Profiles: The People of Paradise

Alexandru Ghiță is a Romanian businessman and brother of Sebastian Ghiță, a former Romanian member of parliament who is currently awaiting trial on charges of money laundering, blackmail and bribery.

Igor Shuvalov is a long-serving senior Russian official. Since 2008, Shuvalov has been the first deputy prime minister. Prior to this, his jobs included deputy chief of the president's executive office, chief of government staff, and deputy chief of the president's executive office.

Vladimir Blotskiy is a wealthy Russian businessman and politician, with interests largely in the fishing industry. In September 2016, Blotskiy became a member of the Russian State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament.

Andriy Verevskyy is the founder and board chairman of Kernel, a Ukrainian diversified agriculture company. Verevskyy was a member of Ukraine’s parliament from 2002 until 2013, when a court stripped him of his seat for simultaneously holding public office and running a commercial business.

Anton Prygodskyy is a Ukrainian politician and businessman who was a member of parliament from 2006 until 2014. He is better known as a longtime hunting and golfing companion of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, and earned a reputation as a behind-the-scenes operator in Yanukovych’s Party of Regions. After Yanukovych’s fall, Prygodskyy left the party and, along with his son, Vitaly, moved into business in Ukraine and the Russian-occupied regions of Crimea and Donbass.

Bogdan Rodić is a Serbian businessman linked to Darko Šarić, a drug-trafficking boss currently on trial for international drug smuggling and money laundering.

Igor Nikonov is a businessman involved in construction who serves as an informal advisor to the mayor of Kyiv, Vitali Klitschko.

Kostyantyn Zhevago is the chief executive officer of the Ukrainian mining company Ferrexpo, and has been a member of the country’s parliament since 1998. He became finance director of the bank Finance & Credit in 1992 and eventually bought the business, which went bankrupt in 2015.

Nebojša Ivković is a Serbian businessman linked to the suspicious privatization of Šinvoz, a railway vehicle company, which was investigated by the country’s Anti-Corruption Council as part of a larger probe into 24 troubled privatizations.

Petro Poroshenko is Ukraine’s president and a wealthy businessman with interests in automotive plants, a shipyard, a television channel, and the country’s largest confectionery company. During his presidential campaign in 2014, Poroshenko pledged to sell this company, Roshen. He has yet to do so.

Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich has been a member of President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle since the late 1990s. Abramovich is a former member of the Russian parliament and was the governor of the Chukotka region from 2000 to 2008. He is one of Russia’s richest people, with a reported net worth of about US$ 10 billion. He owns stakes in the giant metal firms Evraz and Norilsk Nickel, and is the owner of the Chelsea Football Club and assets including the second-largest yacht in the world, the 163-meter Eclipse.

Sergiy Oleksiyenko is a board member of Ukrtransgaz, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the state oil and gas company Naftogaz, which is involved in the transmission and storage of natural gas. Oleksiyenko is also a former advisor to Naftogaz’s chief executive officer, Andriy Kobolyev.

Serhiy Kivalov is a member of the Ukrainian parliament’s Opposition Bloc party, widely seen as the successor of the disbanded Party of Regions of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych. He was the head of the Ukrainian Central Election Commission during the 2004 presidential election, disputes over which prompted the country’s Orange Revolution. Kivalov was repeatedly summoned for questioning by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office over his role as head of the commission, but was never charged.

Vadim Shulman is a Ukrainian tycoon who, since the fall of the Soviet Union, has developed a diverse business portfolio that spans mining, chemicals, energy, and telecommunications. He is a close associate of fellow Ukrainian businessmen Ihor Kolomoiskyy and Gennady Bogolyubov, and since 2006 had chaired the Ukraine Tennis Federation.

Vadym Gurzhos is a Ukrainian businessman who has headed the country’s State Road Administration and served as the deputy head of the Kyiv Regional State Administration from 2006 to 2008.

Valeriy Voshchevskyy is a Ukrainian entrepreneur and politician who was the country’s vice prime minister from December 2014 until September 2015, overseeing national ecology, infrastructure and construction.

Gabriel Comănescu is a former electrical officer in the Romanian Navy who owns one of the country’s most important oil drilling companies, Grup Servicii Petroliere. In 2009 the company landed a US$ 270 million contract with Russian natural gas giant Gazprom for an offshore gas pipeline in the Black Sea. Comănescu has a fortune estimated by Forbes at over €500 million (about $580 million).

Ihor Urbanskyy was a member of Ukraine’s parliament from 2006 to 2007 and the deputy minister of Transport and Communications between 2007 and 2009. His son, Aleksandr Urbanskyy, is a member of parliament aligned with President Petro Poroshenko.

Gheorghe Bosinceanu is a Romanian businessman who has received significant help from the state. In 2002, Bosinceanu bought a majority stake in the Constanta Shipyard, one of Europe’s largest shipbuilding and repair facilities. His purchase of the previously state-owned facility was made easier by the Romanian government’s decision to write off roughly US$ 30 million worth of debt. Bosinceanu’s control of the company is secured by shell companies in Cyprus and Malta, two notorious tax havens.

Ihor Kolomoisky is a Ukrainian-Israeli-Cypriot businessman and former governor of Ukraine’s eastern Dnipropetrovsk oblast from 2014 to 2015. His business interests stretch from airlines to oil production.

Viktor Pinchuk is a Ukrainian businessman with a portfolio that spans from oil and gas, to metals and even the media. Pinchuk was a member of Ukraine’s parliament from 1998 to 2006. He is accused of using his relationship with his father-in-law, former President Leonid Kuchma, to amass wealth via insider deals.

Nicolae Dumitru, 53, is a Romanian businessman and real estate developer who has connections to politicians and former members of the Securitate, Romania’s Communist-era secret police.