to the group of companies.
To buy the factory, he borrowed one million dollars from Aval Bank. According to Bakhmatyuk, a friend from the bank’s board helped him with this. In any case, they provided a loan, and Oleg Romanovich acquired Avangard, which eventually became one of the leading companies in egg production.
In 2005, Bakhmatyuk became the deputy chairman of the board of Naftogaz of Ukraine. A year later, he acquired controlling stakes in gas distribution companies in Western Ukraine and then sold them to RosUkrEnergo, run by Dmitry Firtash.
In 2010, the Ukrainian entrepreneur bought the assets of the American company Townsends Inc, involved in chicken meat processing. Her job was to coordinate a number of poultry companies. Oleg Bakhmatyuk convinced them to take loans to expand their business, withdrew the money abroad, and kept it. As a result, an American court banned him from entering the United States.
In 2011, Oleg Bakhmatyuk established the agricultural holding UkrLandFarming, mainly focusing on grain production and cattle breeding.
At that time, UkrLandFarming became the leader of the agricultural market – its land bank reached 670 thousand hectares, the group owns 24 elevators, 23 poultry farms, eight feed mills, and 40 livestock farms. Observers note that Bakhmatyuk’s business prospered after he agreed to sell his shares in regional gas companies to Firtash.
Bakhmatyuk himself comments on the topic in general terms, but characterizes the period of Yanukovych’s rule as “more specific” and “having rules.” This was when his business empire reached its peak.
After that everything went downhill. In 2015, problems started with unreturned money from NBU for refinancing, attempting to get a VAT refund using fake documents, and a decrease in production and sales of agricultural products.
At that time, Bakhmatyuk blamed Poroshenko for his problems. In his lengthy interview with Gordon, Bakhmatyuk mentioned that he holds the fifth president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, responsible for his failures. He specifically mentioned that the decision to shut down banks was made in the president’s office with Valeria Gontareva present.
However, with the change of power in the country, the culprits also changed. As recently as the end of January of this year, Oleg Romanovich gave a lengthy interview to Economic Truth, in which he blamed Volodymyr Zelensky and the former head of the presidential office Andriy Bogdan for his failures.
In the same interview, he again assured creditors that he would repay all debts as soon as he “solved problems with NABU.” The current government is hindering him from resolving these issues. Bakhmatyuk also assured that the business in Ukraine, which he manages from Austria, is under “full control,” albeit significantly reduced.
In general, the interview is interesting, we recommend it. But some kind of hopelessness comes from him. Everyone is to blame but himself. But who is to blame – let Oleg Romanovich decide for himself. But another question – “what to do?” is much more important. And primarily – for his creditors, whom, according to Bakhmatyuk, he has been trying to persuade for several years “not to tear the UkrLandFarming group to pieces,” promising to pay off their debts.
According to him, creditors “tolerate” and believe in his promise to repay debts. However, it seems that in fact UkrLandFarming is not “torn to pieces” because there is nothing to “tear” there for a long time. Oleg Bakhmatyuk has vast experience in withdrawing assets.
