I am 99% sure that ICU serves the current government in Ukraine. If so, this is the third government in a row. The group's services were first used by Viktor Yanukovych's entourage, and secondly by Petro Poroshenko himself. Now, perhaps, someone from the highest echelons of government is using them.
Where did this assumption come from? The Investment Capital Ukraine group (aka ICU) is supernaturally immune. Since the days of Yanukovych, it has had a lot of adventures. Each of them could have resulted not only in a loss of reputation and licence, but also in a court sentence. The episodes in which ICU cooperated with Russians and sanctioned persons ought to have ended particularly badly. But this did not happen. This immunity can only be explained by the protection of the authorities.
Makar Paseniuk and Kostyantyn Stetsenko from Investment Capital Ukraine are true champions. They remain untouchable even after three changes of government, despite a very colourful past. They are not touched for their past deeds, and they are also very bold in the present. But in general, the news is not good for ICU. There are always untouchables. But as soon as the government changes or mutates, the former untouchables fall out of the fold. From that moment on, they will be prosecuted for those episodes that no one had "noticed" before.
"THE VULTURES"
The other day I read a statement from collective investors. According to them, the owners of ICU Makar Paseniuk and Kostyantyn Stetsenko continue to behave like vultures. They promised to settle the conflict with other investors, but changed their minds.
I believed what I read. From what I know, ICU indeed behaves unethically, although it is just business for them. The group has stalemated more than a hundred respectable Ukrainian families and wants to buy their securities for a nominal 10-15% of the price. After that, Paseniuk and Stetsenko will unblock the problem and get up to 100% – but for themselves. This is exactly how the "buy low, sell high" strategy works, which ICU has been pursuing since its inception in the early 2000s.
CONTEXT
We are talking about Loan Participation Notes (LPN), bonds that Alfa Bank Ukraine sold to its VIP clients before the full-scale invasion. The ICU group was among the LPN owners. As far as I know, the group has purchased securities in several tranches of bonds for quite large amounts (not necessarily with its own funds).
Before the outbreak of the full-scale war, Alfa Bank Ukraine changed its name to Sense Bank. After the full-scale invasion, Ukraine nationalised Sense Bank and refused to pay under the LPNs. The bonds automatically defaulted. At that very moment, they became "cheap" because their price was zero. However, the issuer of these securities, EMIS Finance BV, suddenly promised to return the money. It proposed a restructuring mechanism. The LPNs have become "expensive".
LPN holders in eight of the ten tranches have managed to restructure their bonds and are now awaiting repayment. But there are still LPN holders in two tranches, in which ICU has a majority of votes. The group simply refuses to agree to restructure and does not allow the forced hostages to do so. ICU recently promised to release the remaining LPN holders by exchanging their securities for its own bonds in restructured tranches, but (apparently) changed its mind.
Such behaviour violates the ethics of financial markets and can have dangerous consequences for ICU. Only marginalised individuals or those with powerful protection can allow themselves to do this. ICU is probably protected by the authorities. Any other financial company would have had problems with the inspection authorities, licence or reputation long ago. Any other – but not this one.
However, in the case of the LPNs, Investment Capital Ukraine Group has affected the interests of far more than just the most vulnerable people in society. In my sincere opinion, Messrs Paseniuk and Stetsenko should not have accumulated enemies for such petty reasons. Sooner or later, even they can get unlucky. Now, new adversaries have gained the ability to draw the attention of law enforcement agencies to highly dangerous episodes in the work of ICU.
SUCCESS STORY
On the surface, Investment Capital Ukraine is a seller of military bonds to the public. However, ICU has always provided money management services to politically important and wealthy individuals. Figuratively speaking, the corrupt funds passed through several nodes and turned into "clean" anonymous money from international investors. After that, they can even be imported into Ukraine or used to buy Eurobonds of Ukrainian issuers on international markets. It is conceivable that DTEK's Eurobonds could have been bought with Poroshenko's money, which had been previously transferred to offshore accounts.
ICU has offices in Ukraine and London. ICU Holdings Limited, the group's head office, is registered in the BVI and has a company in Cyprus. Paseniuk officially resides in Switzerland, while Stetsenko lives in Dubai. It cannot be ruled out that this roughly reflects the geography of business. Working internationally increases your freedom of action. The money of famous people is turned into "foreign investment" with a wave of the hand. Our law enforcement officers receive an ironclad "excuse" as to why they allegedly "did not notice anything".
A joint investigation by the supervisory authorities of Ukraine, the UK, Switzerland and several other countries could help to find out whose money ICU is servicing. However, the request for such an investigation must come from the Ukrainian authorities. Not once during the time of Yanukovych, Poroshenko, or even Zelensky did the Ukrainian authorities make such a request. In particular, the NSDC persistently "does not notice" the ICU's cooperation with Russians and sanctioned persons. Why is that?
In Yanukovych's time, the immunity of ICU was explained by the fact that the company handled the money of the President's "Family". Rumours suggested that the amount of funds siphoned off was $1.5 billion!
Under Poroshenko, ICU co-owner Makar Paseniuk was perceived as Poroshenko's "right-hand man" and acted almost openly. You already know about the blind trust, TV channels, Lipetsk, VTB and DTEK's Eurobonds.
Officials were dragged through the courts for the same "Rotterdam+", but the ICU seemed to be invisible. Poroshenko's ally, Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko, looked into the rumours but later admitted that the ICU's reputation was crystal clear.
During the presidency of Volodymyr Zelensky, the Poroshenko-era cases could have been reopened and ICU could have been called as a key witness in court – but this was not done. There has also been no progress in criminal cases opened in the past. Criminal cases against ICU were indeed opened from time to time. One of them concerned the Brokbusinessbank case, but it was quickly closed. There was also a case concerning the Rotterdam+ case, and in this case, the group's office was even searched, but the investigation was soon closed.
Why is that? The most logical version is that the ICU is servicing the money of the highest officials right now. And the existing criminal cases are an insurance policy for the authorities against unpredictable actions. Currently, there are two criminal proceedings against ICU. The first is the already mentioned episode with Sberbank Ukraine and the interest misappropriated through Avangard Bank. Another is case No. 52019000000000044 of 18.01.2019 on the infliction of multibillion-dollar losses to the Ukrainian economy as a result of a conspiracy by a group of individuals. These cases have been opened, apparently, to ensure that Paseniuk and Stetsenko do not disappear with clients' money and preserve anonymity.
And yet, these are real trifles compared to the proceedings that ICU could have received.
This is my personal version, my value judgement. I don't know for sure whose money the ICU is servicing. But it is very possible.
Nevertheless, the ICU still has high-profile episodes that may later turn into court sentences. Here are three such episodes involving the group, in addition to those mentioned earlier.
Episode 1. "Coal case".
The Shevchenkivskyi Court of Kyiv is considering the "coal case". In 2014-2015, Ukraine imported coal from the occupied territories. The investigation believes that this was done by agreement between ex-President Petro Poroshenko, OPFL leader Viktor Medvedchuk, former Minister of Coal Industry Volodymyr Demchyshyn and businessman Serhiy Kuzyara. Officially, the authorities announced the import of coal from South Africa, but the process was artificially blocked, and state-owned CHPs had to burn coal from the so-called DPR/LPR. Viktor Medvedchuk testified against his accomplices on the eve of his extradition to Russia.
In terms of the ICU's involvement, the most prominent of these characters were Poroshenko and Demchyshyn. I have already written about the ties between the former president and the Investment Capital Ukraine group. Let me remind you a little bit about Demchyshyn.
Contrary to popular belief, he was not an employee of the ICU. Mr Demchyshyn was a junior partner of Makar Paseniuk, Valeriia Gontareva and Kostyantyn Stetsenko and held a 10% stake in the group. As you know, the ICU has become a "cadre pipeline" for Poroshenko. Gontareva became the head of the NBU, Dmytro Vovk headed the NEURC [National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission], and Demchyshyn became the Minister of Energy and Coal Industry. He held this position from 2014 to 2016, at the height of the "coal case".
He personally appointed the heads of state-owned enterprises in the DPR/LPR, and on his instructions, state-owned companies in Ukraine transferred money to these enterprises. Also, on Demchyshyn's instructions, electricity was supplied to the LPR – without payment, of course. It is unlikely that Demchyshyn did this on his own initiative. The threads go back to Poroshenko and Medvedchuk.
And now for the interesting part. Before his appointment, during his tenure as Minister, and even after his dismissal, Demchyshyn remained a partner in ICU, owning 9.99% in Avangard Bank, 9.99% in ICU Holdings Limited, 9.99% in Westal Holdings LTD and stakes in other related companies. At the same time, Paseniuk was carrying out numerous instructions from Poroshenko. So, inside the ICU, they must have been aware of the progress of the "coal case". In my opinion, this could have made the company's owners accomplices to Poroshenko in some of the crimes he was charged with.
In 2021, Demchyshyn was apparently warned of impending trouble. When the SBU and SBI investigators served the ex-minister with a notice of suspicion and the Pecherskyi court seized his property, it was too late. ICU issued a statement that Demchyshyn was no longer a partner in the group. Soon after, the former minister was allowed to leave the territory of Ukraine.
The investigation strangely "did not notice" Demchyshyn's ex-partners from the ICU. They were left out of the "coal case" without even receiving the status of accomplices, and "Rotterdam+" affected the company only symbolically. The ICU is a treasure trove of insider information. Why did they stay away?
Episode 2. The fronting of Grigorishin and Poroshenko
In January 2015, ICU bought a 25% stake in Vinnytsiaoblenergo. Three months earlier, the stake had been bought at a privatisation tender by Fondovyi Aktiv, a company believed to be linked to Russian oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin. He already owned 72% of Vinnytsiaoblenergo.
The privatisation auction looked like a sale into the right hands, and the resale of ICU looked like a "forensic clean-up" of the asset. There was an opinion that 25% of Vinnytsiaoblenergo went to Grigorishin. But there was also another version – that the package went to Petro Poroshenko in exchange for the immunity of Grigorishin's other businesses.
The most interesting developments began under Volodymyr Zelensky. After the outbreak of the full-scale war, Grigorishin's Zaporozhtransformator and Turboatom were nationalised, but, surprisingly, his stakes in six regional power companies were not affected. I note that Turboatom's shares were taken away from Svarog Asset Management, Grigorishin's management company.
The NSDC imposed personal sanctions against Grigorishin himself only on 19 January 2025. The media wrote about the asset freeze, which would pave the way for confiscation. However, the official registers say nothing about this. I assume that there is no actual asset freeze.
For example, Vinnytsiaoblenergo is not under sanctions, has not been seized or confiscated.
The Russian didn't try too hard to hide his asset. From 22 February 2023, the official beneficiary of 72.5% of Vinnytsiaoblenergo is Olena Umanska, Director of the Asset Management Department of Svarog Asset Management, a company of Konstantin Grigorishin.
Prior to that, Maksym Markov, Grigorishin's lawyer, had been listed as a beneficiary of Vinnytsiaoblenergo for many years. In short, it was not difficult to recognise the regional power companies as Grigorishin's property and seize them in favour of Ukraine. However, there was no desire to do so. Why is the NSDC so loyal to Grigorishin?
And where does the ICU's immunity come from? Today, the official registers show that the beneficiaries of 25% of Vinnytsiaoblenergo shares are Makar Paseniuk and Kostiantyn Stetsenko. It is highly likely that Investment Capital Ukraine is only a nominal owner of 25% of Vinnytsiaoblenergo. In other words, ICU pretends to own it. If my guess is correct, ICU holds shares for the benefit of either Grigorishin or Poroshenko. Both options are very risky, as both Grigorishin and Poroshenko are under sanctions. This means that ICU cooperates with sanctioned persons, which, according to the law, entails punishment for the financial group.
You don't need to be a marshal of the SBU to make this assumption. If I were the National Security and Defence Council, I would have investigated long ago whether ICU was a nominal owner. However, I have not heard of any investigations. On the contrary, the group has excellent relations with the government, despite a lawsuit with the Cabinet of Ministers over Avangard Bank. This is very similar to the lack of complaints against the group during the Poroshenko era. I would like to remind you that Prosecutor General Yurii Lutsenko searched for, but "did not find", evidence of the group's illegal activities.
Episode 3. Transactions with railcars
The Minister of Defence under Yanukovych, Pavlo Lebedev (who fled to Russia), had his own business. Back in 2011, his company Interlizinvest received a $90 million EBRD loan and used it to buy 2,387 freight cars. After Euromaidan, Lebedev decided not to repay the loan and instead take the railcars for free.
Gennadii Korban added to the intrigue. He attempted to raid the railcars, seizing control of Interlizinvest.
The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has been in court for years, trying to recover its railcars, and in 2017 it won. The EBRD lawyers registered an offshore company in Cyprus, which established Crea I UA, Crea 2 UA, Crea 3 UA and Crea 4 UA in Ukraine. They registered the same 2,387 railcars and began to manage them on behalf of the bank.
But this is only the money part of the story. The railcar component was much more interesting. Lebedev's organisation owned the railcars but did not operate them. "Interlizinvest managed the railcars for two companies – EvrazTrans Ukraine and Transgarant Ukraine. Both had Russian roots.
For example, EvrazTrans Ukraine belonged to the orbit of Roman Abramovich's companies. It was probably used to service the shipments of Sukha Balka Mining and Processing Plant, which also belonged to Abramovich. The plant is now registered to Oleksandr Yaroslavskyi, and officially Evraz is not present in Ukraine.
"Transgarant Ukraine" is a different story. It was a professional management company. The company leased railcars to large industrial consumers, among whom ore producers transported particularly large volumes.
Even the EBRD trusted the professionalism of this company. While the bank was suing Pavel Lebedev's Interlizinvest, the court transferred the railcars into the management of Spetsvagon Transleasing (SVTL), which in turn handed them over for operation to Transgarant Ukraine.
"Transgarant Ukraine" was a subsidiary of the Russian company Transgarant, which was part of the Russian transport group FESCO. The group belonged to the Magomedov brothers, but at some point their business came to the attention of Sergei Shishkarev, Putin's colleague, and the state-owned Rosatom. The Magomedovs ran into problems and began a chaotic sale of assets. Moreover, by 2017, tensions between Ukraine and Russia had already become critical. So FESCO decided to get rid of Transgarant Ukraine.
It was acquired by the Investment Capital of Ukraine group. And not as an empty shell, but with a large railcar fleet. I don't have a one hundred percent understanding of which railcars the ICU bought. Therefore, I will present three fairly equal versions.
The first version is that ICU bought Transgarant Ukraine with Russian railcars from the Russians in order to "clean up" these assets and then resell them into the right hands. It is likely that they also bought decommissioned Russian railcars.
The website of Transgarant Ukraine, which has already been liquidated, reads: "The Company operates more than 3,000 rolling stock units, of which two and a half thousand railcars are its own fleet, consisting of universal gondola cars and specialised rolling stock (pellet cars)."
Also, until 2020, decommissioned railcars from Russia were imported into Ukraine. The Russians invested heavily in renewing their railway carriage fleet and sold the old railcars to Ukraine. The railcars were bought by our large carrier companies, including agricultural companies and ore miners, as it was more profitable for them to operate the wrecked railcars than to build new ones. In particular, grain carriers built between 1975 and 1991 entered Ukraine.
In 2020, the industry association Ukrmetallurgprom named the figure of 89,000 units of all types of railcars. At that time, it was almost equivalent to the railcar fleet of Ukrzaliznytsia itself.
It is unlikely that the purpose of buying Transgarant Ukraine was to enter the logistics business. Let me remind you that Investment Capital Ukraine is a financial group. Its core competencies are securities, investments, and the provision of human resources for government. Most likely, ICU provided "clean-up" services so that a large industrial buyer could buy legally "clean", "Ukrainian" railcars. I don't know who the buyer could have been. It is likely that these are Rinat Akhmetov's structures, as in previous years Transgarant Ukraine operated not only Lebedev's railcars but also Metinvest's railcars.
As for ICU, even though cooperation with the Russians was not a crime, it was publicly unacceptable. The annexation of Crimea and the ATO have already happened. However, this did not stop the ICU. By the way, this is not the only case when the group cooperated with the Russians, in particular, for the benefit of Petro Poroshenko.
There is a second version of the railcars' provenance, which is also very plausible. ICU bought "Transgarant Ukraine", including its railcars, from the Russians. Perhaps it was the railway carriage fleet that the EBRD got back from Pavlo Lebedev through the courts. "Transgarant Ukraine" has managed EBRD railcars before.
The news story below says that ICU was considering a joint business with the EBRD based on the railcars that the bank had taken over from Lebedev.
It's quite easy to come up with a legal structure under which the railcars could have ended up on the balance sheet of Transgarant Ukraine. For example, it could be a financial lease. It is quite possible that ICU bought the railcars from the EBRD and then resold the company along with the railcars.
The third version is that ICU bought Transgarant Ukraine from the Russians, and not only Russian but also Ukrainian railcars sold by Ukrzaliznytsia could have been put on its balance sheet.
In 2018–2020, Ukrzaliznytsia sold off old railcars on a massive scale through Prozorro.Sale. They were sold as scrap metal at very low prices. No one will ever know what the new owners actually got. It is possible that a healthy portion of Ukrzaliznytsia's car fleet could have gone "off the back of the truck". But this is, of course, an assumption.
‼️
Let me summarise all three versions. ICU bought "Transgarant Ukraine", including its railcars, from the Russians. At the same time, the Kyiv-based financial group has become one of the top 5 owners of private railcar fleets.
ICU liquidated Transgarant Ukraine in January 2021. It is not known where the railcar fleet has gone. However, a whole group of logistics companies, including Rail Logistics and Logistor Ukraine, continue to operate at the same address where the company used to be. Who owns them and to whom they provide services is unknown.
What happened in those two years is a commercial secret. ICU was featured in media reports about how Ukraine's largest companies were importing decommissioned Russian railcars through Estonia. Quote: "Another 1,000 railcars with an expired service life have been concentrated by the so-called Transgarant Group or the Tetianych-Paseniuk group through Rail Investments, Invest Agro Capital and Rail Engineering. Valeriy Volkov, the father of Tetianych's wife, Tetiana, worked as CEO of the Russian company Rostovvagonprom LLC from 5 February 2015 to 27 May 2020. The Group also imported Russian second-hand railcars through Estonia, setting up a subsidiary LOGISTOR AS there, which allows it to formally conceal the Russian origin of the railcars."
The staff of Transgarant Ukraine did not disappear after the acquisition. At the same time, several logistics companies were located at 5 Dilova Street, building 2 in Kyiv, such as Rail Logistics and Logistor Ukraine. Perhaps the business is still operating.
The events of 2014–2020 had terrible consequences for Ukrzaliznytsia. The state-owned company ceased to be a monopolist in railway transportation and has been slowly crawling towards the graveyard ever since. The share of UZ [Ukrzaliznytsia] cars in Ukraine's freight traffic was falling rapidly: 2018 – 47%, 2019 – 37%, 2020 – 21%. Let me remind you that as of the summer of 2020, the shocking figure was 19%. I don't know what it is now.
Could it have happened "by accident"? On the one hand, Ukrzaliznytsia banned the import of railcars from Russia and limited their service life. On the other hand, everything was happening in a strange way.
While owning a private railcar fleet is not a crime, the uncontrolled importation of decommissioned Russian railcars into Ukraine and the sale of Ukrzaliznytsia's railcars would have been impossible without the decisions of specific individuals in the central government.
There was no investigation into the railcar schemes. This once again demonstrates the inviolability of the ICU. But this is not forever.
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