Fozzy Group

• Fozzy Group is one of the largest Ukrainian retailers.
• The founders are Volodymyr Kostelman (51%), Roman Chihir (23.2%), Oleh Sotnikov (23.2%) and Yuri Gnatenko (2.5%).

• The staff numbers more than 50,000 employees and 690 retail stores all around the country. These are Silpo supermarkets, wholesale and retail Fozzy hypermarkets, Fora convenience stores, Thrash! discounters.
• The company finished 2019 with a turnover of UAH 78 billion. Over the past five years, it has increased almost 2.5 times. During 2019, they opened 71 new stores and paid UAH 3.85 billion in taxes, which is 32.8% more than in 2018.
• Now the area of Fozzy Group stores is more than 1 million sq.m.
• The group of companies includes food production, banking and restaurant business, pharmaceutical supermarkets Bila Romashka, and personal electronics stores Ringoo.
• They also have their own production facilities: Nezhin cannery and Varto poultry factory.
• Bank Vostok, delivery company Justin and the chain of travel agencies Silpo-Voyage are also part of the Fozzy group.
• Fozzy Group restaurant business includes the U Hromogo Pola, POSITANO, Jiao-bar, ESCOBAR ,WHO&WHY.DRINKERY bar, Mokri Vusa Bar and two bakeries Boulangerie in Kyiv.
• Fozzy has its own trademarks: Premiya, Premiya Select, Premiya Wine Club, Polnaya Chasha, Polnaya Riumka, Zonk, EXTRA! and Zelenaya Strana.

• In 1997, the Fozzy Group was founded.
• In 1998, they founded the Silpo retail chain and opened the first supermarket in Vyshneve near Kyiv. Now, there are 239 supermarkets in 61 cities.
• In 2002, the first Fora store was opened. Today, the chain is represented by 248 stores across the country.
• In 2015, they acquired PJSC Sumyrybkhoz, a fish farming enterprise. It is a 300 hectares land plot with water resources in Verkhnya Syrovatka village and Sad village, Sumy region.

They also bought Agro-Alliance of Transcarpathia LLC in Onok village, Vinogradovsky district. They use this enterprise for growing rathe-ripe vegetables. They also launched virtual mobile operator Yezzz!

• In 2018, Fozzy acquired Belarus LLC. The company is registered in Burovka village, Chernihiv region and is used for cultivating grain crops.
• In May 2020, Fozzy Group received a $60 million loan from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).

The money are planned to spent on improving energy and resource using efficiency, waste management and expanding the presence of Fozzy Group supermarket chains in regions with limited food retail supply.

• In 2003, Deputy Prosecutor General Tetiana Kornyakova (back then, Svyatoslav Piskun held the post of the Prosecutor General) opened five criminal cases against Fozzy.

'The company's turnover for six months was 270 million hryvnias, while the company paid only 58,000 hryvnias in taxes,' Kornyakova said.

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The president of the corporation denied all charges.

'The real amount of taxes paid only by Fozzy CJSC is UAH 3.9 million, which is 70 times more than the announced amount. We started our business practically from scratch, and our relations with the state are limited to paying taxes,' Kostelman said then.

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Several years later, he told reporters that the company had wasted a year on the criminal cases. Legal remedies didn't succeed. And the tax office didn't accept any court rulings.

'They had a specific goal to destroy us, so they went right towards it. And the story ended when the colonel who put pressure on us was fired from the tax police. I heard he taught at the academy after that. It may happen, he is still passing on his experience to the youth,' the businessman told reporters.

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• In 2004, Fozzy registered the Wal-Mart trademark for product advertising and promotion, window dressing, delivery services, and other activities.
• In 2014, it became known that the American retail chain Wal-Mart Stores was suing the State Intellectual Property Service and the Ukrainian company Fozzy for its brand.

'Wal-Mart Stores believes that this violated its rights. The company may try to prove that its brand is well-known in Ukraine, in particular, through movies,' the lawyers explained to journalists.

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There is no information about details of the proceeding and how it ended.

• In 2016, the Solomensky District Court of Kyiv arrested the Fozzy-Food 's accounts because the company officials understated the VAT. The investigation found out that VAT was understated by UAH 32.2 million during bulk transactions.
• In 2016, Krym.Realii journalists published an investigation that stated that all Fozzie supermarkets continue operating in Crimea but as Russian entities, through Krymtorg-S LLC, Krymtorg E, Krymtorg R and Krymtorg B, registered in April 2014.

'All of them are connected with each other by the Russian owner — Moscow-based Trading House Nezhin LLC. But this trading house, in its turn, is a subsidiary of Ukrainian Fozzy Group that belongs to the famous businessman, millionaire Vladimir Kostelman,' the media wrote.

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• In November 2018, Fozzy Group came under Russian economic sanctions. At that time, there were seven Silpo stores operating in Crimea.

A month later, the founders of Trading House Nezhin (officially, it was the owner of the Crimean stores) changed. The Ukrainian company TH Nizhyn and Nizhyn cannery disappeared from the list of the owners. Instead, someone Aleksey Rashchupkin became the owner.

It is worth mentioning that according to the Ministry of Justice, someone named Rashchupkin until December 2019 was listed as the final beneficiary of the Ukrainian Fozzy-Food LLC, a subsidiary of Fozzy Group. The company is registered in Vyshneve near Kyiv. Now, Rashchupkin is the founder of the private joint stock company Good Food Plus that is also part of the Fozzy empire.

• In 2018, Silpo won four nominations of Retail Awards — 2018 Consumer's Choice: the best supermarket chain in Ukraine, as well as in Kyiv, Odessa, Lviv.
• Three Fozzy Group companies were included in the TOP-200 Best Employers of Ukraine rating compiled by the State Fiscal Service.
• Bank Vostok was ranked among the TOP-5 of the best banks for individuals according to Ukrainian Interbank Payment Systems Member Association (EMA).
• Together with the No Waste Ukraine Project, they opened three stations for receiving recyclable materials.