"Exploiting the Carpathians: Business Lessons from OPZZH and Arachamia."

Who is Kaskiv and what does he have to do with the Austrian investor?

July 2020. The office of President Zelensky, led by Andriy Yermak, discussed the creation of a year-round mountain sports and tourism cluster called "Borzhava." The most esteemed guest presenting the program was Austrian Gernot Leitner. They talked about building lifts, hotel and restaurant complexes, and other entertainment tourist facilities in the village of Pilipets in the Zakarpattia region and its surrounding villages. Although the discussion stopped publicly at the Office of the President after the onset of the large-scale war, this grand idea did not vanish but rather went underground. However, it turned out that the Austrian company was merely a front. The true beneficiary of this venture is none other than Vladislav Kaskiv, a deputy of the Zakarpattia Regional Council from the OPZZh party.

In March 2014, Kaskiv resigned from State Investment Project and moved to Austria, where in February 2015, he took the helm of the investment company Ozario Holdings. Prior to him, the director was Peter Jandl, a member of the supervisory boards of Dmytro Firtash's companies. Although Ozario Holdings has since been liquidated, it was registered in Vienna at the same address as Yuliya Levchenko's Teleferic Holdings, which had a representative in Ukraine—Andriy Bantzner. He was Kaskiv's assistant. The director of the company was Gernot Leitner—the same investor who attended a meeting at the Office of the President in 2020. Interestingly, his company Masterconcept has implemented more than one project in Russia after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018.

Additionally, Gernot Leitner owns the Slovak company Carpathian Mountain Resort, s.r.o., which has 12 companies in Ukraine. They are managed by Irina Kukh, a former employee of the State Investment Project during Kaskiv's leadership. By the end of 2021, these 12 companies owned 450 hectares of Zakarpattia land, where they planned to build the "Borzhava" ski resort. However, this proved to be insufficient.

From threats to criminal cases

On March 7, 2022, while fierce battles with Russian invaders were raging near Kyiv and most of the country was suffering from shelling, a struggle for valuable land began at the "Grand Hotel Pilipets" in the Zakarpattia region.

Vladislav Kaskiv attempted to negotiate with local entrepreneur Ivan Borychko to have him hand over his hotel "Berloga."

In 2014, Ivan purchased a plot of land, completed all property documents, and began constructing a hotel and restaurant complex. Now, Kaskiv insists that he plans to build a lift there, and Ivan's hotel would obstruct his plans.

“The ultimatum was very simple: ‘If you don’t remove it, we will take it over in some time, figure out what to do with it, so you need to understand this.’ That was the specific ultimatum,” the entrepreneur recounted.

And they indeed came up with a plan. They involved architect Valeriy Beznosko, who, according to locals, joined their united territorial community by the end of 2022. He revised the village's master plan in such a way that a piece of land where Ivan Borychko's hotel is located turned out to be part of a parcel owned by Kaskiv's orbit companies—“Borzhava SKi” and “Sky Land.” The designer then left for abroad and has not appeared in Ukraine since. The mentioned companies filed a lawsuit against the entrepreneur, demanding that he demolish “Berloga.” Moreover, a criminal case was opened against Borychko for allegedly illegally seizing the land plot, which, according to Ivan's property documents, belonged to the village council. The land plot was subsequently seized from Borychko.

“The prosecutor's office is currently pursuing a civil case aimed at seizing this plot for the benefit of the village council. By the way, this scheme was proposed to me by Vladislav himself, saying that if I didn’t do it, the village council would seize it and either give it to him or sell it. So far, yes, everything is happening as he described to me,” says Ivan Borychko.

But Ivan's story in Pilipets is far from unique.

Nadezhda Hladyo, a resident of the neighboring village of Podobovets, which is part of the same ATC, also finds herself in a strange coincidence where someone wants to take away her house, into which she and her family have invested the last 10 years of their lives. The land for her family was allocated by the village council back in 2013. They then received all the documents and property rights.

“In 2013, we began construction, and by 2017, we practically had a house, and we completed the privatization; our documents were ready. This whole mess started, it’s been going on for sure for three years now. I receive anonymous calls. They say: ‘I’ll buy this house,’ in Russian. And I replied: ‘This house is not for sale; we are building it for ourselves,’” recounts Nadezhda Hladyo.

Nadezhda decided to ignore the calls. Soon after, the cables that had just been connected to supply electricity to her house were cut. When this didn’t deter the Hladyo family either, in September 2022, a criminal case appeared in the court registry. Allegedly, Nadezhda's husband, back in 2013, along with the then village head, illegally took possession of this land, and the plot is located outside any populated area.

Next to Nadezhda's plot on the cadastral map is another one—25 acres. It belongs to the LLC “Borzhava-Zamkovaya Gora”. The beneficiary of the company is Rovshan Guseynov, the father of Renata Guseynova. She was Kaskiv's assistant in parliament when he was a people's deputy and is now his civil wife, with whom he has a son. Rovshan owns 97 land plots in the Mezhgorye district, most of which are located directly in Pilipets, although he is officially registered in Kyiv. Renata owns another 40 plots. Her company, “Borzhava Center”, holds an additional 25.

To figure out who is suing whom and for what, as well as what’s going on with the new master plan that locals have yet to see, we went to meet with the head of the Pilipets ATC, Vitaliy Pyrynets. He assured us that there is a new master plan, but he could not show it to us because the architect left the country, the lawyer is on sick leave, and he himself does not have the authority to present the master plan.

We agreed to meet with Vitaliy Pyrynets the following day—saying that the lawyer would be present and we could study the new village master plan together. However, the head of the ATC suddenly left the village.

Arahamia is not engaged in reputation management

Vladislav Kaskiv did not respond to calls from hromadske journalists. Therefore, the only opportunity to ask him a question arose during an unscheduled session of the Zakarpattia Regional Council. However, he was not inclined to answer.

“I am not interested in either you or your questions. I do not consider you a mass media outlet, so I have neither the desire nor the intention to communicate with you,” Vladislav Kaskiv replied to us.

During the investigation, it also became known that Kaskiv was accompanied by the head of the "Servant of the People" faction, David Arahamia, who visited Pilipets in early October. When asked by journalists what he was doing with Kaskiv in the Zakarpattia region, Arahamia replied that he was working on attracting investments and was looking into the "Borzhava" ski resort project.