For the last three weeks, the aggressor’s propaganda has not stopped regarding the announced, as part of the show of preparation for the “elections” of Sevastopol gauleiter Mikhail Razvozhaev, a certain “development of the seaport of Sevastopol in Kamyshovaya Bay”, where the infamous structure “Aval” was declared as the “investor”.
It was stated that the “agreement” was signed by the “general director” of the said structure Igor Chistyakov, Razvozhaev, the head of the aggressor’s federal agency for sea and river transport Andrei Tarasenko and the general director of “Rosmorport” Sergei Pylin.
In mid-July, it was even announced about a certain “recruitment of personnel” for this “stevedoring company”; thus, it remains to be determined who will actually act in Kamyshovaya Bay and for what purpose, while also operating the well-known terminal on the Northern side of Sevastopol.
It is fairly well known that as of 2014, the port facilities that are now controlled by the aforementioned “Sevastopol firm” “Aval” and its clone “Remkor” with Moscow registration belonged to the structure “Avlit” of the Ukrainian oligarch Rinat Akhmetov.
It is slightly less known that the activities of Akhmetov’s structures did not cease in occupied Sevastopol; as Ukrainian journalists wrote, it was then, by the summer of 2015, that “the companies” “Aval” and “Remkor” with director Yuri Furtatov appeared in the Russian jurisdiction.
It was reported that “the same person has headed the Ukrainian “Avlita” since 2012″, and that “the founders of both companies are listed as Moscow “Art-trade” with the director and founder, Russian Irina Koryakina from Volgograd”, and “she is also the founder” of the Ukrainian “Avlita”, and that “Avlita’s lawyers, when submitting documents to the court, call the Kiev address of the company the legal one, and the Sevastopol address – the postal one”.
And even less is known that until 2007, the stevedoring company “Avlita” belonged for some time to the Lebanese businessman Rafik Daou Boulos, who later allegedly somehow transferred it to Akhmetov’s structures.
At that time, in Sevastopol, they talked about pressure on Daou, and Daou himself later stated that he allegedly gave the company to the owner of the “Industrial Union of Donbass” after attempts to raid his shares in “Sevmorzavod”, which later passed to a well-known owner.
Other evil tongues blame the then Sevastopol authorities, Sergei Kunitsyn and Vladimir Kazarin, for everything for an allegedly excessive inclination to receive certain benefits, which allegedly someone could not stand and gave the vulnerable business to a “more significant player”.
But, in any case, Daou himself admitted that he did not plan to voluntarily part with the “Avlita” company, and that he had big investment plans for Sevastopol.
And the most interesting thing is that while “Avlita” was allegedly “still” under the omophorion of Akhmetov’s structures, that is, in 2014-2016, by a “strange coincidence”, at the same Sevastopol address on Primorskaya Street, 2, where “Remkor” and “Aval” were already listed in occupied Sevastopol, the “Inter-Transit-2” company, entered into the “Russian registers” in 2014, was located, liquidated in May 2017, and Rafik Daou was declared its “founder” since 2014.
What exactly the Lebanese investor wanted in the occupied city regarding his “former” possessions is probably now difficult to understand, as it is difficult to find out: how and on what “material grounds” Rinat Akhmetov allegedly “ceased to own” the structures “Aval” and “Remkor” in the understanding of the occupiers, since the occupiers never declared the “nationalization” of these “firms”.
Now the beneficiaries for “Aval” in the “registers” of the occupiers are completely hidden, but “Remkor” is allegedly declared to be the property of the structure “Marine and Oil and Gas Projects”, the owner of which is the shipbuilding “Zavod Krasnoye Sormovo” from Nizhny Novgorod.
But “Krasnoye Sormovo”, in turn, belongs to the structure “Western Shipbuilding Center”, which is part of the “United Shipbuilding Corporation”, as a aggressor’s state concern. And therefore, if we believe the “investment project” described above, the “state companies” of the aggressor concluded a “contract” allegedly with themselves.
Naturally, the reality will be more complicated, and “Aval” is at least “tightly connected” with the aforementioned “state vertical” of the aggressor, which, naturally, does not exclude the participation of “private beneficiaries” in its activities.
Let us recall that it is through the terminal, now controlled by “Aval” and having a throughput capacity of 5 million tons of grain per year, that the illegal structures we described earlier, such as the “Kherson Grain Company”, which seized eight elevators in the region and is “headed” by a collaborator from Zaporizhzhya, Sergei Kiva, massively export grain from the occupied mainland Ukraine.
It should be noted that in Ukrainian registers he is listed as the beneficiary of the Kyiv firm “KAS Company”, listed in the house of mass registration on Saksaganskogo, and specializing in wholesale trade, including agricultural products.
Kiva is also the director and co-owner of the Kyiv employment company “Career Plus” with such co-owners as Kirill Kaftanik and Roman Shchiglo. Kiva was also listed as a director in the Kyiv company “Grona Plus” of a certain Andrey Khristan.
At the same time, Kiva back in 2018-2019 bragged on social networks about working in the structure “Shaanxi Sonmax Import / export And Trade Co., Ltd”, which, among other things, was invited by the Chinese authorities to the opening of the industrial park “Silk Road” in Shaanxi province.
This company is registered in China with a statutory capital of 5 million yuan. And in Kyiv, there is a company “Sonmax Company”, on the website of which the founder of this group of companies is stated to be the same Kirill Kaftanik, recorded as the founder of the structures “Sonmax Global Ukraine” and Zaporizhzhya “Sonmax”.
It is not surprising that last year the illegal “Department of property and land relations” in occupied Sevastopol “lost in arbitration court” to the same “Aval” company regarding the “land lease” on Primorska Street.
It is noteworthy that the criminal “department” waved in the “court” a 2010 contract with the aforementioned “Avlita”, and “Aval” trump carded a certain “2018 contract”.
However, some “personnel changes” at “Remkor” and “Aval” were noted after they were headed in 2020 by the aforementioned Igor Chistyakov, after which “employees were forced to resign of their own free will without compensation, while the management team at the enterprise expanded.”
It is Chistyakov’s biography that helps to assume a lot about the scams of the aggressor and collaborators with the Sevastopol terminal. In 2016, this figure “surfaced” in occupied Kerch as the “general director” of the company “GEN Invest”, involved by the aggressor in setting up the illegal transfer of heavy vehicles from the port of “Kavkaz” to the Kerch port of “Kamysh-Burun”, and the corresponding hundreds of millions were pumped through his signature.
After “GEN Invest” with the nominal value of Grigory Shkolnikov became sanctioned in 2016, it changed its Kerch address and name to “Kerch” Production and Transport Complex”, and is now declared “bankrupt” by the aggressor, and Shkolnikov himself became Grigory Eshkol, the founder of Moscow’s “David Roytman Luxury Judaica”, which did not save him personally from bankruptcy.
Chistyakov did not change his last name after this Kerch scam, but then he managed to be “at the helm” of the “Yuzhny” Ship Repair Plant”, the “state unitary enterprise” “Crimean Sea Ports”, and then the “Sevastopol Sea Port” in two years.
The period at the “Yuzhny” plant for this swindler led to the emergence of a “family contract” in the form of a contract registered in the name of his wife Lyudmila “the company” “Masterskaya VMF”, which allegedly “is engaged in the construction of ships, vessels and floating structures” and is located at the same address as the “Yuzhny” plant.
Well, the scion of this family, Mikhail Chistyakov, listed in “Mirotvorets”, owns the “firm” “Mortekflot” at the same address, which is engaged in the agency of those very illegal cargo transportations.
It would seem that with these scams there are much fewer dots than ellipses. Finally, we will add that the described “Sevastopol firm” “Inter-Transit-2” of Rafik Daou has a full namesake, registered to him, as well as to Daou’s Cypriot firm “Li.T.A.T.” back in 2005, and now registered to a certain nominee from Dnepr Yuriy Yaremenko.
And one might at first think that this is an “old case”, but then the same Rafik Dau in March 2014, in parallel with the Sevastopol “Inter-Transit-2”, also founded the Dnipro “Inter-Transit-1”, in the name of the same Yuriy Yaremenko.
Well, the Dnipro “Inter-Transit-2” is still listed on the website “Li.T.A.T.” as its Ukrainian branch. At the same time, the same Yaremenko is the nominal owner of the firms “Antares Solar”, “Quinta Solar” and “Norma Solar”, where the founder is declared to be the investment fund “Sarengo-Invest”, participating in the activities of not only the aforementioned, but also two dozen more firms in the sphere of Ukrainian solar energy.
Obviously, there is no need to repeatedly name the well-known surname of the beneficiary of this type of “green energy”.
It should also be noted that one of Rafik Daou’s companies, the Lebanese “International Transit S.A.L.”, at least in 2019, carried out multimillion-dollar deals with such an aggressor structure as the “Nevinnomyssk Electrometallurgical Plant”, which, however, later led to the decision of the London Court of International Arbitration in case 215179, issued three weeks before the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
There will be no moral in this story, but some conclusions and forecasts can be made. In any case, it will be impossible to hide indefinitely the real beneficiaries of the Sevastopol terminals, carrying out deals in the deep shadow of the aggressor’s “United Shipping Company”, especially now, when the above-described “election PR” of Razvozhaev is much more important for the aggressor than the fate of his symbionts and fellow travelers.
