A Secret Deal of Petro Poroshenko and Valeriya Gontareva

There was an interesting event that took place 8 days before the assignment of Valeriya Gontareva as NBU Head and 5 days before she sold her ICU shares. On June 11, 2014 CHARTOMENA LIMITED, Cyprus obtained investment certificates of ICU fund for a sum of 21,009,399.00 UAH.

Such a seemingly ordinary deal may conceal rather interesting affairs since the Cypriot offshore CHARTOMENA LIMITED stays in the shadow of Petro Poroshenko looming over it. And the question is ‘Why did he actually need to invest in ICU?’. The answers to this question make experts differ in their views. Let me describe all of the versions.

CHARTOMENA LIMITED is one of the main offshore companies belonging to the business empire of Petro Poroshenko and his partners.

CHARTOMENA LIMITED is registered in Cyprus at Chrysorogiatissis & Kolokotroni, 3040, Limassol and is headed by Andri Atanasiu.

This company was used by Petro Poroshenko to move his Russian agrarian business offshore in 2014.

Andri Atanasiu, Head of CHARTOMENA LIMITED and a resident of Cyprus, leads a few other offshore companies that work for Petro Poroshenko’s partners. HUDC Holding Limited is one of them and you’ve already read about its corrupt business on purchase of defense equipment serving the interests of Oleh Svynarchuk-Hladkovskyi.

So, I’ve got an informative document and according to it CHARTOMENA LIMITED stroke a contract with Westal Holdings Ltd acting on behalf of LLC INVESTMENT CAPITAL UKRAINE on June 11, 2014. The contract concerned purchase of the investment certificates in the amount of 8 390 units for 2 504.10 UAH each. Total value of the deal was 21,009,399.00 UAH.

Open the document in a new window

Indeed, the Cypriot offshore being filled up with the funds that were moved by Poroshenko’s structures out of Ukraine invested them to the company of Valeriya Gontareva. But what was it done for?

The first what confused all of the experts was the price of the certificates.

According to stockworld portal data, as at June 12, 2014 the price of securities of AMC INVESTMENT CAPITAL UKRAINE was 2 168.79 UAH each but the deal with CHARTOMENA LIMITED was struck with a different price and it was 2 504.1 UAH. So the overpayment reached 15% that made more than 3mln UAH in total. The exchange rate of USD/UAH at that time was 1 USD to 11.6 UAH.

And here we go with the versions expressed by the experts.

Version I. Petro Poroshenko bought Valeriya Gontareva’s ICU share.

5 days after ICU certificates were bought by the offshore company CHARTOMENA LIMITED Valeriya Gontareva stated that she was going to sell her 22.74% of ICU share to ICU itself. Such a sale was agreed to be payable by instalments over a period of 5 years.

The total value of the deal was kept confidential. However, in the end of 2014 Valeriya Gontareva received her first tranche from ICU amounting to 24,271,000.00 UAH and that amount was almost equal to the value of the deal concluded between CHARTOMENA LIMITED and ICU.

Market experts suppose that the debt to Valeriya Gontareva was paid with the money from the Cypriot offshore. They also assume that such kind of investments was done by CHARTOMENA LIMITED in 2015, 2016 and the following years as well.

If this version is reckoned a trustworthy one it becomes quite clear why ICU was the one engaged in preparing Roshen sale since August 2014 and its further transfer to the blind trust. The operation was done in consortium with Rothschild Investment Company.

Having an indirect control over ICU given by the obtained share of Valeriya Gontareva, Petro Poroshenko managed to transfer Roshen to the blind trust just like he wanted to. For those who are not competent in the issue I recommend to read ‘The Project 85’.

Certainly, the official subdivision of shares among ICU shareholders looks quite the other way: the main ICU shareholders are Makar Pasenyuk and Kostyantyn Stetsenko. Each of them holds 41.7095 % of ICU shares.

However, the experts suppose that these guys function as a cover and the real owner of Valeriya Gontareva’s ICU share is Petro Poroshenko who bought it through the investment of the controlled by him offshore company and Makar Pasenyuk is more than just Poroshenko’s financial adviser. He is also a holder of Poroshenko’s ICU share.

Version II. Petro Poroshenko gained control over Avangard Bank.

Other experts in the field of banking consider the investment of almost 2mln USD in ICU to be a good opportunity for Petro Poroshenko to get control over the bank Avangard that is in the ownership of ICU through Westal Holdings Ltd.

Avangard Bank is one of the most mysterious ones that got in the spotlight during the so called bank-fall that was initiated by Gontareva in 2014. While the majority of banks was suffering losses and barely stayed afloat, Avangard Bank was making money and even developed. In the first half of 2015 its profit reached to approximately 11mln UAH and for the year of 2016 the bank tripled its assets and moved up the bank rating by 30 points.

If the version supporting the idea that Petro Poroshenko gained control over the bank Avangard through his investment to ICU is true, the unprecedented success of the bank can be easily explained regardless of being publicly attacked by security forces.

Version III. Petro Poroshenko bought 25% of PJSC Vinnytsyaoblenergo.

Petro Poroshenko’s interests in power supply industry could be one more cause of CHARTOMENA investment to ICU.

So, in December 2014 Closed Non-Diversified Investment Fund INVESTMENT CAPITAL BOUNDS FUND under the control of LLC AMC INVESTMENT CAPITAL UKRAINE (ICU) purchased 25% of PJSC VINNYTSYAOBLENERGO calling such a deal to be a portfolio investment. However, it’s not known who that portfolio belonged to.

It could be justified to suppose that, having such a big energy consumers as Vinnytsya Confectionary, the assets of Petro Poroshenko could be replenished by shares in the field of power supply industry for the money that was formerly moved offshore.