It’s well known that scams, criminality, and plain deceit are behind the large sums of money in our country. It’s inevitable – a new economic system in the country emerged just a couple of decades ago, and the initial accumulation of wealth followed traditional laws.
The majority of Ukrainian businesspeople carry the baggage from the nineties. Many of them accept the fact that you can’t change the past, and are philosophical about the media coverage on the origins of their “first millions”. However, some try to hide their unsavory past and clean up their online presence, which has been the main source of information in recent years.
Whether due to simplistic thinking or greed, their attempts to do so are often clumsy and draw more attention to them. Domestic businessman and banker Sergey Nikolaevich Tron falls into this category.
He gained notoriety a couple of years ago when the Moscow Commercial Bank, in which Tron owned 24.99% of the shares, went into liquidation.
Naturally, the liquidation of the bank sparked considerable interest, as a significant number of people suffered due to the bankers’ actions. Once again, it was found that the bank’s assets were insufficient to satisfy all the claims of the deceived depositors. Additionally, law enforcement authorities became interested in the bank’s management, opening criminal proceedings No. 42018101100000355, which revealed that the bank’s owners were involved in embezzlement, including Sergey Tron and Reinis Tumovs, who also owned shares:
Reinis Tumovs, by the way, is still on the wanted list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and has been taken into custody in absentia. Another co-owner, Arkallaev, is the Donetsk “authority” nicknamed “Nurik”.
In 2017, Serhiy Tron’s assets were seized in criminal proceedings against officials of PJSC City Commercial Bank for misappropriating over UAH 400 billion from several banking institutions during 2010-2015 with the prior agreement of the bank owners, equivalent to 50 billion dollars at the time.
One embezzlement scheme worked as follows: the head of the board of PJSC City Commercial Bank signed pledge agreements under a loan agreement between the lender, the Austrian bank Meinl Bank Aktiengesellschaft, and the Belize offshore company Melfa Group LTD without the consent of the bank’s supervisory board. Subsequently, the Belize company received a loan of 45 million euros, followed by another 10 million, and then another 15 million.
Melfa Group LTD did not repay the loans, and, under pledge agreements, the debt was repaid from the correspondent account of PJSC “City Commercial Bank”, with the loan funds being dispersed to the accounts of shell companies.
Yes, when the bank was being closed, the Deposit Guarantee Fund of individuals said it needed a much smaller amount to cover the bank’s losses – only 2.57 billion hryvnias.
As part of the claims from the victims, the property of Sergey Tron was also arrested: 15 land plots in the Makarovsky district of the Kyiv region with a total area of 18.7 hectares, one apartment and a Toyota Land Cruiser-200 car. We won't calculate how much it cost, as it's clearly not worth $50 billion. Doesn't even reach 2.57 billion hryvnia.
And also, on August 21, 2020, the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv, led by Anna Sergienko, canceled the arrest of Tron’s property, explaining its decision by stating that “the need for arrest has disappeared, otherwise it will be unjustified interference by the state in a person’s right to respect their property.”
The judge’s decision caused a strong reaction, and the front pages of the media (mostly electronic) were full of mentions of Sergei Tron with very unpleasant biography details for him. Before revealing what exactly Tron did not like, we won't keep the suspense and tell you what he did to clean up this information. Although attempts to clean up the Internet began a little earlier, since Tron applied for a job in the Cabinet of Ministers of Goncharuk.
We repeat – we don’t know what let him down – greed, stupidity or ignorance of basic search algorithms, but the following headlines started appearing on the Web in response to the query “Sergey Tron”:
Historians were confused – they simply had never heard anything about Sergei Nikolaevich Tron, an outstanding specialist in such broad areas of historical science.
Following them, literary critics expressed bewilderment:
Boxers were next, especially in the Kyiv Boxing Federation.
They suddenly found out they had a new leader – Tron Sergey Nikolaevich, whom they had never heard of before. There were more surprises to come. Tron was also a surgeon and dentist:
But after all these career changes, the historian, literary critic, surgeon, dentist and boxer suddenly switched to become IT specialists:
Sergey Tron also presents himself as an IT businessman today:
The last interview is from June 22, 2021.
The essence of this whole situation is simple and basic – all these materials were supposed to bury in the search results and push down as much as possible those articles that revealed the unpleasant details of his biography to Sergey Tron:
And he had something to hide. In addition to the scams with the First City Bank, biographers of Sergei Tron, among other things, mention the following. For example, joint ownership with the brothers Roman and Nurulislam Arkallaev Donetsk Ecooil LLC:
Nurulislam Arkallaev is none other than the ex-people’s deputy from the “Party of Regions”, the man of Rinat Akhmetov, known in criminal circles under the nickname “Nurik”:
There is a biography of a “historian, literary critic and IT athlete” and the following episode: “Tron, a junior business partner and assistant when Arkallaev was a people’s deputy, is widely known in the Ukrainian criminal environment, where they say that he did not disdain murders to expand the business empire , he is credited with at least 13 murders of businessmen. Through Kiev-based Weiss Trade LLC, which was exposed in the bankruptcy scam of PJSC Joint Ukrainian-Kazakhstan-Russian Enterprise for the Production of Nuclear Fuel, both are connected with Leonid Kryuchkov, brother of Dmitry Kryuchkov, the founder of the scandalous Energomerezh holding.
Ecooil LLC sold fuel to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and Ukrzaliznytsia at higher prices, making 2.37 billion hryvnias during Yanukovych's time. It's also involved in criminal proceedings related to the City Commercial Bank.
Ecooil LLC is involved in multiple corruption investigations and eight sanctions lists connected to Russia's war against Ukraine.
In 2104, Tron's business partner Nurulislam Arkallaev financed the Donetsk militants with stolen money from the Ukrainian army. Despite this, Serhiy Tron continued doing business with him. It's hard to believe that Arkallaev did this without Tron's knowledge.
Sergei Tron is known to be involved in a scam with the purchase of the Ilyichevsk and Odessa oil and fat plants, as well as the Ilyichevsk grain port. In spring 2019, he colluded with the then head of the Deposit Guarantee Fund Konstantin Vorushilin to purchase this property complex for 182.5 million hryvnia, although it was valued at 4.85 billion.
He attempted to claim a seat in Goncharuk's Cabinet, but it didn't work out, so he went back to the IT sphere.
Sergei Tron was offended by the domestic press and started giving interviews at the same time.
He encouraged people to visit his personal website for all inquiries: https://tronsergei.com.ua/. However, his personal website does not look very impressive.
Sergey himself claims to be open and willing to answer questions on his website. He also mentions that you can get information about him there and apply to invest in any project. This was from his supposed interview, but the publication did not check the link.
Despite attempts to bury news about scams with the City Commercial Bank, Ecooil LLC, financing of the DPR, and the theft of the property complex in the Odessa region, Sergei Tron's involvement at some level succeeded.
Sergei Tron's activities decreased last year, but he resurfaced as an IT specialist and could be trying to become a prominent figure again soon.
