Companies, apartments, land, and yacht. Court arrests another 154 properties of Medvedchuk family

Author

Lesia Solovchuk

The court arrested another 154 pieces of movable and immovable property belonging to the family of the leader of the Opposition Platform for Life (OPFL) and Putin’s crony Viktor Medvedchuk, who was detained the day before, and his wife Oksana Marchenko.

The odious politician, one of the most famous lobbyists for the interests of the occupying country in Ukraine, Viktor Medvedchuk, was detained on April 12 as a result of the SSU special operation.

According to Ivan Bakanov, the head of the SSU, the OPFL leader, who had fled from arrest early in the war, was hiding in Kyiv. The FSB tried to take him first to Transnistria and then to Moscow. But law enforcement officers managed to detain him on the way out of the Kyiv region.

The decision to seize the assets of the Medvedchuk family, as reported by the press service of the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), was made on April 13 by the Lychakivskyi District Court of Lviv.

The list of seized property includes: 26 cars, 30 land plots, 23 houses, 32 apartments, 17 parking spaces, and a motor yacht. The shares in the authorized capitals in 25 companies, the beneficial owner of which is Viktor Medvedchuk or his wife, were arrested as well.

Earlier, the SBI investigators and prosecutors from the Prosecutor General's Office arrested Medvedchuk's Royal Romance yacht and other real estate through court. In 2015, the yacht cost about $200 million. But Medvedchuk owned it through the Fregata Marine offshore in the Marshall Islands, registered until March 2021 to Oksana Marchenko. The yacht later changed hands to Lanelia Holdings, also from the Marshall Islands.

At that time, the ship was handed over to the National Agency of Ukraine for finding, tracing and management of assets (ARMA). According to ARMA, at the time of the arrest, the yacht was in the Croatian port of Rijeka.

Property of the Medvedchuks: "1+1", oil and gas fields, regional power distribution companies, and metallurgical plants

According to Medvedchuk's e-declaration for May 2021, almost all property and companies are registered to his wife Oksana Marchenko, only parties and public organizations are billed as those registered to the leader of the Opposition Platform for Life.

The property list of the family at that time included: 50 apartments, 5 aircraft, and Mezhyhirya itself — a huge estate in the Zakarpattia region, no worse than that of Yanukovych.

Medvedchuk owns two mansions and thousands of square meters of residential real estate in the capital, including 12 apartments on the Hrushevsky Street, 9A ($15 million), 13 apartments on Taras Shevchenko Boulevard, 27B, their area is from 150 to 212 square meters.

In addition to numerous land plots in Pereiaslav, Obukhiv district, a recreation center in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, the OPFL leader also has an estate in the Crimea near Alupka worth $2 million and 23 hectares of the Bulgarian coast worth $25 million.

Oksana Marchenko, according to her husband's declaration, owns dozens of offshore companies in Cyprus. Through them, she owns shares in energy, metallurgical, and logistics enterprises, as well as television companies. According to Forbes Ukraine, in total — worth $140 million.

The Medvedchuk family owns shares in three regional power distribution companies in the Ivano-Frankivsk, Lviv, and Zaporizhzhia regions. Marchenko also owns shares in Dniprospetsstal, Zaporizhzhia Ferroalloy Plant, and four Odesa oil transshipment complexes through offshore companies.

Marchenko also has shares in three TV channels: Television and Radio Company Studio 1+1, Gravis-Kino (2+2), and TET.

Through his wife, Medvedchuk controls the Gavrikovskoye oil field in Russia worth $93 million, as well as the Glubokaya oil and gas field in Crimea worth $20 million.

The Medvedchuk family also owns $70 million in cash and other liquid assets. The lion's share of this amount are the dividends from the Novoshakhtinsk oil products plant in the Rostov region — Marchenko owned it in 2014-2021.

Medvedchuk also has his own planes. According to Bihus.Info, he regularly used two of them: Dassault Falcon 900EX ($25 million) and Gulfstream G650 ($70 million).

Before the war, Forbes estimated Medvedchuk's fortune at $620 million.

What will happen next with the Medvedchuk family property

Property and assets, together with corporate rights, can be confiscated by court decision in the form of a guilty verdict, Ihor Chudovsky, Managing Partner of the law firm Chudovsky and Partners, noted in a comment to .

According to the lawyer, during the investigation, these assets may be handed over to ARMA for management.

"This applies only to those assets that are on the territory of Ukraine and the EU. In practice, it will be difficult to implement the court decision on arrest and confiscation in the Russian Federation. However, this may become the subject of a political dialogue," Chudovsky stated.

What Medvedchuk is suspected of

Medvedchuk has been under house arrest since October 2021 on suspicion of facilitating the illegal supply of coal from the temporarily occupied territory of Donbas in 2014-2015.

Before that, he had already been under house arrest since May 2021 over the suspicions of three episodes of illegal activities and cooperation with Russia.

On February 27, on the fourth day after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it became known that Viktor Medvedchuk escaped from house arrest he had been under in several proceedings. The list of charges brought against Medvedchuk included treason.

On February 19, 5 days before the Russian offensive, Medvedchuk's wife left the country, subsequently she published a video from Moscow.

On October 12, 2021, the court sent Medvedchuk under round-the-clock house arrest until December 7 in the case of purchasing coal from Russia through the occupied territories. Later the court extended this preventive measure for him. The prosecution asked to set a bail of 1 billion UAH.

Since May 2021, the leader of the Opposition Platform for Life has been under round-the-clock house arrest on suspicion of treason and attempted plunder of national resources. In October, another suspicion was added — treason and assistance to the activities of a terrorist organization.

The Pecherskyi District Court of Kyiv placed Medvedchuk under house arrest until March 10, 2022. The deputy was suspected of illegal trade with the ORDLO leaders.

On March 18, the court allowed Medvedchuk to be arrested in absentia.

The OPFL leader was also involved in a scandal in which he appeared as a lobbyist for the Kremlin's interests. Bihus.Info project journalists published wiretapping of Medvedchuk's telephone conversations he had had during four years — from 2014 to 2017, where he had allegedly communicated with Russian officials of various levels, leaders of the so-called DPR and LPR.

On February 19, 5 days before the Russian offensive, Medvedchuk's wife left the country. She subsequently posted a video from Moscow.