RAIDING – Ukraine open for business

Work of 26 laboratories of Eskulab network is paralyzed due to unscrupulous actions of company’s co-owners

26 laboratories of the well-known medical chain Eskulab have suspended their work due to an internal conflict between the company’s co-owners. According to Serhiy Dyadyushko, one of the brand’s co-owners, his colleagues Denys Melnyk and Stanislav Luhovskyi, along with software administrator Igor Malinovsky, are committing illegal actions to gain full control over the company.

“Melnyk and Luhovskyi have repeatedly expressed their dissatisfaction with the official cash accounting. Their actions are aimed at gaining control over Eskulab in order to gain full access to its financial flows, to further direct them into their own hands, outside the official accounting and without paying taxes,” says Sergiy Dyadyushko.

He also claims that other co-owners offered to spend a significant portion of the cash outside the cash register and distribute it without paying taxes.

“They offered to spend the lion’s share of the funds received outside the cash accounting and distribute them without paying taxes among the company’s members. I categorically disagreed with such proposals and repeatedly informed them of my rejection of illegal actions. In this regard, Melnyk and Luhovskyi launched a raider attack to exclude me from the company’s shareholders by depriving me of my share,” said Diadiushko.

According to Dyadyushko, the raider attack included the systematic convening of general meetings of participants in violation of the established procedure, which led to the artificial creation of preconditions for his exclusion from the company. Melnyk and Luhovskyi also involved employees of the Lviv Directorate of Ukrposhta to ensure that he did not receive notices of the meeting.

“I have appealed to law enforcement agencies and am preparing documents to go to court. Despite constant psychological pressure and threats, I was forced to agree to resign as director and sign a new version of the charter to prevent my exclusion from the company,” he said.

This situation led to a temporary paralyzation of 26 laboratories of the Eskulab network in Kyiv, which negatively affected the provision of medical services to the population.

“As of today, having gained control over Eskulab, as a result of consistent raider actions, Melnyk and Luhovskyi, as well as Malinowski, who administers the software (computer program) of the company on the basis of which the latter conducts its business activities, have blocked me as a participant and medical director of Eskulab access to the said program and jointly withdraw cash from the company without paying taxes monthly in the amount of about UAH 20,000,000 Such actions of these persons lead to the actual non-receipt of biological products by the state budget. Because of this, 26 biomaterial collection points in Kyiv are actually unable to carry out their activities,” emphasizes the co-owner of the company.

Sergiy Dyadyushko considers these actions to be nothing more than a raider attack aimed at depriving him of his share in Eskulab.

“They demanded that I either resign as a director or they would exclude me from the company’s shareholders. The case has now been referred to law enforcement agencies. We are also preparing documents to go to court to restore my legal rights,” Dyadyushko said.

Established in 2009, Eskulab is a leading medical laboratory in western Ukraine that provides a wide range of laboratory services to the public with four laboratories and more than 150 biological sampling points.

In 2023, Eskulab paid UAH 33.8 million in taxes, including UAH 14.97 million in unified social tax, UAH 1.33 million in military duty, and UAH 14.034 million in personal income tax. It is one of the ten largest taxpayers in Lviv region.

The co-founders of PE “PSML ‘Eskulab’ are Dyadyushko, who owns 43% of the company, Luhovskyi (43%) and Melnyk (14%). The co-founders of Eskulab Center LLC are Dyadyushko, Luhovskyi and Melnyk, who each own 20% of the company, and Ruslana Soltani, who owns 40%.

Esculab, LUHOVSKYI, MELNYK, RAIDING, Дядюшко

Number of raiding cases increased by one and half times in month

Only cases of document forgery reach the court

According to the Prosecutor General’s Office, 188 criminal proceedings on raiding were recorded in 5 months of this year. This is already 1.3 times more than in the same period in 2023. Most proceedings are opened under Art. 205-1 “Forgery of documents”.

The number of raiding cases has been growing in recent years, but has not yet reached the levels before the full-scale invasion. Since the beginning of the year, 188 proceedings have been opened under articles on raiding. This is 1.3 times more than in the same period last year in 2023 – 147 proceedings. However, it is still two times less than in 2021 – 398 cases.

On the eve of the full-scale invasion, an average of 50 new cases were registered every month. At the beginning of this year, 32 new proceedings were opened per month, and in May their number reached 52.

In general, raiding cases are opened under the articles on forgery of documents (Article 205-1 of the Criminal Code), counteraction to legitimate economic activity (Article 206 of the Criminal Code) and illegal seizure of company property (Article 206-2 of the Criminal Code), etc.

Most often, raiding is recorded through forgery of documents: 138 or 73% of all cases this year.

Since the beginning of the year, 29 and 21 criminal proceedings have been opened for counteracting legitimate business activities and unlawful seizure of company property, respectively. It is worth noting that since the beginning of the year, no new cases of obstruction of business activities and unlawful seizure of company property have been brought to court.

According to the Anti-Raiding Office, the number of complaints about raider attacks is growing year on year. 1,255 complaints were received in the first 5 months of this year. For comparison, there were 1,905 such complaints for the whole of last year.

https://opendatabot.ua/analytics/raiders-2024-5

courts, forgery of documents, RAIDING

Founder of Eskulab Medical Laboratories suspends development plans due to raiding attempts

The Eskulab laboratory chain is fulfilling its obligations, but the conflict between the owners has jeopardized the network’s development plans, said Natalia Kohut, Eskulab’s medical director.
“We fulfill 100% of the obligations we undertook in 2024 in terms of conducting trials. But the issue of interaction between the co-founders of the company, unfortunately, has suspended the dynamic growth of the network,” she said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine on Tuesday.

Kohut said that the company planned to open 25 branches in Kyiv and Lviv region in 2024 and start expanding to the central and eastern regions of Ukraine.
“We did have such opportunities. We have already opened three laboratories outside of Lviv and Kyiv, but unfortunately, we do not have this opportunity now,” she said.

Natalia Kohut also noted that since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the network has been accredited for the quality of its management system. At the same time, Eskulab provides laboratory services to more than 5,000 patients every day.

“We are conducting honest business activities, we have no financial abuses in relation to the obligations we have assumed,” she said.
For his part, Andriy Dubivka, CFO of Eskulab, noted that the possible losses of the network due to the conflict between the co-founders could be estimated at hundreds of millions of hryvnias, if not a billion.

“We are currently calculating the losses. We pay official dividends according to the reporting forms. We have set ourselves the task of making the company transparent and clean,” he said.

Andriy Dubivka clarified that at the meeting held last week, the co-founders of Eskulab did not agree on the formation of the company’s governing body, so the Management Board established by the decision of the meeting in October 2023 remains the legitimate body.

“At the meeting, the participants did not reach any agreement, as Sergiy Dyadyushko’s position was clear: the said management board is able to continue to fulfill its powers,” he said.

For his part, co-founder of the Eskulab network Serhiy Dyadyushko noted that the conflict between the co-founders arose in 2023, when co-founders Stanislav Lugovskyi and Denys Melnyk attempted to re-register Serhiy Dyadyushko’s share and remove him from the network. In addition, according to Serhiy Dyadyushko, his business partners did not support the activities of the charitable foundation Aesculab, which he had created, which, among other things, provides food, medicines and medical devices to the military.

“According to the version of the company’s charter adopted in October 2023, each of the company’s participants has a representative in the board, so there is one representative on my side and two on the side of my opponents,” he said.

As reported earlier, the Eskulab Group, which operates the Eskulab medical laboratory network (PE First Social Medical Laboratory (FSML) Eskulab and Eskulab Center LLC), announced the risks of stopping the network’s operation due to raider seizure attempts by its two co-founders Stanislav Luhovskyi and Denys Melnyk, who carried out a raider seizure and blocked Eskulab’s financial operations through their representatives in the management. In this regard, Diadiushko appealed to law enforcement agencies.

In his turn, Denys Melnyk said in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine that he and Stanislav Luhovskyi “are being removed from any management or influence on the company,” their access to their jobs has been blocked for several months, and Diadiushko “deliberately conceals the state of affairs in the financial and economic part.”

At the same time, Dyadyushko’s representative, lawyer Yuriy Petrovsky, said that the company’s shareholders are not deprived of the right to manage the company, as confirmed by the general meeting of the company’s shareholders convened by Lugovsky on April 12. At the same time, according to Melnyk, another meeting of Aesculab’s shareholders is scheduled for April 19, 2024.

He said, “as for the operational management of the company’s production processes, two participants carry out such management through their delegated representatives of the management: commercial director Roman Vysotsky and financial director Andriy Dubivka. Currently, it is Vysotskyi who is blocking the company’s operational activities.”…

Eskulab Medical Laboratory is one of the three largest private laboratories in Ukraine, contracted by the National Health Service of Ukraine (NHSU). The network consists of five laboratory centers and 180 sample collection points in the western regions of Ukraine and Kyiv.

In 2023, Eskulab paid UAH 33.8 million in taxes, including UAH 14.97 million in unified social tax, UAH 1.33 million in military duty, and UAH 14.034 million in personal income tax. It is one of the ten largest taxpayers in Lviv region.

The co-founders of PE “PSML “Eskulab” are Dyadyushko, who owns 43% of the company, Luhovskyi (43%) and Melnyk (14%). The co-founders of Eskulab Center LLC are Dyadyushko, Luhovskyi and Melnyk, who each own 20% of the company, and Ruslana Soltani, who owns 40%.

Aesculab, CONFLICT, Kohut, Petrovsky, RAIDING, Дубівка, Дядюшко

Spanish investor claims loss of more than UAH 20 mln due to raider takeover of company by its Ukrainian co-founder

Spanish citizen Angel Miguel Cerezo Gallardo estimates losses from the raider takeover by the Ukrainian co-founder of the Selecto Markets company, of which he is a co-founder, at UAH 20 million.

As the Spanish citizen said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Tuesday, together with Ukrainian partners, he planned to develop a chain of grocery stores in Ukraine with the supply of products from Spain and other European countries, created the Selecto Markets company, invested in first store in Kyiv, delivered equipment and goods.

According to him, one of the co-founders of the company from the Ukrainian side was Maksym Marshchivskyy, who at that time headed the distribution direction in the Furshet retail chain. The co-founders, among other things, planned to supply European products to Ukrainian retail chains, as well as develop their own network of Selecto Markets stores.

However, according to the Spanish investor, Marshchivskyy, without any reason, refused to pay for goods imported from Spain and other European countries by the Spanish businessman’s companies, stopped paying local suppliers, blocked the Spanish partner’s access to the company’s accounts and documents, and also “decided to personally manage the company and re-register for himself.”

In turn, Cerezo Gallardo’s lawyer Hennadiy Borysychev noted that law enforcement agencies “are in no hurry to enter information about criminal offenses under Articles 219 and 191 of the Criminal Code into the unified register of pre-trial investigations, as well as to investigate them.”

“We will have to go to court to declare the investigators’ inaction illegal and in court to oblige law enforcement agencies to initiate criminal proceedings,” he said.

Borysychev clarified that the matter concerns the actual raider takeover of the Selecto Markets company by Marshchivskyy.

The lawyer also noted that, according to information available to Cerezo Gallardo, Marshchivskyy is currently abroad, presumably in the United States.

“Any country that is at war, especially with a nuclear state, is not very attractive for investment. But if you add to this the fact that law enforcement and government agencies cannot protect investors, it can lead to bankruptcy of the state,” he said.

“We want to use the example of this case to prove that justice and law enforcement agencies really work in the country, that it is really possible to invest in our country,” he said.

According to the lawyer, representing the interests of Cerezo Gallardo, he intends to “take other steps to stimulate the investigative authorities in a legal way so that they actually investigate these cases.”

In turn, another co-founder of Selecto Markets, Eugene Zhevagin, said at the press conference that since the start of the full-scale invasion, Cerezo Gallardo “not only did not leave Ukraine, but is actively helping it, supplying humanitarian aid, ambulances, and medicines.”

“He doesn’t just invest money, he helped and is helping everyone who needs it, he believes in Ukraine. We really hope that by making this case public, we will get a positive result,” Zhevagin said.

The Spanish investor contacted the Embassy of the Kingdom of Spain in Ukraine to assist in a fair resolution of the case.

angel miguel cerezo gallardo, BORYSYCHEV, CONFERENCE, INVESTOR, Marshchivskyy, RAIDING, selecto markets, жевагін

UKRAINIAN REVEALING INFORMATION SETS UP BUSINESS SUPPORT CENTER

Nationwide legal association Revealing Information has set up the Business Support Center. The Center will provide businesses with support to fight illegal seizures, which have become a burning issue during the emergency situation and quarantine.
According to the Justice Ministry, the number of illegal seizures through making amendments to state registers has increased by 16 times during the quarantine.
Managing Partner of the Revealing Information Law Firm Oleksandr Keyer said that today both the society and businesses experience an intensive turbulence.

“The number of fraud cases is growing in Ukraine. The Justice Ministry has officially reported an increase in the number of illegal seizure attempts by dozens of times. We also can see such a trend. The situation is getting even worse due to uncertainty about the coronavirus (COVID-19) disease and its influence on business and economy. We are doing the utmost to stay one step ahead and, in particular, for this reason our company has set up the Business Support Center right now,” Keyer said.
The Business Support Center of the Revealing Information Law Firm will provide services to protect businesses by all available legal means, including security and prevention measures, represent them in court, provide them with legal support while concluding agreements during the quarantine, and so on.
Revealing Information is a nationwide legal association of broad-based experts providing services to protect the rights of victims of all types of offenses, fraud and banditry.
The association’s services include legal business support, analytical and information work, security measures to counter raiding, customer support in criminal, commercial and civil disputes, and more.

http://revealinginformation.com.ua/en/

E-mail: revealing@ukr.net
Phone: +38095 868 3590, +38067 868 3690

BUSINESS, CORONAVIRUS, COVID_19, ILLEGAL, KEYER, RAIDING, REVEALING_INFORMATION, SEIZURES

PRESIDENT OF UKRAINE SIGNS LAW ON COUNTERING RAIDING

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky has signed the law on amending the Land Code of Ukraine and some other legislative acts to combat raiding adopted by the Verkhovna Rada on December 5, 2019.
According to information on the website of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, on January 13 the document was returned with the signature of the president.
As reported, bill No. 0858 establishes that if a party to the contract wishes to refuse to automatically renew the land lease, then no later than 30 calendar days before the expiration of the contract, it must submit an application to the state register of property rights. In the absence of such a statement after the relevant expiration date of the contract, it is extended for the same period and with the same conditions.
The lease payment for land plots of state and municipal property leased at land tenders cannot be reduced by agreement of the parties during the term of the lease, as well as upon its renewal, as indicated in the document.
The bill also provides for the establishment of a guarantee contribution amount per lot at the level of 5% of the starting price for the sale of a land plot and 50% of the starting amount of the annual fee for using a land plot, but not less than 500 tax-free minimum incomes of citizens and not more than 5,000 tax-free minimum incomes of citizens.

COUNTERING, LAW, PRESIDENT, RAIDING

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