VIENNA – The Austrian capital has both luxury and a favorable corporate environment for business, a combination that has proved irresistible for many of Ukraine's rich. A handful of Ukrainian oligarchs own homes and set up business headquarters in the city, and I decided to pay a visit to some of them on a recent morning.
I kick off my trip in the village of Tulbingerkogel, a 30-minute bus ride outside of Vienna. This village is the official Austrian home of Serhiy Klyuev, a parliament member and brother of Andriy Klyuev, one of the key figures in ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s inner circle.
Andriy Klyuev, the former chief of the National Security and Defense Council, is on the list of 22 individuals sanctioned by the European Union, with assets frozen and travel bans imposed, but not his brother Serhiy, despite having served as a front in many real estate operations related to Yanukovych. He was the proxy owner of Tantalit, Yanukovych’s main company behind his Mezhyhirya estate.
Andriy Klyuev’s whereabouts are not known, but Serhiy has been spotted in Ukraine’s parliament, where he was elected on the party list of the Opposition Bloc.
The house I am visiting is owned by the wife of Serhiy Klyuev, Iryna, though a complex chain of offshores. She also features in official records as co-owner of some of the Klyuev brothers’ Austrian-based businesses.
The property is located in a beautiful, hilly countryside southwest of Vienna. This suburb town has a distinctive appearance of an East European mountain village, with crisp air and a mishmash of architectural styles that reflect its evolution.
The buses that go there are almost completely empty because the village is remote and its residents rely on cars more than public transport. You pass by picturesque little lakes, mini-hotels and well-kept mature forests along the way, with lumberjacks in bright orange vests pottering in the snow amid freshly cut tree branches.
The house itself, located at Groissaustrase, 12, looks abandoned. There is a single track cleaned off snow, but the rest of the garden is untouched, and no tracks are visible on the side porch. There aren’t even bins in the designated fenced-off area, a sign that there has been no human activity here for a long time.
A local village caretaker driving by stops his car to check out two nosey strangers. He says the house still belongs to the Kyuev family, they have not sold. But they have not been here for a long time either, and he checks up on the property and cleans snow in front of the gates.
Bernhard Odehnal, my Austrian guide who works for a Swiss newspaper, says it’s quite unusual for caretakers to pay such close attention to private estates – especially in a middle-class, regular village like this. “You wonder why a Ukrainian oligarch would buy a property here if they were buying in Austria,” he says.
It may have been for the view. Klyuev’s house is perched at quite a high altitude, overlooking rolling hills across the valley, and even gets a glimpse of sunset in the evening. We settle for that explanation for now, and head back to the bus stop.
There is a single lady waiting for the bus there, and I am struck by the image of this lonely figure who looks exactly like many women her age I had seen in a similar landscape in western Ukraine waiting for their rides at a bus stop. By a strange coincidence, the lady turns out to be a Ukrainian from Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, a locality with an identical vibe and hills.
Her name is Maria, and she works in a house on the same street, owned by a Russian. She says there are a handful of Russians in this village. She also says she has not seen the Klyuevs since last spring in the house, though. “There is a girl that goes inside occasionally, I think she cleans the house,” says Mariya, who did not want to give her last name because of fear of losing her job.
Austria’s official property records obtained by the Kyiv Post say that the house has not changed hands since 1998, and is still owned by GBM Handels und Vertretungs GmbH, a company that has been traced to Iryna Klyueva by Ukraine’s anti-corruption watchdogs. It’s also used as a collateral for a 581,000 euro mortgage.
We head back to Vienna’s more up-scale area to visit the house of Oleksiy Azarov, the son of former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov. Both the father and the son ran to Moscow almost a year ago, after the EuroMaidan Revolution.
Oleksiy Azarov’s address in Austria is Potzleinsdorfer Strasse 152-156. This is a location in District 18, a much more prestigious area close to the Vienna Woods that gets the benefit of fresh air all around the year and a cool breeze in the summer.
There are a lot of large mansions, with well-tended, landscaped gardens and impressive-looking security video systems embedded in the front gates. Some of the houses are very modern, others are historic buildings, decorated with lovely embellishments or lacy wooden elements.
Azarov’s property is part of a compound of 10 large flats, which sits across the path from Poetzleinsdorfer Schlosspark, a beautiful public garden with ancient trees, statues and a duck pond.
You can locate Azarov’s H3 flat on a large map outside the house, but this flat has no name plate on the mailbox or elsewhere around. This is the only anonymous flat in the compound.
A neighbor says the name plate was taken down recently. He also says he had not seen the Azarovs for months in this house. But we’re lucky with cleaning ladies today, there is one in H3 flat, vaccuuming the floor right inside. The bell does not work, so we knock and she opens. She looks surprised, even scared, but says there are no Azarovs living here. She says the family is called Paul, but she is not telling the truth.
The Austrian property records show that this property has not changed hands since 2010. Moreover, it indicates that the property is frozen under European sanctions. Both Mykola Azarov and his son Oleksiy are on the EU sanctions list.
Oleksiy Azarov is also under investigation by Austrian authorities on money-laundering suspicions, according to Bloomberg’s April 15 report. Thomas Vecsey, a spokesman for Vienna prosecutors, told the agency that Austrian banks reported suspicious capital flows in early 2014, which became basis for investigation.
At the time of the report Bloomberg said that Austrian company register lists Oleksiy Azarov as former managing director of a Viennese company called Sustainable Ukraine gemeinnuetzige Forschung GmbH. His wife, Lilya Azarova, is listed as the 50 percent-owner of Publishing Deluxe Holding GmbH. The family’s new home was discovered in Moscow recently.
Next stop is Am Hof, 13, in the very central District 1. This is an office building, but you feel like you’re about to hit the jackpot here. There are four companies that used to be registered at this address, all with ties to the Klyuev brothers, according to Anti-Corruption Action Center, a Ukrainian watchdog. They are CEE Sunpower GmbH, CEE Windpower GmbH, Black Sea Renewable Energies GmbH and CEE Clean Economic Energy AG.
All these four firms are a part of a complex web of offshores that own Andriy and Serhiy Klyuev’s solar power giant in Crimea. The company, which was best known by its corporate umbrella name Activ Solar, ran into trouble soon after the annexation of Crimea.
Sergey Aksyonov, the Russia-backed leader of Crimea, said in May that Activ Solar was a “scam which allowed top leaders of Ukraine to earn, putting a billion dollars in their pockets.” Then he said in August that the assets of Activ Solar will be taken over by the Crimean banks for alleged debts of $300 million.
Activ Solar had built six solar power plants in Crimea, with a total capacity of 400 Megawatt, four of which had been hooked to the electricity grid. The project was marred with controversy from the very start as it appeared that Andriy Klyuev allegedly used his various jobs in the government to acquire financing and high energy tariffs for his firm. He always denied wrongdoing.
It’s clear that Crimean troubles reflected on the activity of the Vienna offices Activ Solar’s various corporate elements. The company name plates have been taken off the wall of the office building at 13 Am Hof. Business letters continue to arrive to this address, though. The mail box is stuffed to the brink, it’s clear that nobody has cleaned it out for days.
The Austrian company database shows that all four businesses have been moving a lot recently, and landed just a block away, at the official address of GBM Handels und Vertretungs GmbH, the firm that owns Iryna Klyueva’s home outside Vienna.
My next destination is Wipplingerstrasse 35, the Vienna headquarters of Activ Solar, but I discover that this office has also been standing empty. The lights are on in the office, but nobody answers the door bell. It does not look like business in Vienna is good for Ukraine’s oligarchs – at least for now.
Katya Gorchinskaya is the deputy chief editor of the Kyiv Post.
