Gennadiy Vladyslavovych Butkevych
Official biography
Born on May 27, 1958 in Dnipropetrovs’k.
Education: Dnipro Civil Engineering Institute, O. Honchar Dnipro National University.
Career.
Former police officer, worked in the Department for Combating Theft of Socialist Property. In 1991, he headed the department for combating organized crime in Dnipro.
He started his business with a small cafe. In 1993, he became a co-owner of the Agrotekhbiznes trading company, which he took over after the departure of Yaroslav Korchevsky, a former banker and mayor of Dniprodzerzhynsk.
In 1995-1997, he headed the security service at United Energy Systems of Ukraine. With the money he earned from Tymoshenko, he built a meat processing plant.
In 1998, Butkevych and his partners registered ATB Market (an acronym for Agrotechbusiness).
Gennadiy Butkevych, Yevhen Yermakov and Viktor Karachun are still co-owners of ATB in equal shares.
Family.
Wife: Valentina Fedorovna Butkevich (maiden name Vlasova). Born on January 9, 1958. She is the founder of the Kyiv Equestrian Club Equides (EDRPOU code 40501407) in the village of Lesniki, Kyiv region.
Daughter: Anna Butkevich. Born on February 27, 1985. Model and radio presenter. In 2015, she appeared in the video “It’s All Her” by singer Sergey Lazarev and the video “Your style” by Kazaky. In the same year, she became the face of the ANDRE TAN brand, and in 2016 — the jewelry house The House of Moussaieff.
Daughter: Daria Butkevich. Daria was born on October 09, 2000. She is a student, and on social media she indicated that she works at the Equides Equestrian Club in Kyiv.
Former son-in-law: Serhiy Viktorovych Rybalka, businessman, founder of Snack-Export (S.Group corporation, trademarks “Kozatska Slava”, Semki, “Macho”) and former MP from the “Radical Party of Lyashko”. In 2006, he married Hanna Butkevych. In March 2013, the family relationship ended. They have a daughter together, Roksolana.
Compromising material
One of the most notorious scandals is the conflict with his former son-in-law Serhiy Rybalko. According to Butkevych, he went to another woman. After that, Rybalka complained to journalists that he was not allowed to see his daughter and take part in her upbringing. Family disputes resulted in a business conflict that began in 2013 and continues to this day.
The companies associated with Rybalka and Butkevych are suing each other. S.Group Corporation was suspected of tax evasion of UAH 145 million, as well as an attempt to fraudulently seize funds of ATB-Market worth UAH 110 million. ATB was accused of sponsoring terrorism.
In 2015, the MP registered a bill in the Rada to nationalize ATB, allegedly because of its trade in the occupied territories.
In 2016, in Kyiv, unidentified persons attempted to assassinate Rybalko by throwing weights at his car. The MP himself wrote on social media that he linked the “assassination attempt” to his former father-in-law.
Gennadiy Butkevych went to court, and Rybalka and the media that reprinted the news were ordered to refute the information about his former father-in-law’s involvement in the attack.
Prior to that, Butkevych won a lawsuit against the Public People magazine, which published an interview with Rybalka, who accused the ex-father-in-law of “actively bribing security forces, and we were planted with drugs and weapons.”
In May 2019, the Supreme Court ordered MP Vitaliy Kupriy to refute the accusations against Butkevych. The MP wrote on social media that the head of the SBU in Sumy region was flying on the businessman’s helicopter. And one such flight costs $5 thousand.
Kupriy also accused the businessman of doing business in the occupied territories and paying millions in taxes to the aggressor country.
MP Kupriy filed a complaint with the police and the prosecutor’s office about Butkevych’s crime with ATB
MP Kupriy accused the owner of ATB of driving a journalist to suicide.
Vitaliy Kupriy, MP, Deputy Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on Legislative Support of Law Enforcement, has filed a statement with the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office and the National Police of Ukraine alleging that the owner of the ATB chain, Gennadiy Butkevych, committed a criminal offense.
This became known from the statement, the text of which is available to the editorial office. The deputy said that he had been approached by the editor of the independent public television Conflict TV, Artem Rudenko, who said that Butkevich «has been exerting unreasonable pressure on him and his family for a long time». In particular, according to Rudenko, he has been prosecuted for four years, and the case has been closed three times due to the lack of corpus delicti. In addition, his friends are being threatened, and one of the journalists’ cars was damaged. According to Rudenko, his lawyer’s house was burned down. It is difficult for the editor himself to find a job, as his employers are having problems, and his mother has fallen ill due to constant stress. MP Kupriy also notes in his statement that former PGO investigator Dmytro Sus in an interview directly pointed to the ordered nature of the prosecution of Butkevych’s ex-legislator, MP Serhiy Rybalka, by Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko and his subordinates. The owners of the ATB supermarket chain are taking away gas fields from businessman Pavlo Fuks in favor of the entourage of Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, Nashi Hroshi reports.
Did oligarch Butkevych (ATB) pay $400,000 to close the case against his daughter?
The prosecutor’s office may close the criminal case against Anna Rybalka, the daughter of Gennadiy Butkevych, co-owner of the ATB supermarket chain, and the ex-wife of MP Serhiy Rybalka. The criminal case concerned the failure to comply with a court order to ensure the father’s participation in the upbringing of their common child. The prosecutors allegedly received the relevant instruction to close the case from the Prosecutor General’s Office, a source in the department said.
According to the source, $400 thousand has already been paid to close the case.
Earlier it was reported that the last time the same criminal proceedings on the fact of failure to comply with a court decision, which was initiated on December 8, 2014, were closed for $300 thousand in February 2015. Thus, the services of corrupt law enforcement officers have risen in price by 30%, golos.ua reports.
Dangerous cookies were supplied to ATB
In Ukraine, palm oil with 3-monochloro-1,2-propanediol (3-MCPD) (a substance that does not meet food safety standards) was added to the cookies supplied to ATB-Market and Forward-KD. The products are to be withdrawn within two days.
This is stated in the message of the State Consumer Service of Kyiv on its official Facebook page.
Arrest “for the good”
In order to prevent the loss of property in Crimea, in 2014, ATB Corporation decided to conduct a “judicial restructuring” of its assets. The parent company filed a lawsuit (case No. 904/1990/14) against its Ukrainian subsidiaries in Crimea for about UAH 400 million (about $45 million at the exchange rate at the beginning of 2014).
To secure the claim, the court seized all the property of the “debtors”. The seizure was lifted only in October 2016. In addition, a similar lawsuit was filed with the “Arbitration Court” of the “Republic of Crimea”, as the “twin” defendants had successfully re-registered under the laws of the Russian Federation. In the “Russian” court, the case is being heard under case number A83-1704/2015. The judge in Crimea also seized the property.
The same operation was carried out with the transport that was stationed in Crimea and transported goods to ATB stores. Thus, by the decision in case No. А83-3572/2015, the ownership of all vehicles that belonged to ATB-Invest LLC (which was a co-owner of V-TRUST LLC) before the occupation and which sold these vehicles to V-TRUST LLC under agreements dated 01.03.2014, was recognized as belonging to V-TRUST LLC (registered under Russian law).
The fact that, despite the arrests, the real estate continues to be operated in the interests of ATB is confirmed by the information that in 2016 PUD LLC received licenses for the retail sale of alcoholic beverages, which contain the addresses of the licensed real estate objects of ATB Corporation, as indicated in the above court decisions.
Thus, Butkevych, Karachun and Yermakov “hedged” themselves against raider attacks and made it impossible to transfer their assets to anyone. This once again confirms their full control over the business in Crimea.
Falsification of criminal cases instead of law enforcement
Law enforcement officials helped ATB owner Gennadiy Butkevych falsify criminal cases against his former son-in-law, MP Serhiy Rybalka.
In an interview with Ukrayinska Pravda and the Washington Times, former Prosecutor General’s Office prosecutor Dmytro Sus told how former Interior Minister Volodymyr Yevdokimov came to the PGO on behalf of Gennadiy Butkevych and offered 30-50 thousand dollars for a skillfully fabricated case against Rybalka. Judging by the fact that the media periodically reports on new suspicions against the MP, Butkevych managed to make a deal with law enforcement.
At the end of November, it became known that Gennadiy Butkevych sold a stake in his Crimean business, the chain of stores “Products at Home” (formerly ATB), to the structures of the Russian Minister of Agriculture. In 2015 alone, the Russian state budget received about $5 million in taxes from the chain’s operations. And now the Ukrainian oligarch has also become a business partner of the Russian Minister of Agriculture and the former governor of the Krasnodar Territory, who was the first to make territorial claims against Ukraine, having organized the construction of the ill-fated dam on the Tuzla River.
The head of the Sumy SBU uses the businessman’s helicopter. NABU launches investigation
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine will investigate the situation with the provision of a helicopter to Vladyslav Kosynskyi, the head of the Sumy regional SBU office, by the co-owner of the ATB retail chain, Gennadiy Butkevych, according to the decision of the Solomyansky court of April 4, 2018.
This was reported by MP Vitaliy Kupriy. Kupriy says Kosynsky began using a Bell-407 helicopter with the tail number UR-PTW, which belongs to Gennadiy Butkevych, co-owner of the ATB supermarket chain.
According to him, in December 2017, Kosynskyi flew the plane from Dnipro to Sumy for his own interests, which is estimated to have cost at least $5,000. In response to these statements, the Solomianskyi District Court of Kyiv ordered the NABU to open proceedings against Kosynskyi and Butkevych.
Butkevich is preparing for a major split
The founder of the ATB chain wants to start leaching uranium ores in Mykolaiv region. This carries the risk of radiation contamination of the territories.
The other day, the official website of the Environmental Impact Assessment Register of the Ministry of Nature published the «Notice of Planned Activities of Nuclear Energy Systems of Ukraine LLC (NESU)».
It states that this notorious company, majority owned by Dnipro businessman Hennadii Butkevych, plans to build a uranium ore mining facility at the Safonivske deposit, located in the Kazankivskyi district of Mykolaiv region.
“To implement the activity, it is planned to build mining and processing complexes, as well as engineering and transport infrastructure facilities,” the statement said.
Whose money is Artem Vitko sowing his constituency in Poltava region for?
ATB, Kernel, and BPP are the main donors of the “deputy-defender”.
The history of contacts with his main sponsor began in February 2015. Vitko filed a deputy inquiry to the Prosecutor General’s Office demanding that the owner of the ATB supermarket chain, Hennadiy Butkevych, be prosecuted for terrorist financing and tax evasion. Artem Vitko was one of the co-authors of Bill 2689, which proposed to nationalize the property of the entire chain. At the time, he was clearly working for the interests of his faction colleague Serhiy Rybalko. He is Butkevych’s former son-in-law, with whom the ATB owner had a deadly battle.
After hearing rumors that $500,000 was offered for withdrawing his signature on this project, Vitko suddenly made a dizzying somersault. He not only withdrew his signature, but also publicly apologized to Butkevych.
Accusations of ties to Russia
In 2015-2016, companies controlled by ATB in Crimea paid about $11 million to the Russian budget. We are talking about the chain of PUD stores operating on the occupied peninsula after 2014. Despite the so-called “sale” of PUD to the entourage of Russian Agriculture Minister Alexander Tkachev in the summer of 2017, ATB managers are still working in its structures. Gennadiy Butkevych himself and his partners were accused of having ties to Russia, money laundering, and separatism.
It was also noticed that in some ATB stores, Ukrainian symbols were pasted over and the flag was removed.
Violation of building codes
Kremenchuk.
The State Architectural and Construction Control Department is checking the legality of the company’s actions Last week, work began on the construction of an ATB supermarket in the ground floor extension opposite the railway station at 63/16 Pershotravneva Street. The situation was discussed at a staff meeting with the mayor on May 25. According to Volodymyr Okun, head of the department for control over the state of improvement, it was noticed that work was being carried out on the site, and construction materials were being unloaded — a crane and a truck arrived.
According to him, none of the people who work there wanted to say who hired them or who owns them, but various sources confirmed that it is a retail chain from Dnipro
Zaporizhzhia
In September 2017, the Ordzhonikidze District Court of Zaporizhzhia arrested a land plot with an ATB store in the Khortytskyi district. As the investigation revealed, the land under the store was transferred to the religious community of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in 2012 for the construction of a church. But instead of a church, an ATB grew there.
Vinnytsia.
An equally high-profile scandal broke out recently in Vinnytsia. It turned out that ATB-controlled entities illegally withdrew a 0.2-hectare plot of land from the ownership of the Vinnytsia Regional Clinical Hospital Pirogov through a decision of the city council. The ATB store was quickly built on the land of Pirogovka. So far, no one has succeeded in reclaiming the land plot.
The litigation between Zhytomyr activists and ATB has been going on for more than three years. The subject of the dispute is a land plot in the city center. At the intersection of Teatralna and Kyivska streets, the activists wanted to build the Heavenly Hundred Heroes Square.
However, clever businessmen managed to negotiate with the local authorities and get this land plot for the construction of another ATB store.
Kyiv
Due to ATB’s land fraud, real street wars periodically erupt at 4/56 Chornobylska Street in Kyiv. Local activists have repeatedly set fire to ATB and the developer’s trucks.
“A piece of land under the building itself was illegally allocated back in the early 2000s. It was a standard corruption scheme: change of purpose, privatization, and repeated purchases. But no one dared to build. The owners of ATB spat on all the laws and the community, thanks to which the Heroes of the Modern Liberation War Square is being created here on the territory! The owners have repeatedly sent thugs to guard the fence and threaten us,” said public activist Andriy Tarasenko.
“Whether there will be a Heroes’ Square on Chornobylska Street is a question. “ATB is not giving up. The builders are at a low start. The site has been cleared of centuries-old trees. “Referring to obviously purchased documents, the developer is trying to start construction work for the fourth time,” Kyiv City Council member Prokhor Antonenko reported in April.
Kherson
“The corner of Beryslavske Highway and Myru Street, active construction. The announcement says that they are building a covered parking lot,” Kherson Online reports that Andriy Tsyvilsky, a resident of Kherson, wrote on Facebook and posted a photo of the construction:
“How long will they keep us, ordinary people, as clowns? The whole district knows that this is ATB being built.”
Non-payment of debts
The Ukrainian supermarket chain ATB-Market is not repaying a debt of more than five million hryvnias.
This is stated in the register of court decisions.
The case file states that ATB and Kamyanka Global Wine LLC entered into a contract for the supply of goods. However, ATB paid for the goods only partially and ended up owing almost UAH 11 million.
Soon after, ATB paid part of the debt, but still owed more than five million hryvnias. Therefore, the company was sued to recover the debt. The trial is currently ongoing.
As a reminder, the owners of the ATB-Market supermarket chain are not repaying the debt to the Deposit Guarantee Fund. The store owes the Fund UAH 4.013 million.
In addition, the Unified Register of Court Decisions contains dozens of lawsuits filed by suppliers of goods and services with whom ATB-Market does not consider it necessary to pay. There are also many who have been paid by ATB more than a year late.
«ATB holds ‘fake’ promotions, thereby deceiving customers
Expired and low-quality products
The ATB-Market supermarket chain has seen an increase in cases of low-quality food being sold. Dissatisfied customers write about this on social media.
On April 7, a resident of Dnipropetrovs’k region discovered that one of the dairy products had expired on April 3.
«Did you know that ATB sells expired goods on the square? What should I do in such cases?» writes customer Oleg Tkachev.
Managers of the Prosecutor General’s “best friend” from ATB want to take away 8 gas fields on the basis of a non-existent clause
The court found that in 2016, Angro Invest LLC twice applied to the State Service of Geology and Mineral Resources for special permits for 20 years for geological exploration with subsequent oil and gas production at eight fields (commercial oil and gas development) without an auction.
These are the following areas in Poltava region: Saudivska, Pivdenno-Myrhorodska, Demydivska, Krasnohorivska, Cherkasivska, Fedorivska, Fedunkivska and Bilotserkivska.
For the first time, the State Service of Geology and Mineral Resources returned the company’s applications on March 18, 2016, due to the non-compliance of the packages of documents with the Procedure for granting special permits (No. 615 of 30.05.2011). Thus, the company did not indicate the capacity of the enterprise, submitted improperly certified copies of documents on the ownership (lease) of the integral property complex.
The resubmitted applications were returned to Angro Invest on May 31 of the same year. The State Service of Geology and Subsoil stated that Angro Invest had not specified the type of minerals in the applications and had not fully corrected the previous comments. The company was denied special permits.
Wealth — income, business, declarations
Included in the rating of the TOP-100 richest Ukrainians. Novoye Vremya magazine and Dragon Capital estimated his wealth at $172 million. Focus puts the figure at 2.5 times higher — $420 million.
He ranks first in the list of the richest residents of Dnipro.
Summary.
An oligarch is an oligarch. And as we know, in our country, oligarchs are odious, deceitful, and thus rich people. Butkevych fits this description. We can also add separatism and disrespect for the Ukrainian people. In general, the ATB supermarket chain speaks for itself and clearly shows disrespect for ordinary people.