A recent investigative report outlines how businessman Oleg Tsyura was allegedly involved in facilitating an illicit flow of ilmenite to occupied Crimea through a network of front companies portrayed as “German.” According to the investigation, this scheme diverted millions from the state-owned UMCC even as officials publicly promoted an anticorruption agenda.
In 2020–2021, a large-scale corruption scheme operated around the state-owned enterprise United Mining and Chemical Company (UMCC), with Swiss-Ukrainian businessman Oleg Tsyura as one of its key figures.
According to journalistic investigations, Tsyura organized ilmenite supplies to occupied Crimea through the “German” company ITS International Trade, within which part of the funds ($88–108 per ton of raw material, or roughly $2.3 million) was diverted to companies under his control, including the Czech-based EPI Group and intermediary Belanto. In addition, Tsyura was linked to the “shadow headquarters” of Pavlo Prysyazhnyuk, which coordinated the diversion of funds, agency fees, and offshore transactions. Now, amid ongoing investigations by Ukrainian law enforcement agencies, Tsyura is actively attempting to erase information about these crimes from the internet, which we have already detailed in our previous article.
According to media reports, Prysyazhnyuk, through his associate – the acting head of the UMCC board, Artur Somov (former CFO of Karpatygaz LLC, a ’daughter’ company of Milsen Energy AB) – influenced the sales of the state enterprise’s products. In the summer of 2020, Somov introduced the “German” company ITS International Trade, managed by Oleg Tsyura, to sell ilmenite to the occupied Crimea. Allegedly, $88–108 from each ton of raw material was diverted, allowing approximately $2.3 million to be funneled away.
The Czech company EPI Group, which at that time was owned by Prysyazhnyuk (30% of shares), also participated in the scheme. On August 6, 2020, ITS transferred about 472.89 thousand euros to EPI as “agency fees” through UniCredit Bank. The contract between EPI and ITS had been signed back in March 2020. In March 2021, EPI sent offers to consumers to buy UMCC’s products.
For regular supplies, according to investigations, another Czech intermediary company, Belanto, was used, through which ilmenite from the Irshansk Mining and Processing Plant was supplied to Crimea from October 2020. Simultaneously, Denys Kudin, the curator of UMCC at the State Property Fund, was engaged in “whitening” Belanto’s image in the media.
Against this backdrop, the State Property Fund publicly demonstrated a fight against corruption: its head, Dmytro Sennychenko, made videos about exposing bribe-takers, while in the shadows, according to journalists, a complex “multi-move” scheme with kickbacks and offshore accounts was at work.
