Editor’s Note: The following investigation is supported by Objective Investigative Reporting Program, a Kyiv Post partner and MYMEDIA project funded by the Danish government.
See a related interview with Oleksandr Hranovsky here.
Oleksandr Hranovsky, a lawmaker from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction in parliament, has risen to the top fast.
Before being elected to parliament in 2014, he was the little-known junior partner of wealthy yet controversial businessman Andriy Adamovsky. But now he has eclipsed Adamovsky, the vice president of the World Jewish Congress, and become an influential powerbroker and grey cardinal.
Hranovsky works in tandem with his friend and lawmaker Ihor Kononenko, who denies accusations of profiteering from state companies. The duumvirate of Kononenko and Hranovsky allegedly forms the core of Poroshenko’s inner circle.
“The task Hranovsky was elected to parliament to do is to make money,” Yegor Firsov, an ex-lawmaker from the president’s dominant bloc, told the Kyiv Post. “He doesn’t participate in public politics, and the essence of his activities is horse-trading and shadow schemes.”
Hranovsky is considered as Poroshenko’s top confidant for micromanaging law enforcement agencies to promote the president’s business and political interests.
Hranovsky’s critics also claim that he is picking the winners in the ongoing competitions for the Supreme Court and the State Investigation Bureau.
He denied the accusations. “You’ve got to give examples,” Hranovsky said in an interview with the Kyiv Post. “Otherwise I can’t take this information seriously.”
Adamovsky did not respond to requests for comment. Prosecutors and courts accused of having links to Hranovsky declined to comment.
Sky Mall dispute
Many of the accusations linking Hranovsky with specific judges and prosecutors revolve around the corporate conflict around Kyiv’s Sky Mall shopping center, which used to be controlled by Adamovsky and managed by Hranovsky.
Adamovsky, a Russian-Ukrainian businessman with interests in telecommunications and real estate, has acquired the reputation of a corporate raider, which he denies, and has partnered with allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych. He ranked 65th on the Forbes’ list of Ukraine’s richest people with $262.5 million in 2013, but has fallent off the top 100 list in subsequent years.
Adamovsky and Hranovsky are accused of illegally seizing control over Sky Mall from Estonian businessman Hillar Teder in 2012. In May, the London Court of International Arbitration required them to transfer Assofit Holdings, which had previously run Sky Mall, for free to Tedar’s Arricano firm.
The Prosecutor General’s Office, the National Police and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine are investigating corporate raiding, fraud, embezzlement and tax evasion cases against Hranovsky and Adamovsky.
“Since 2013, the London Court of International Arbitration has ruled in favor of Arricano in five cases as part of the Sky Mall dispute,” Yevgeniy Malieiev, head of Arricano’s legal department, told the Kyiv Post. “At the same time, Ukrainian law enforcement agencies done nothing in cases linked to the illegal takeover of Sky Mall.”
Arricano attributes the lack of progress to Hranovsky’s political clout.
Shady document
One of the institutions involved in the dispute was the High Commercial Court.
In 2014, the Anti-Raider Alliance of Entrepreneurs published what it claimed to be an informal written agreement between the High Commercial Court and Prizma Beta, a company controlled by Adamovsky.
Under the alleged agreement, the High Commercial Court was to receive $2 million for rejecting a $120 million debt claim against Prizma Beta and transferring a car park from Arricano to Prizma Beta in 2012–2014.
Hranovsky dismissed the agreement as a possible fake.
Viktor Tatkov, the chairman of the High Commercial Court in 2010 to 2014, and his former deputy, Artur Yemelyanov, were accused of running large-scale corruption schemes under Yanukovych, which they deny. Both judges were charged last year with organizing unlawful court decisions.
Pavlo Grechkivsky, the son of former High Commercial Court Deputy Chairman Mykola Grechkyvsky, has been accused of having links to Hranovsky and Kononenko. Grechkivsky, who is a member of the High Council of Justice and has been charged with fraud, also used used to co-own 7.5 hectares of land with Yemelyanov.
A friendly prosecutor
In August 2014, Hranovsky sent then Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Herasimyuk a summary of a criminal investigation that could influence his conflict with Teder over Sky Mall, according to emails published by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a Kyiv Post partner.
Herasimyuk told OCCRP he did not have an email address.
His involvement in the Sky Mall conflict also surfaced when in November 2014 he responded to a letter sent by Estonian Prime Minister Taavi Roivas to Poroshenko.
Herasimyuk wrote that a criminal case into the mall’s seizure was under way.
Roivas asked Poroshenko on Aug. 27, 2014 to help Teder protect his rights in the Sky Mall dispute. He wrote that “the attackers are using the Ukrainian legal system and law enforcement authorities to bar the investor from controlling his resources.”
“We have raised this issue at numerous high level meetings with the Ukrainian authorities but unfortunately we have seen no progress on the case,” Gert Antsu, Estonia’s ambassador to Ukraine, told the Kyiv Post. “Thus it remains a serious concern for us that our investor is not able to use his assets and we keep working on the issue.”
The documents published by the OCCRP also show that Herasimiuk, who later became a parliamentary aide to Hranovsky, was being offered bribes to drop charges against Yanukovych allies, and that he transferred $700,000 abroad in 2014.
‘Bald birds’
Kyiv’s Dnipro district prosecutor’s office also played a key role in the Sky Mall dispute.
The police and prosecutors of the Dnipro and Solomyanka districts have investigated bribery, embezzlement and forgery cases against employees of Arricano who clashed with Hranovsky in the conflict. Some of these cases were closed in 2016 due to a lack of evidence.
In 2015 AutoMaidan activist Serhiy Stroy took a picture of smartphone correspondence between Dnipro district prosecutors in a courtroom. In the messages, prosecutors Serhiy Lysenko and Artem Tenditny threatened to open a criminal case against Stroy, “beat the “sh*t out of him” and have someone steal his phone.
In May, investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap took a picture of Hranovsky drinking tea with Lysenko. Several sources told the Kyiv Post that Lysenko now acts as an informal liaison between Hranovsky and the department for high-profile economic cases at the Prosecutor General’s Office, which is accused of fabricating cases on behalf of Poroshenko, Kononenko and Hranovsky.
A loyal judge
Tenditny, Lysenko and their fellow Dnipro district prosecutor Denys Solovey were fired after the scandal, but in April Kyiv’s Administrative District Court ruled to reinstate Lysenko and Solovey, though eventually they failed to get their jobs back.
But another participant in the correspondence, Anton Drozd, was appointed an investigator at the Kyiv prosecutor’s office in 2016.
After Kyiv’s Administrative District Court made the decisions, Radio Liberty filmed Hranovsky meeting last May with Pavlo Vovk, chairman of the court, as well as with Oleksandr Ruvin, head of the Kyiv Institute for Forensic Research.
The court has also ruled in favor of Hranovsky and Adamovsky when Arricano disputed the actions of registrars in the Sky Mall conflict.
Meanwhile, fugitive lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a suspect in an embezzlement case, has claimed that a representative of Hranovsky had requested a $2 million bribe to have an administrative court give Onyshchenko back his immunity to prosecution – an apparent reference to Kyiv’s District Administrative Court.
Onyshchenko, who fled Ukraine last year before being stripped of immunity, claimed in December that he had evidence of Poroshenko’s alleged corruption, which is denied by the president.
Exempt from lustration
In 2014 the Kyiv District Administrative Court exempted prosecutor Oleh Valendyuk, an alleged ally of Hranovsky, from the lustration law on the firing of top Yanukovych-era officials in a highly controversial ruling.
Valendyuk received a monetary bonus from then Prosecutor General Artem Pshonka for cracking down on EuroMaidan protesters, according to documents obtained by the Kyiv Post.
Last July Prosecutor General Yury Lutsenko made him resign as acting chief prosecutor of Kyiv under public pressure but subsequently appointed Valendyuk first deputy prosecutor of Crimea and promoted him to a deputy head of the organization and analysis department at the Prosecutor General’s Office.
Lutsenko’s reluctance to fire Valendyuk and other Hranovsky allies and his decision to take Hranovsky with him to Cyprus last September triggered speculation about the lawmaker’s influence on the whole prosecution service.
A judge with a bribe
Hranovsky-linked prosecutors from Kyiv’s Dnipro District Court are working in tandem with the district court, where the lawmaker also allegedly wields influence.
One of the court’s judges, Mykola Chaus, was caught last year with a $150,000 bribe and fled the country.
In 2015, Chaus ruled against Arricano when it complained about prosecutors’ failure to return to the company the property that had been seized during searches. In that year he also issued an arrest warrant for Gennady Korban, a political opponent of Poroshenko, in a kidnapping and theft case.
Other judges of the court have authorized Arricano lawyer Malieiev’s arrest in 2014 and made decisions in favor of Hranovsky and Adamovsky in the case against another Arricano employee.
Oleksandr Hranovsky, a top ally of President Petro Poroshenko, faces accusations of interfering with law enforcement and influencing judges and prosecutors to promote Poroshenko’s interests.
Summary justice
The Holosiiv District Court has also ruled in favor of Hranovsky and Adamovsky in the dispute around Sky Mall.
Cases linked to the dispute were always given to judges Larysa Kalynychenko and Oksana Myroshnychenko, which led Arricano to suspect that they were doing Hranovsky’s bidding.
The court has allowed computers illegally seized from Arricano to be used as evidence in Teder’s legal dispute with Adamovsky, Arricano claims.
The Holosiiv District Court has also required businessmen Andriy Malitsky and Igor Filipenko to pay Hr 748 million to Adamovsky and Hranovsky in a business dispute over the sale of oil product retailer VikOil. The decision runs contrary to one made in 2014 by a British Virgin Islands court, which ruled that Adamovsky and Hranovsky defrauded Malitsky and Filipenko and required them to repay $35 million.
Odesa corruption
Kyiv’s Solomyanka District Court is also allegedly influenced by Hranovsky.
Last year Oleksandr Bobrovnik, a judge of the court, banned the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine from accessing Viber messages written by Olga Tkachenko, a member of the Odesa Portside Plant’s executive board under investigation in a graft case. Tkachenko used to be an aide to Hranovsky and chief executive of Sky Mall.
In 2015 the vlasti.net news site published an alleged $16 million contract between Odesa Portside Plant and Hong Kong-based Expotrade Global Limited, which is accused of buying fertilizers from the plant at below-market prices.
The contract was signed by Tkachenko.
