In early March, it was reported that a Cypriot court sentenced former Deputy Prosecutor General Rikkos Eritokritou to 3,5 years in prison on charges of conspiring with the law firm Andreas Neocleous to raid the Providencia trust fund, which held tens of millions of euros in assets belonging to the Rosinka company, whose beneficiaries were Russian citizens. This event has direct implications for the highest echelons of power in Ukraine, writes crime-ua.com.
According to Forbes, Rikkos Eritokritou and the law firm Andreas Neocleous were found guilty of attempting to raid the assets of the Rosinka company in Russia, valued at $200 million.
The former Deputy Attorney General of Cyprus was taken into custody in the courtroom. Panagiotis Neocleous, son of the founder of the law firm Andreas Neocleous, was also taken into custody; the court sentenced him to two and a half years in prison. Former partner of the firm, Andreas Kypriozlou, was sentenced to one and a half years in prison.
The judge ordered the law firm Andreas Neocleous to pay a fine of €70,000. The Cyprus Bar Association will soon consider revoking the firm’s license.
As we wrote earlier, at the end of September 2015, the Supreme Court of Cyprus unanimously dismissed the Republic’s Deputy Prosecutor General, Erotokritou, from his post.
The indictment states that Erotokritou received over half a million euros for his services from the bankrupt Cyprus Popular Bank, embezzled with the complicity of Panagiotis Neocleous. The latter was swayed by greed: having decided to bribe Erotokritou, he simultaneously attempted to do so at the expense of the bankrupt bank served by Andreas Neocleous & Co. The investigation followed this documentary trail of corruption.
According to Rosbalt, Neocleous himself and his law firm, Andreas Neocleous & Co., have been mentioned more than once in connection with the offshore assets of the Ukrainian president. Petro PoroshenkoIn particular, it was reported that Bogdan Holding GmbH, a holding company directly affiliated with Poroshenko, is owned by the Cypriot company Hesutu Limited. In 2013, this company served on the board of directors of Bogdan Motors. Hesutu’s sole shareholder is Teckford Investments Financial Corporation, a British Virgin Islands company. It was also revealed that Panagiotis Neocleous (Andreas’ son), a Cypriot citizen and co-owner of the law firm Andreas Neocleous & Co., has a direct connection to Hesutu Limited.
According to Cypriot media, President Anastasiades, Neocleous & Co. head Neocleous, and former Deputy Prosecutor General Erotokritou are old friends and hail from the same port city. Neocleous, the eminence grise of Cyprus, once helped Anastasiades to the presidency. Erotokritou, whom Anastasiades later appointed as Deputy Prosecutor General, ran his campaign, lobbying for Anastasiades’ interests by initiating criminal cases against his rivals and political opponents.
Cyprus Popular Bank, now absorbed by Bank of Cyprus, specialized, like the Neocleous family that controlled it, in servicing oligarchs from the post-Soviet space. The main clients of Cyprus Popular Bank and the Neocleous family are Kremlin-connected billionaires and other individuals collectively known as the “Russian mafia.”
At one time, this Cypriot bank established a network of subsidiaries in former Soviet bloc countries operating under the Marfin Bank brand, including in Ukraine.
Marfin Bank, registered in Odessa, was bought by the scandalous banker Nikolai Lagun in 2014, but now, according to industry publications, it is within the orbit of the people’s deputy Ivan FursinEstonia’s Marfin Bank has been acquired by a shadowy Dnipro oligarch. Vadim Eromolaev and operates under the name Versobank AS, gradually becoming embroiled in scandals and criminal cases.
The Neocleous law firm operates in Ukraine under the name Andreas Neocleous & Co. However, since 2013, it has been listed in the State Register as undergoing liquidation. It was only in 2016 that it was revived, and recently changed its name to Neocleous & Dovbenko (abbreviated N&D), which is entirely appropriate—its Kyiv operations are managed by a young, talented lawyer. Andrey Dovbenko.
Before Yanukovych’s flight, he served the “Family’s money man,” Serhiy Kurchenko, advising the “young oligarch” on mergers and acquisitions. Roughly speaking, he provided legal support for the purchase and subsequent management of commercial assets using funds previously stolen from taxpayers.
It’s noteworthy that until last year, Andriy Dovbenko’s name was rarely mentioned in open sources. When it was, it was only in the context of journalistic investigations into the dealings of Yanukovych’s gang, where our lawyer was not even a minor player. However, since February-March 2016, Dovbenko has become a media personality. He comments in the press, has two Facebook accounts, created a personal website, and actively maintains personal blogs in several top online publications. He comments on everything from judicial reform to bank liquidations. On one website, we came across an article in which Andriy Dovbenko discussed how to choose the right solid fuel boiler.
Perhaps it’s just a coincidence, but at the same time Dovbenko began to emerge in the media, an interesting event occurred: the Cabinet of Ministers appointed Pavlo Moroz, an old colleague and comrade of Andriy Dovbenko, as Deputy Minister of Justice of Ukraine for State Registration.
Just so you understand: Moroz controls the registration of property rights to everything in this country. From your home and car to Akhmetov’s factories. Even those located in the ORDLO were “nationalized” by terrorist gangs and transferred to “external management” by the wanted criminal Serhiy Kurchenko, who was once assisted in managing essentially stolen assets by Pavlo Moroz’s friend, Andriy Dovbenko.
It should be noted that at the end of January, the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau Artem Sytnik Sytnyk stated at a briefing that a new type of corporate raiding has flourished in Ukraine. “Right now, corporate raiding is happening on a massive scale, thanks to interference in the property registry. We’re receiving massive complaints about the rightful owner being simply thrown out,” he said. He recalled a recent incident in which a building in central Kyiv was seized by men armed with machine guns.
“A representative of a Cypriot company came and said, ‘Look, we’re already the new owners because we’ve been added to the register.’ This is a new form of corporate raiding,” the NABU director emphasized.
In response to Sytnyk’s statement, Deputy Minister of Justice Pavlo Moroz assured that there were no widespread corporate raids using the property rights registry, only isolated intrusions into the registry. Two weeks later, on February 17, Moroz reported on the progress in combating corporate raiding at a meeting of the Ministry of Justice: “In 2016, the anti-raiding law was enacted, with 30 amendments making 90% of corporate raiding schemes impossible. Also, since 2016, the Ministry of Justice has had a Commission for the Review of Complaints in the Sphere of State Registration. It is currently the only institution in the country capable of promptly responding to isolated cases of illegal alienation of property.”
The deputy minister himself chairs the commission he’s referring to. He spoke about its activities several times throughout February. “In January 2017, we received only about 50 complaints about registration actions taken after the anti-raiding law came into effect! In other words, their number has effectively decreased fivefold!” Moroz boasted at a press conference on February 8. “Currently, the number of corporate raids in Ukraine has decreased by 90%, but we remain vigilant! The Ministry of Justice commission is working and returning illegally expropriated property to our citizens and businesses,” Moroz was quoted by the newspaper “Uriadovyi Kurier” on February 21.
However, businessmen and members of parliament offer very different assessments of the Moroz Commission’s activities. The essence of these assessments is that, under the guise of combating corporate raiding, Justice Minister Pavlo Petrenko and his deputy, Pavlo Moroz, have used the aforementioned commission to establish their own monopoly on corporate raiding.
According to published information, the commission makes the necessary decisions at the request of interested parties. Media reports indicate that fees for resolving minor issues start at $10, while assistance in raiding large industrial facilities can cost anywhere from half a million to several million dollars. Journalists claim that funds are transferred to the Ministry of Justice through a law firm headed by Andriy Dovbenko, a former classmate of Minister Petrenko. These transactions are billed as legal services to Andreas Neocleous & Co. In reality, however, these are fees for entering new data into the State Register of Property Rights, the Register of Legal Entities, or for canceling a registration action.