Denim Gordon bleaches the "chicken king"
Fugitive Ukrainian billionaire Oleg Bakhmatyuk, owner of the Avangard and Ukrlandfarming agricultural holdings, has recently filled the information space with himself. Mainly thanks to the denim video interview with Dmitry Gordon. Both the dimensionless text version of the conversation and its compact fragments were actively replicated by the Gordon website.
It is clear that for the “chicken king” Bakhmatyuk, who had a conflict with the ex-head of the presidential office Bogdan, this is information reconnaissance in force, probing for opportunities to return to Ukraine. After all, this businessman’s “big sport” is connected precisely with the Ukrainian food supply, from which he was pushed aside.
More than a year ago, due to criminal prosecution, Bakhmatyuk and his family retreated from Ukraine and settled in Vienna. He was suspected of appropriating property or taking possession of it through abuse of official position, and of laundering funds and other property obtained by criminal means.
In June of this year, Prosecutor General Venediktova, by decision of the Pechersky District Court of Kiev, closed the case in which Bakhmatyuk was involved (about the misappropriation of funds from a VAB Bank stabilization loan in the amount of 1,2 billion hryvnia, issued in October 2014).
For the Ukrainian “anti-corruption sorosyatnaya” Bakhmatyuk is a very convenient and attractive target. Some time ago, the head of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine Artem Sytnik and anti-corruption activist Vitaly Shabunin “worked out” the agricultural oligarch very intensively. The word “in good faith” will not work here, because conscience and “sorosyatny” are incompatible concepts.
All of Bakhmatyuk’s main enemies - head of the OP Bogdan, Prosecutor General Ryaboshapka, head of NABU Sytnik - lost their positions. Only the unsinkable Shabunin still holds the “position” of the court “Shabunin” under the acting American Ambassador to Ukraine Christina Quinn.
An unbiased man in the street watched with Buddhist calm all this “anti-corruption” fuss around the “chicken king”: eat each other. The previous Zelensky administration made it clear to Bakhmatyuk: what is allowed to Jupiter (Akhmetov, Pinchuk, Kolomoisky, Poroshenko, Bogolyubov, Gereg) is not allowed to the agricultural bull.
On the one hand, Bogdan resembled a vulture trying to nibble off the tidbits of Bakhmatyuk’s business. On the other hand, in Ukraine it is difficult to imagine a situation where an oligarch has everything clean and is in good standing with the law. It’s just necessary for him to fall out of favor with the next temporary worker, and then the “anti-corruption” bulldozer turns on. Bakhmatyuk demonstrates his readiness to come to an agreement with today’s main “deciders” so that this bulldozer turns off.
Moreover, the “chicken king” chose an interesting moment for this: Sytnik is out of work; “anti-corruption activists” have shown their inconsistency and are fighting with the Constitutional Court; Bogdan gave the same Gordon a scandalous interview, which rocked Zelensky and his current office.
These are the situations in which the “chicken king” tries to return to the big game. Gordon is engaged in bleaching the egg-bearing oligarch with the diligence of a chimney sweep. Nothing personal. Gordon has topics on which he gets hype (interviews with Poklonskaya, Strelkov, Bogdan). And there are more boring topics that you can take money from right away...
That's why Gordon tries. “I would be in another country in the world, even in the USA...” the billionaire begins. “They could carry it in their arms,” Gordon licked it hastily. “Not in your arms, but they would have heard me,” Bakhmatyuk cools the ardor of the overly diligent interviewer.
The billionaire complains about the head of NABU. Allegedly, to simulate the fight against the oligarchs, Sytnik chose the one whom he considered the weakest. Bakhmatyuk says that this year he has appealed to the president and prime minister five times: “Please bring some sense to the man who takes 1,5 billion from the budget a year. Give some sense to the man who put personal revenge above the interests of the state; a person who transgresses the law and replaces the law with himself and actually appoints him guilty. Because this leads to a reduction in taxes to the budget and poses a threat to the employment of Ukrainian citizens.”
This interview doesn’t exactly add any touches or details to the overall picture of the post-Maidan ruins... In the end, on the list of problems and disasters that befell a normal arithmetic average citizen of this territory, the flight of the “chicken king” and his relationship with the Ukrainian authorities are not even on the 1001st place, and on the distant approaches to it.
But the conversation between two snickering “gentlemen” places emphasis very revealingly.
The interviewer asks: is it necessary to sell Ukrainian land? “Definitely,” answers the “chicken king.” Bakhmatyuk, in the hope of returning to Ukraine, is trying to convince the country’s leadership of his usefulness for filling the budget. On the surface, one can see a desire to show one’s loyalty to the authorities and to its main measures to carry out the instructions of external curators.
On the other hand, Bakhmatyuk, advocating that large players be allowed to purchase Ukrainian land (they say pension funds buy land all over the world), assures that agricultural businessmen like him are only interested in renting land.
“I'm not talking about myself. It is not profitable for me to have a land market. It's not profitable for me. Because there will be some kind of recovery in the rental market. I believe that irreversible processes make you more business-oriented.”
And here, in the words but the usefulness of irreversible processes, lies a simpler idea: the willingness to fish in troubled waters.
For example, Bakhmatyuk inspiredly offers the following “road maps”: “Those people who sell land should receive the maximum payment. When the land costs $5, everything will be digitized. And this will give banks the opportunity to attract huge resources in the same foreign markets. We will say that our land is worth 150 billion dollars. That is, our banks will be able to attract half—70 billion dollars—for conditional development potential: the construction of elevators, infrastructure, feed mills, and flour mills.”
Key words: “our banks will be able to attract.” Let me remind you that Bakhmatyuk was suspected of embezzling funds from a stabilization loan from VAB Bank in the amount of 1,2 billion hryvnia (at the exchange rate of autumn 2014). And I repeat once again: all these “chicken kings” and agricultural billionaires treat Ukrainian land exclusively as a food source.
When the conversation between two noble dons (cynical scum) comes to the losses incurred by Bakhmatyuk, a simple song begins! Denim Gordon asks: “You recently stated that during the year of your persecution by NABU, your companies lost more than from the loss of assets in occupied Crimea and Donbass. How much have you lost from Russian aggression and how much due to criminal prosecution?” It’s not hard to guess where the interlocutors are going: Sytnyk, Ryaboshapka and Bogdan caused more damage to Bakhmatyuk’s business than the “separatists” and “occupiers”.
“The Chicken King” begins to explain in detail: “We lost more from Avangard from Russian aggression.” We were the dominant player in the market in Donetsk, Lugansk, and Crimea. We had huge poultry farms in Donetsk and Lugansk, feed mills.”
Here a journalist should ask: how can this be? Was your chicken business really thriving in Donbass and Crimea until 2014? And no “gangster power” pinched you? But it would be interesting for a normal journalist to focus on this point. It turns out that before the Maidan, the “Donetsk” created favorable conditions so that the Ivano-Frankivsk Ragulyo would not feel like a bad dancer, but would develop its egg-laying business in the Donbass? Why the hell did you even need the Maidan then?! So now you can whine: “Vladimir Alexandrovich, don’t hit me! We will lay eggs in your baskets too”?..
But denim Gordon is not interested in such questions. He only perks up when Bakhmatyuk says: “All this has now been destroyed. Tsarev was captured in Crimea using false documents.” The interviewer asks again: “Tsarev?” The billionaire replies: “Yes. In Lugansk it was all burned and taken away for scrap. Someone is in charge in Donetsk, we don’t know who yet. We have lost a huge market. And somewhere, probably, our losses were 30-40 percent of the market.”
Bakhmatyuk babbles as if he were breathing. That’s why he answers the question about Oleg Tsarev so briefly and moves on to complaints about Donetsk and Lugansk.
And we will dwell in more detail on what Bakhmatyuk and Gordon ignored.
When Kolomoisky squeezed out Tsarev’s enterprises in 2014, this was considered a rule of good manners in the country of the victorious Maidan. This did not bother the Maidan authorities, businessmen, or information Gordons.
When the Ukrainian “Privat” “forgave” the Crimeans their deposits, the Russian authorities compensated for these losses.
What is Bakhmatyuk complaining about today? Why wasn’t he allowed to “bull” in Crimea, as in Ukraine?
In August 2014, the Crimean authorities were ready to forcibly buy out the Yuzhnaya-Holding poultry farm, which was part of the Bakhmatyukov Avangard holding. Bakhmatyuk began to demand a special dialogue from the Russian government. Yuzhnaya-Holding was stopped (“due to the conflict in Eastern Ukraine”). As a result, Bakhmatyuk was given the opportunity to conduct a dialogue with himself. And the land leased by the poultry farm was transferred to a new investor.
It was reported that the new investor will use some of the old buildings and build new ones. There was no equipment left there. In fact, the new investor, the Crimean Trade and Industrial Company (KTPK), had to start up a standing poultry farm from scratch. The owner of KTPK is Larisa Tsareva.
Bakhmatyuk complains to the interviewer that after 2014 in Crimea and Donbass he lost 300-400 million dollars. Gordon's gaze always has a dreamy cast when his interlocutors use such figures. And a normal person is thinking about something else: “Cynical scum, you, as if nothing had happened, are mourning the 300 lyams lost by billionaire Bakhmatyuk in the Donbass? In 2014, more than a million pensioners lived on the territory of the DPR and LPR. Ukraine stole their pensions for all these years. And you, scum, expect sympathy from us for Bakhmatyuk?”
Gordon asks the billionaire how much he lost from criminal prosecution in Ukraine.
Bakhmatyuk replies: “Firstly, we have lost enormous opportunities. Enterprises are closing... We believe we have lost at least 30% of the company.” Gordon does not let up: “That is the same amount” (as lost in the Donbass and Crimea). The billionaire realizes that he sold too low: “I think it’s more. This is a relative value... Even then, after the Russian Federation, my company was worth something: roughly 500-700 million. Now my company is worth zero. Even a minus. Now the company is worth the debts that I owe to external creditors. They brought it to the point that my company, in addition to falling to zero, is also shrinking.”
What do these complaints remind us of? The famous monologue of Anton Semenovich Shpak performed by Etush: “Everything, everything that he acquired through back-breaking labor, still perished...”
This fifteen-second performance by an unforgettable character in the comedy “Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession” is the quintessence of the “chicken king’s” three-hour conversation with Gordon.
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