Dubai Unlocked: how MPs, judges, prosecutors bought up luxury property in Dubai
15 May 2024 17:45
A number of European investigators have published the Dubai Unlocked project about real estate purchased by officials from different countries in Dubai. There are 600 of them among Ukrainians, [korespondent] reports
Journalists from the OCCRP network, the Norwegian financial publication E24, and more than 70 media outlets from around the world gained access to data from the Dubai Land Department and state-owned utility companies. From Ukraine, Slidstvo.Info and Schemes (Radio Liberty) participated in the project.
The data leak, which covers mostly 2020 and 2022, contains information on hundreds of thousands of properties in Dubai, their owners and tenants. It was obtained by the Washington-based Centre for Defence Studies (C4ADS), a non-profit organisation that studies international crime and conflict. The data was then shared with the Norwegian financial publication E24 and the OCCRP Corruption and Organised Crime Investigation Project, which coordinated the global investigative project Dubai Unlocked.
The project’s previous findings include Ukrainian MPs, prosecutors and judges who have bought tens of millions of dollars worth of property in Dubai.
The journalists found Mykola Zlochevsky, former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources under Viktor Yanukovych, among the owners of real estate in Dubai.
According to the Dubai leak, on the same day in July 2019, Mykola Zlochevsky purchased two apartments in Dubai – in an elite residential complex on the Persian Gulf at the Palm Jumeirah itself – W Residences Dubai – The Palm, so named because of the W-shaped building.
According to reports, the apartments with a total area of more than 1700 square metres cost the former minister almost $11 million.
In the year of the purchase of the Dubai apartments, Mykola Zlochevskyi was no longer in power and was subsequently put on the wanted list.
Earlier, the NABU suspected Zlochevskyi of misappropriating funds from the NBU stabilisation loan during the Yanukovych era, and Zlochevskyi was later put on the wanted list for attempting to bribe the SAPO and the NABU to close the case.
While the trial in this case was ongoing, Zlochevsky re-registered the apartments in W Residences Dubai – The Palm to his daughter Anna Zlochevska (the former minister eventually transferred his gas production business to her and his other daughter Karina).
Anna Zlochevska remains the owner of the Dubai property to this day, as of 2024. According to the leak, the Zlochevsky family used passports of Cypriot citizens in real estate transactions.
Journalists found property in elite Dubai residential complexes owned by another Ukrainian official, Viacheslav Bohuslaev, and his son, Oleksandr. The Boguslaevs owned at least 19 apartments and office space worth $15 million.
As of today, only five of the 19 properties owned by the Boguslaev family (one apartment and four office premises) are still in the unfinished Dubai Pearl luxury residential complex, while the rest of the property has been sold.
Based on the leaked data on the sale and purchase of Dubai real estate, Skhemy calculated that the Boguslaevs could have received $3.5 million from the sale of their property. According to the Dubai Land Registry, the family earned another $1.5 million before the sale by renting out the apartments. During these real estate transactions in the UAE, according to the registry, Alexander Boguslaev used a passport of a citizen of the island nation of Grenada.
The journalists asked the Office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine whether they were aware of this foreign property of the Boguslaevs, and they replied that “the pre-trial investigation body has not yet received reliable information and documents regarding the property of Boguslaev and his son in the United Arab Emirates”.
At the same time, the agency noted that the confiscation of the property of the former Motor Sich president’s son, which was probably acquired, in particular, “from the illegal activities of his father,” is possible only if a Ukrainian court decides to confiscate it based on the results of the relevant criminal proceedings both in Ukraine and in the countries where such property is located
Boguslaev is a former Ukrainian pro-Russian politician from the now banned Party of Regions and former president of Motor Sich. Boguslaev is currently in custody on suspicion of treason. According to the SBU, he and the head of the Motor Sich’s Foreign Economic Activity Department were involved in the transfer of military goods to the occupiers, including aircraft engines for Russian attack aircraft.
Former MP from the Party of Regions Vasyl Hrytsak also owns property in Dubai.
Hrytsak worked as a deputy of the State Migration Service and headed a group of MPs on interparliamentary relations with the UAE. The media also called Hrytsak a lobbyist for the Unified State Automated Passport System (USPS), which was once a monopolist in the production of documents.
According to journalists, he owns two apartments in Dubai worth more than $700,000, which he later transferred to his relatives.
The first one is in The Fairways North Tower complex, which has an outdoor swimming pool, fitness centre, garden and terrace. Vasyl Hrytsak bought a 72-square-metre apartment there in 2010 for $216,000. According to transactions from the Dubai Land Registry, he re-registered the apartment in 2019 to his eldest son Igor. He is still the owner of the apartment.
The second apartment, measuring 123 square metres, was purchased in 2011 for about half a million dollars in the Ocean Heights development. It is now owned by his wife Natalia Hrytsak and younger son. Ocean Heights is a skyscraper in the Dubai Marina district, which is a city landmark and one of the five tallest buildings in Dubai.
Hrytsak himself denies owning property in Dubai.
Another property owner in the UAE is Svetlana Yemelyanova, the former wife of Yanukovych-era judge Artur Yemelyanov. She owns three apartments with a total value of $1.8 billion.
Emelyanova bought her first apartment there for almost $650,000 in December 2014. Until 2014, Svitlana Yemelianova was a member of the Donetsk City Council from the Party of Regions. She and Artur Yemelianov divorced in the autumn of the same year, after the Revolution of Dignity, when law enforcement officers became interested in the judge in a case of possible interference with the automated distribution of cases between judges.
The other two apartments were officially purchased by the judge’s ex-wife in 2017 and 2018 for $620,000 and $560,000 respectively.
Artur Yemelianov was suspected of corruption and pressure on judges, and was removed from the bench, but he continued to work at the Supreme Economic Court of Ukraine until 2021. Emelianov applied for the new Supreme Court, but the High Qualification Commission did not allow him to compete.
In 2023, the State Bureau of Investigation searched Yemelianov’s home as part of an investigation into the former judge’s possible aiding and abetting of the aggressor state. Currently, Yemelianov works as a lawyer.
The Schemes journalists also found the former deputy prosecutor of Odesa region, Oleh Kornilov. He purchased two apartments and a hotel suite worth over $400,000 in the Emirates.
According to the transactions, he became the owner of the two apartments in December 2011 and early 2012. At that time, Kornilov had already become the Deputy Chief Prosecutor of Odesa Region.
Kornilov was the head of a unit of the Odesa Region Investigation Department, but was lustrated in 2014.
In 2020, the Odesa prosecutor decided to sell an apartment in the Jumeirah Bay X1 Tower – a 38-square-metre studio for almost $100,000.
Kornilov challenged this decision in court, and in 2021, the Odesa Administrative Court of Appeal reinstated him in his position and paid him UAH 2.3 million “for forced absenteeism”. In August 2022, Kornilov resigned of his own free will. Speaking to journalists, Kornilov denied owning any Dubai property.
Subsequently, after being reinstated in his position, Kornilov sold a second property in Jumeirah Bay X1 Tower in November 2023. Currently, Kornilov still owns a hotel room in Aykon City-Tower B.
The journalists note that the documents contained information about six hundred Ukrainian citizens who own real estate in Dubai. Among them, the journalists also found current officials, about whom they decided to publish a separate article.
