Pinchuk Elena Leonidovna
Official biography
Place of birth. Education. Born in Dnipropetrovs’k. Graduated from the Faculty of Economics of Dnipropetrovs’k State University.
Career
- In 1995-1996, she worked in the economic department of PrivatBank.
- In 1997-2004, she was Deputy Marketing Director of Kyivstar, one of the leading Ukrainian mobile operators.
- Since 2003, she has been the head of the Anti-AIDS Foundation charitable organization. Today, it is the first and only private foundation in Ukraine to fight AIDS.
About the Anti-AIDS Foundation. The stated goals of the Foundation are to counteract the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Ukraine, reduce the rate of infection, and improve the quality of life of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. The Foundation helps orphanages where HIV-positive children live, conducts charity and educational campaigns, and uses its funds to purchase and distribute medicines to the target audience.
AntiAIDS became known to the wider public through active TV advertising and several large-scale events, including free concerts by Elton John in Kyiv (2007) and Queen and Paul Rodgers in Kharkiv (2008). According to the foundation, the first concert raised UAH 1.5 million in charitable contributions from VIP guests, and the second concert raised almost UAH 800 thousand.
- In 2010, Mrs. Pinchuk joined the UN commission set up to create a “prevention revolution” — a breakthrough in preventing new HIV/AIDS cases in the world.
Family
Elena Pinchuk is the daughter of the second president of Ukraine Leonid Kuchma.
Married. Her husband is Victor Pinchuk, a well-known businessman and philanthropist, billionaire, co-owner of Interpipe Corporation, founder of the Victor Pinchuk Foundation and co-founder of the Anti-AIDS Foundation. Married to Victor Pinchuk, he has two daughters (born in 2003 and 2011). She has a son Roman (born in 1991) from her first marriage.
Olena’s first husband was Ihor Franchuk, the former head of Chornomornaftogaz and son of Anatoliy Franchuk, the former chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea.
Compromising material
The daughter of the second president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, is a well-known person in her country and, at first glance, has a relatively untarnished reputation (unlike the children of Yushchenko or Poroshenko). However, this is rather a merit of her father, who managed to conceal his daughter’s involvement in the family business until a certain point. But this could not last forever, because everything secret sooner or later becomes public.
In 1997, after breaking off her relationship with Pinchuk’s first husband, Olena Leonidivna met Victor Pinchuk with the help of her father. After a while, the couple started living together. A year later, he became the chairman of the parliamentary subcommittee on business, which is very suspicious for a person who is completely new to politics. In 2002, Olena became Viktor’s legal wife. Since then, politics has been the main lever for effective management of the family business.
The president’s son-in-law is doing well. The illegal privatization of Kryvorizhstal, the largest metallurgical enterprise in Ukraine, is being carried out through fraud. After the re-election of Viktor Yushchenko, the property was returned to the state, and Victor Pinchuk lost about $800 million.
An expensive Victorian house
In 2008, Elena bought the world’s most expensive house — a five-story Victorian mansion with a total area of 2,000 square meters in one of the most prestigious areas of London, worth about $159 million.
Non-payment for landscape design services
In 2012, Elena Pinchuk was caught in a fraudulent scheme to avoid paying for landscaping services at the Pinchuk estate in Koncha Zaspa. The amount of the fine, decided by the US District of Columbia court, which Elena has to pay to Oehme van Sweden, is not that big — only about 500 thousand dollars. Naturally, by the standards of the richest family in Ukraine.
How Elena Pinchuk denied her obligations to Villa Elena
Court documents say that representatives of Oehme van Sweden were introduced to Victor and Elena Pinchuk back in 2004. The plot on which Oehme van Sweden, under the guidance of Pinchuk and his representatives, was developing the landscape design was acquired in 2004 by the company Svit Shlyakhov, a freight forwarding company, the newspaper says.
“Svit Shlyakhov owes this to the government of Viktor Yanukovych. After all, it was his government that leased 114 hectares of land in the elite Koncha Zaspa neighborhood near Kyiv in April 2004 and transferred it to Svit Shlyakhiv in July. In October of the same year, the then-governor of Kyiv region, Anatoliy Zasukha, signed an act granting the firm the right to 135 hectares of land,” the Kyiv Post writes.
Olena Franchuk promises $5000 for an inscription on underwear
The Elena Franchuk ANTIAIDS Foundation announces a graphic design competition Naked Street Fashion dedicated to the topic of safe sex, the Foundation’s press service reports. The task of the competition is to develop text and design of inscriptions/images on underwear that call for safe sex.
“Our goal is to fill the everyday life of Ukrainian youth with the theme of ‘good sex is safe sex,’” the organizers of the contest say, promising the winner a $5000 prize.
The contest is to become part of the Naked Truth about AIDS project, which will be presented on March 16, 2010, at the podium of the Ukrainian Fashion Week, Ostrov reports.
Daughter of ex-president Leonid Kuchma, Elena Franchuk, bares her breasts
Elena Franchuk impressed the guests with her uncovered breasts.
The head of the Anti-AIDS Foundation and daughter of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, Elena Franchuk, bared her breasts at the Best Fashion Awards ceremony.
The wife of oligarch Victor Pinchuk did not hesitate to go out without a bra that could at least cover her breasts.
Elena’s transparent dress spoke for itself. Many of the guests of the ceremony kept looking in the direction of Kuchma’s daughter’s bare breasts. Oleg Skrypka, the leader of the VV band, was especially pleased to see Olena uninhibited, and he came on stage with her.
Elena Franchuk: I have friends only among Russian billionaires
STB, Novy and ICTV TV channels list the Pinchuks as their beneficiaries
Viktor Pinchuk, the owner of the EastOne investment and consulting group and Interpipe pipe corporation, and his wife, Elena Pinchuk, the daughter of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, are the ultimate beneficiaries of STB, Novy, ICTV and QTV, which are part of the StarLightMedia group, according to the new legislation on disclosure of ownership structure.
According to their websites, Victor and Olena Pinchuk are the beneficiaries of four trustees from France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Jersey who, through a number of companies in Hong Kong, the Seychelles, the British Virgin Islands and Samoa, own Starlight Media Limited, a Cyprus-based company.
A designer dress
At one of her auctions, Olena Franchuk bought a dress by Ukrainian designer Larysa Lobanova for 7,500 euros.
Dress for 70 thousand like the Duchess of Cambridge
Our attention was drawn to the daughter of the former president of Ukraine, Olena Pinchuk.
Ms. Pinchuk, 46, took part in the 14th annual meeting of the Yalta European Strategy (YES), which started today in Kyiv.
At the event, Elena appeared in a gray knee-length dress from the Gucci brand, which cost about 70 thousand hryvnias. We saw the Duchess of Cambridge Catherine in the same outfit in June this year. She visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in this dress.
Views and opinions.
In November 2007, she was ranked 17th in the TOP-100 most influential women in Ukraine by Focus magazine. According to the compilers, her influence is due to her “public activities, marital status, and ownership of a part of the shares in Victor Pinchuk’s media holding (Fakty i Komentarii, Novyi Kanal, ICTV, STB, M1, and several radio stations)”. Since November 2009, Mrs. Pinchuk has been the Chairman of the Supervisory Board of StarLightMedia, a TV group that unites ICTV, Novy, STB and M1 channels.
Family affairs
The 1990s were crucial in Victor Pinchuk’s career. He met the daughter of future President Leonid Kuchma. Although they officially legalized their relationship only in 2002, Pinchuk felt the benefits much earlier.
In 1996, Pinchuk’s companies Interpipe and Boston Trading Conn entered the Belarusian market and took part in the privatization of the Mogilev Metallurgical Plant. It is said that Kuchma helped him a lot in this, because Lukashenko was against Pinchuk opening anything in Belarus.
In addition, thanks to the support of his father-in-law, Pinchuk privatized several regional power distribution companies: “Dniprooblenergo, Zaporizhzhiaoblenergo, Mykolaivoblenergo, Ternopiloblenergo, and Luhanskoblenergo.
The business brought Pinchuk huge profits and in 1998 he decided to invest in politics. In the parliamentary elections, Victor Pinchuk was elected to the Verkhovna Rada on the list of the People’s Democratic Party.
In addition, under Kuchma, he was appointed an advisor to President Leonid Kuchma and was a member of the Council of Entrepreneurs at the Cabinet of Ministers.
In 2002, he left the party. And until 2004, he did almost nothing as a politician.
Summary
Elena Pinchuk is a very influential woman, and some media describe her as a woman who changed the world. It is unclear whether she managed to change the world for the better, but she did manage to improve her husband’s financial well-being and open up new political opportunities.