While the real owners of the Euroterminal can’t be proven, the people who manage the terminal have a number of controversial connections that raise serious questions about the operation.  It is unclear why would the president of Ukraine push for the creation of the terminal only to let it be run by people with alleged ties to criminal activities.

The management is run by two brothers Pavel and Serhiy Lisitsin, Russian citizens, who serve as president and director, respectively of Euroterminal.

Pavel Lisitsin was also director of Sintez U.K. Ltd., part of the well-known Sintez group, which in the 1990s traded oil and gasoline in the former Soviet Union.

One of Pavel Lisitsin’s partners at Sintez is Aleksander Zhukov.  Zhukov’s daughter, Dasha, is the girlfriend of billionaire Russian businessman Roman Abramovich.

In 2001, Zhukov was detained in Italy on suspicion of trading in illegal weapons. Later, an Italian court acquitted him of smuggling because the smuggling happened offshore and was outside of Italy’s jurisdiction. 

The third partner of Pavel Lisitsin and Zhukov in Sintez group is Leonid Lebedev, a member of Russia’s upper chamber of parliament and a prominent businessman. Pavel Lisitsin and Lebedev were co-directors in British company Transcargo Ltd., which has since ceased its activities. The director of Transcargo from 1996 to 2000 was the controversial Alexander Angert, an Israeli citizen born in 1955. 

Angert, a well-known figure in Odesa, is nicknamed “The Angel,” according to police and media reports dating from the 1990s. Media reports say that in 1980 Angert was sentenced to 15 years of jail for premeditated murder but was released after 12 years.

An Italian police file lists Angert and Zhukov – the latter being Pavel Lisitsin’s and Lebedev’s partner in Sintez – as members of the “Odesa Oil Mafia.”  

However, very little information can be verified about Angert through official sources. Neither the Interior Ministry nor the State Penitentiary Service of Ukraine, an agency that oversees the country’s prisons, responded to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project’s repeated requests for information regarding Angert’s alleged convictions and jail sentences.

However, The Guardian on July 9, 2001 in an article described Angert as a “notoriously violent Odesa godfather who now lives in London. Angert helped run the (Odesa) port’s lucrative oil business and extortion rackets ...”

The Guardian also quoted Odesa’s police chief, Vladimir Zhurakovsky, at the time saying, “Angert was in control (of the Odesa port). The politicians depended on him.”

Read More