Grantz Arthur Gurgenovich

Official biography

Businessman, co-owner of BF&GH Travel Retail Limited, publisher of Forbes Ukraine. Owner of BF Group LLC since 2015, friend of MP Andriy Ivanchuk.

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Dirt.

Sports betting, smuggling, and ties to Russia: what the co-owner of VBet is known for

An Armenian with a Belarusian passport, Arthur Hrantz, has made millions of dollars in the Duty free business, which may be a cover for smuggling. During the war, he was a co-owner of VBet, which investigative journalists suspected of having ties to the aggressor country. His family (father and three sons) lives in Russia and does business there. StopCor’s analysts found out who Arthur Hrantz is, what he owns and who he is friends with.

Armenian Arthur Hrantz, who holds a Belarusian passport, successfully runs a business in Ukraine, and he often remains in the shadows. In 2021, he acquired the Betconstruct franchise, a group of companies that owns the Vbet brand of brothers Vahle and Vigen Badalyan, as reported by the investigators of the Insider Ukraine project on their Telegram channel.

Thus, VBET Ukraine itself was founded in 2020 by Soft Construct Limited, a company registered on the Isle of Man, and the ultimate beneficiaries were the Badalyan brothers. In their homeland, Armenia, they had established a wide network of businesses, including pawnshops, restaurants, and online casinos. The brothers controlled casinos in Ukraine through the company Essie IP Limited, registered in the Channel Islands. But in 2022, UCR Holding Ltd, a company registered in Cyprus, and an Armenian named Rudolf Poghosyan became the owner of VBET.

According to information from open sources, there are two versions of VBet available in Ukraine. One of them, vbetua.com, is managed by Radon VB, a company registered in Curacao. So, fellow journalists found out that Radon VB has been operating a network of online casinos in the world since 2003, one of which is Vbet. The network infrastructure is developed by two companies — Soft Construct Limited and BetConstruct. On the BetConstruct website, you can see the partners section, which mentions the well-known Russian bookmaker Fonbet. The BetConstruct website also mentions cooperation with one of the oldest Russian bookmakers, BetCity. Other websites belonging to BetConstruct clients offer a list of companies that accept bets from Russian players. In addition, through Fastex, BetConstruct is a sponsor of the Russian Poker Tour in Armenia.

On April 18, 2024, journalist Yevgeny Plinsky said that financial monitoring blocked the accounts of the VBet bookmaker for 30 days. They still have 570 million on them.

Official and “shadow” business of Artur Granz in Ukraine

According to open sources, Granz allegedly built his business empire mainly by inheriting it from the famous smuggler Alexander Potemkin, who ran smuggling schemes in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia since the 90s. These schemes, according to reports by Mind.ua, included the importation of goods, mainly through the territory of Belarus. However, in 2006, Lukashenka intervened, which led to business problems for Granz. At the time, local media also wrote about this situation. As a result, the dictator closed all the Duty Free stores through which Granz had been carrying out smuggling operations. Granz himself was forced to flee to Ukraine, where he already had a similar business, including about half of all Duty Free shops at Boryspil airport, which are now closed due to the war. However, he left his passport and citizenship in Belarus, as he said in an interview with Ekonomichna Pravda.

So, since the beginning of 2006, Granz has been living in Ukraine. Here he founded the company BF Capital, which manages all the entrepreneur’s assets. This company owns real estate and a chain of Duty Free stores in countries such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia. In this business, the company has a partnership with the world-famous Gebr. Heinemann, which is one of the leading European Duty Free operators, including Boryspil Airport. However, as we have already mentioned, they do not operate at Ukrainian airports.

Back in 2016, it was announced that the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine had granted permission to BF Capital Limited to acquire shares in Ninori Co Limited. Both companies are registered in Larnaca, Cyprus. In particular, Ninori Co Limited is a co-owner of the Ukrainian-German-Swiss Joint Venture Duty Free Trading LLC, in which Arthur Granz is also a co-owner. Therefore, Granz is the official owner of the Duty Free Trading LLC store at the Porubno-Siret checkpoint (Chernivtsi region).

Among other businesses, he was also the owner of the Swiss company Mimier Trade SA and its branch in Ukraine, Mimier Trade Ukraine LLC, in official registers until 2021 .

The company’s business is to supply petroleum products, as well as sunflower and soybean oils. The online publication reports that the type of exports has several peculiarities. First, the products are sold in markets that are exotic for Ukraine, such as Lebanon and Nicaragua. In addition, supplies are made to companies in the hotel and restaurant sector. For example, in 2018, the company generated revenue of $140 million, but operating profit amounted to only $3.2 million. Also in Ukraine, Mimier Trade S.A. is the founder of Mimier Trade Ukraine LLC and Imagine!

Million-dollar scheme with Terminal D at Boryspil Airport

In 2013, Arthur Granz won a tender for a long-term lease of premises in Terminal D of Boryspil Airport, which he did not own before. So he actually became a monopolist at the airport, as he himself said in an interview with liga.net. The rent was only UAH 2,372, which was three times less than the market price. This led to three investigations. But they all ended in nothing.

It seems that impunity allowed the businessman to implement another equally interesting scheme: for each passenger at the airport, a check was drawn up to purchase 23 cartons of cigarettes, which were then sent to Ukraine. It is likely that none of the passengers actually bought the cigarettes. The financial benefit of this scheme was that no taxes and duties were paid on the cigarettes, which brought millions of hryvnias in net profit to Granz. According to media reports, the cigarette mountains themselves were sold to smugglers without paying excise duty and shipped to the European Union.

However, it did not stop there. And in 2022, another scheme of cigarette smuggling from Belarus was discovered. Georgii Mazurashu, MP from the Servant of the People party, wrote about this on his Facebook page. He said that the person who owns the largest chain of Duty-Free stores, which are currently out of business, in Ukraine is also a partner in Lukashenko’s business and a citizen of Belarus.

Purchase of the Forbes publication

In Ukraine, Granz was also interested in the media sector. And not just any ordinary online publication, but theForbes brand. So, in 2020, after a three-year break, the American magazine again sold a license to publish the magazine in Ukraine. There were two bidders for the purchase:Imagine LLC and the Slovak company Barecz & Conrad Media, which publishes Forbes in Austria, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary.

However, despite Barecz & Conrad’s experience in publishing, for some reason, at the last minute, preference was given to ImagineLLC with a charter capital of UAH 3,000, which was registered only at the end of 2019. The owners of Imagine are the editor-in-chief of the publication , Volodymyr Fedoryn, and Arthur Hrantz.

However, details of the acquisitionby Forbes later became known. Kateryna Horshchynska was supposed to become the editor-in-chief of the project from Barecz & Conrad Media. After all, it was she who had been researching the Ukrainian market for more than a year on behalf of this company, registering the company in Ukraine, finding key employees, opening a bank account, and was on the verge of signing a lease agreement. However, the Slovak publishers with whom she planned to cooperate began to threaten her, as she later wrote on her Facebook page.

Granz’s connections with influential politicians

Artur Hrantz’s allegedly illegal activities are linked to well-known Ukrainian politicians. But most often it is the figure of Andriy Ivanchuk. In particular, we are talking about the scheme of alcohol smuggling, which was reported by the Obozrevatel. The scheme is quite simple. Granz wrote off 30 liters of alcohol from everyone who crossed the border. But the real alcohol went to the shelves of ordinary stores and was sold there without paying taxes or excise duties.

By the way, both investigations mention a business partner, Andriy Ivanchuk, who is also an MP and a member of the Committee on Financial, Tax and Customs Policy. It was this committee that was supposed to expose smuggling schemes. In thephoto, Ivanchuk is smiling at the Duty Free store in Boryspil, which is currently closed.

It was at this time that Ivanchuk was divorcing his wife, but for some reason he moved her to Monaco and they bought real estate worth 500 million euros.

Another interesting thing is that Andriy Ivanchuk has ties to the Popular Front, as he has been friends with Arseniy Yatsenyuk for more than 30 years.

By the way, according to the Strana newspaper, Petro Poroshenko, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Andriy Ivanchuk, Oleh Khomutynnik and other well-known political figures were among the guests at Granz’s birthday party in Cyprus. The party was also attended by Ukrainian pop singer Svitlana Loboda, who, according to journalists, citing Hrantz’s entourage, is his common-law wife.

However, a scandal erupted after this celebration. Yatsenyuk’s press service denied that Yatsenyuk had attended the celebration. Press secretary Olga Lapko wrote about this on her Facebook page.

A selective fake in the style of Strana. Not a word of truth. A lie about Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s trip to Cyprus, a lie about his participation in a birthday celebration, a lie about some kind of partnership. If Strana does not publish a retraction, we will go to court. And we will win. Just like we won lawsuits against those who spread fakes about 24 villas, mythical billions, Yatsenyuk’s passports and other mediocre lies,» wrote Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s spokeswoman.

In addition, online media report that Andriy Pyshnyi, the current head of the National Bank, while still the head of Oschadbank, allegedly helped Hrantz squeeze out the Creative agricultural holding. By the way, Andriy Pyshnyi is also a party colleague and university friend of Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

Family ties to Russia

It is not only that Artur Hrantz , having a Belarusian passport, is probably freely engaged in business that has its roots in Russia. He also has family ties to the aggressor country. According to information from Fakty, Artur Hrantz‘s sons , David and Arman, live in the Moscow region and own several trading companies, such as Avangard LLC and Mika Holding LLC. Their brother, Maren Granz, who owns Mag-Inter LLC, also lives near them and is engaged in the trade business. And as for Arthur’s father, Gurgen Granz, he was even a candidate for the local council, but failed to win the election.

And here is a peculiar situation. A man with a Belarusian passport is doing business in Ukraine during the third year of the war, having close ties to Russia. That is, he will not defend Ukraine at the front, because he is not a citizen of Ukraine, but he can make money here.

StopCor analysts personally asked Georgiy Mazurash, Andriy Ivanchuk and Arseniy Yatsenyuk, as possible partners of Granz, to comment on the situation and sent inquiries to Artur Granz personally through his companies in Ukraine.

We are currently waiting for answers and will be ready to publish the position of all the heroes of the material.

As a reminder, StopCor’s team has already written about how the hazardous waste disposal market has fallen into the shadows due to the reform of the Ministry of Environment and how the owner of the capital’s Lysenko Business Center got caught in a fraud scandal.