Eight years ago, Mercedes S 65 AMG from the motorcade of Petro Dyminskyi, an influential Ukrainian businessman, committed a gross violation of traffic rules and rammed through Opel Astra, a driver of which, 31-year-old Natalia Trila, died on site. Despite the testimony, saying that the businessman could have driven this Mercedes himself, the culprit of this traffic accident hasn’t been punished yet.
Yet, this day, August 18, 2017, became the turning point in Petro Dyminskyi’s life. At that time, he owned a classic set of an oligarch – a football club, a TV channel, and political influence. Dyminskyi earned his main assets in the oil-processing industry, in particular, by owning 25% shares of one of the largest fuel station networks in the country, WOG. The Forbes analysts estimated his property at USD 103 million and gave him the 44th position in the list of the richest Ukrainians.
Now, Petro Dyminskyi is 70 years old. He has successfully sold his main business in Ukraine and has been living abroad for eight years. Despite being wanted for that fatal traffic accident, Dyminskyi is doing rather well.
NGL.media has worked on this investigation for almost a year in partnership with the international investigative journalist network OCCRP and journalists of Inside Story (Greece), KRIK (Serbia) and BIC (Belarus).
Today, we are ready to reveal previously unknown details about the sale of ZIK TV channel, Petro Dyminskyi’s new business ventures in Latvia, Serbia, and Greece, and how he has successfully evaded Ukrainian justice in Europe for eight years.
Content:
What happened immediately after the fatal traffic accident in August 2017
15:15 – The Yavoriv police station received a notification about the deadly traffic accident on the Lviv-Krakovets road. Mercedes S 65 AMG and Opel Astra collided near the village of Yamelnia. Natalia Trila, the driver of Opel, died at the scene.
At 15:40, Stepan Matsevko, Natalia Trila’s cousin, arrived at the scene of the traffic accident. In his words, there were witnesses who saw that Dyminskyi allegedly had been driving the car. Later, all the witnesses refused to give any testimony. Andrii Borshch, a 43-year-old bodyguard of Dyminskyi and director of his security company “Irbis”, took responsibility for the accident. Petro Dyminskyi left the scene of the traffic accident in another car from his motorcade.
Petro Dyminskyi was called for interrogation on Wednesday, August 23.
According to the information from Anton Herashchenko, the advisor to the Minister of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Petro Dyminskyi flew from Lviv to Geneva on his private jet.
The materials about the traffic accident were transferred to Kyiv. Mykola Lysyi, the businessman’s lawyer, posted on Facebook the picture of the medical certificate from the Swiss clinic, Generale-Beaulieu, in which a doctor Dimitrios Samaras claimed that he had not found any traces of fractures, dislocations of joints, bruises, scratches, and other bodily injuries on Dyminskyi’s body.
Petro Dyminskyi arrived in Greece.
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A golden visa in Greece
Exactly two months after the fatal traffic accident, on October 18, 2017, Petro Dyminskyi bought a house in the prestigious suburbs of Athens, at the coast of the Aegean Sea, woth EUR 280 thousand A townhouse with an area of 171.5 sq.m. is located in Voula, about 20 km from the centre of Athens, according to the documents . According to Greek regulations, the investment into real estate with the minimum cost of EUR 250 thousand, allows foreigners from non-EU countries to obtain the so-called Golden Visa – a permit to reside in the country for five years with the right of its renewal. This is the very document which, according to the data of our colleagues from Inside Story, was received by Petro Dyminskyi.
“Golden Visa is the only type of residence permit that doesn’t require its owner’s permanent presence or living in Greece. It gives the right of unlimited movement within the Schengen Area but doesn’t protect its owner from potential extradition requests,” Vasileios Kerasiotis, a lawyer from Athens with many years of experience in the sphere of immigration law and human rights, explains.
It seems that Dyminskyi needed the townhouse in the Athens suburbs just to get the “Golden Visa”. Unfortunately, in the Street View mode of Google Maps service, the picture of the house is blurred – this effect may be achieved by the owner’s request to Google. Greek partners of this investigation visited this place and found out that Dyminskyi is likely not to live there; the surnames of other people are indicated near the doorbell (Smorzheniuk and Temponeras). The house itself looks neglected.
The townhouse with an area of 171.5 sq.m., bought by Petro Dyminskyi in Voula near Athens in 2017 (a photo by Inside Story, May 2025)
The search by the address of Dyminskyi’s townhouse yielded a mention about the company Sea Joy, which rents yachts on the island of Corfu. NGL.media found not only people with the surnames on the doorbell of the house among the owners of this company. A share in Sea Joy also belongs to Oksana Liasenko, who controlled the Lviv “Business Centre “Ofis-Voronoho” LLC via a company from Cyprus some time ago Previous names are “Media Group ZIK”, “Editorial office of the newspaper “Za Vilnu Ukrayinu” [For Free Ukraine]”, the current name “V-113” LLC , the later owner of which was Zhanna Dyminska, Petro Dyminskyi’s daughter.
Another Dyminskyi’s daughter, Anastasia, was among the guests of the high-profile celebration of the 50th birthday of Andrii Chornyi in 2016 – this is the husband of Oksana Liasenko.
There is not much information about Andrii Chornyi in the Ukrainian mass media. He was called the owner of record for one of the companies of Oleksandr Yanukovych The elder son of Viktor Yanukovych, the ex-president of Ukraine , he allegedly was engaged in the sale of Ukrainian coal abroad. Andrii Chornyi, aka Andreas Tserni, was born in Georgia, moved to Donbas, and later to Greece. He is 59 now. We will come back to Tserni and this birthday party of the businessman, because it seems to have had no random guests.
In 2020-2022, Dyminskyi frequently flew abroad from Athens airport, as evidenced by the data on his flights uncovered by Inside Story journalists. He was last seen at this airport in November 2022 – that’s when he prolonged his “golden visa”. These data allow for the assumption that at least in the first years after fleeing Ukraine, Petro Dyminskyi lived in Greece.
Who looks for Petro Dyminskyi and how?
A runaway businessman has been wanted by the Ukrainian police since December 2017. He has a status of a suspect pursuant to part 2 of Art. 286 of the CCU (violation of traffic rules, which resulted in the death of the victim). However, this investigation has been suspended. “The pre-trial investigation in the criminal proceedings […] is currently suspended due to the international search for the suspect, all the possible measures envisaged by the legislation to find his location are being taken,” the Prosecutor General’s Office stated in the response to NGL.media’s inquiry.
As for the situation with the international search for Dyminskyi, it is unusual, to say the least. According to the court rulings, he was placed on the international wanted list almost at the same time, as on the national scale, on December 15, 2017. On the same day, judging by the response of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the Interpol distributed the so-called “blue notice” This notice is used to collect the additional information about a person, the location or activity of a person in connection with the criminal investigation, but not to detain or arrest him , which does not envisage any immediate detention or arrest. Instead, the Interpol refused to issue a “red notice”, which imposes the obligation to arrest the suspect, and a few months later, they even deleted the “blue notice” as well.
NGL.media addressed the Interpol with the request to explain the reasons for this decision, but we were denied. The Ukrainian prosecutors and police also insist on “confidentiality”. However, one court ruling in Dyminskyi’s case states that Interpol concluded some violations on the side of the Ukrainian legal system, including while making a ruling about Dyminskyi’s arrest in absentia.
In July 2023, the Ukrainian police addressed Interpol again with the request to issue the “red notice”, but they were denied again.
Therefore, the notion of the “international wanted list”, which is still used by the Prosecutor General’s Office, doesn’t have any practical sense in this case since June 2018.
Probably, they could have detained Petro Dyminskyi in March 2019, when he was meeting the detectives of the NABU in the premises of the Ukrainian embassy in Athens – legaly, it is considered the territory of Ukraine, where the national legislation is in force. But this interrogation was related to another case, initiated by Dyminskyi himself.
Why wasn’t Dyminskyi detained at the embassy? In response to NGL.media’s inquiry, the NABU asserts that five days before the meeting with Dyminskyi they warned the Ukrainian police about it in an official letter. Yet, the police insist that they found out about the interrogation at the embassy only post factum.
If desired, the Ukrainian legal system still has a chance to reach Petro Dyminskyi, but the clock is ticking. The statute of limitations for the crime he is being suspected of is 10 years, but in case of avoiding the pre-trial investigation, the countdown of the statute of limitations is suspended, Ihor Sotskyi, the senior investigator for particularly important cases of the National Police, explained. It is being renewed on the day when a person comes with the admission or is detained. In this case, the person is released from criminal responsibility if it has been fifteen years since the time of committing a crime.
Eight years have already passed.
The cost of Dyminskyi’s media-holding
Two years after the fatal traffic accident and fleeing from the country, Petro Dyminskyi sold one of the most well-known businesses – an informational TV channel, ZIK, very profitably. At that moment, the official owners of the TV channel were his wife and daughters.
On June 14, 2019, Taras Kozak, a people’s deputy from the “Oppositional block” known for his pro-Russian views, announced that he had become the new owner of TV channel ZIK, which was to enter the shared network with two more informational TV channels, “112 Ukraine” and “NewsOne”, acquired by him before.
While the cost of these two TV channels soon became publicly known – about USD 4 million The declared cost of “112 Ukraine” and “NewsOne” was UAH 113.8 million, out of which Kozak actually paid UAH 103 million , the cost of ZIK sale remained unknown. The market players assessed the price of the channel as USD 15-20 million, though Dyminskyi himself allegedly wanted USD 53 million.
The actual cost of the TV channel sale was revealed in the financial reports of the Cyprian company Ablemark Limited, which NGL.media accessed. It was Ablemark Limited that was the owner of the Ukrainian company, “Pro Radio” and, in its turn, “Teleradiocompany “New Communications” which owned licences for ZIK broadcasting.
The newsroom of ZIK TV channel in Kyiv in 2018 (a photo by Telekrytyka/UNIAN)
Ablemark Limited was registered in 2012 and controlled by another Cyprian company, Cypcoserve Limited, for a long time. According to the data leak of Cyprus Confidential More than 3.6 million financial documents from Cyprian corporate suppliers of services, which became the foundation for the global investigative project, Cyprus Confidential, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and Paper Trail Media (Germany) , this company acted as confident (guardian) of the family trust of the Dyminskys.
The financial report of Ablemark demonstrates that on June 13, 2019, the Ukrainian “Pro Radio” was sold to the Cyprian company, Turul Investments Limited, which belongs to Taras Kozak. In its turn, the report of Turul Investments states that the initial agreement was made for USD 165 thousand, but on the same day, the amount of the agreement was increased to USD 27.5 million The exact amount was USD 27,535,139 . This was the amount, received by Ablemark on June 14 to the account of the Belarusian “Absolutbank” In 2021, “Absolutbank”, associated with the Belarusian authorities, was subjected to international sanctions and lost its banking licence in 2023. Mykola Vorobey, the former bank owner, who is called “the money purse” of the president of Belarus, is on the sanctions list of the EU, the USA, the UK, Canada, Japan, and Ukraine. Similar to Taras Kozak, Vorobey is closely connected to Viktor Medvedchuk , which is demonstrated in the bank account statement from the leaked data.
On June 14, 2019, Turul Investments acquired another Cyprian company of Dyminskyi for EUR 17.1 thousand – Alvho Trading Limited, which owned the Ukrainian “Zahidna informatsiina korporatsia” LLC [Western Informational Corporation] (the ZIK information agency) and “TRK “Mist TB” LLC, which also owned some licences for the broadcasting of ZIK TV channel.
Immediately after the announcement about the sale to Taras Kozak, the journalists started to resign en masse from the TV channel and the ZIK information agency. Soon, the TV channel transformed into one of the largest sources of pro-Russian propaganda. In February 2021, pursuant to the decision of the NSDC, its work was blocked, and the website ZIK.ua stopped functioning at the same time. A few weeks later, Taras Kozak flew to Russia and didn’t come back to Ukraine, where he was accused of treason in absentia.
Serbian trace
At the end of 2017, Petro Dyminskyi received the citizenship of Serbia The Serbian passport of Petro Dyminskyi was issued on November 28, 2017, it was discovered from the leaked data of flights, during which he sometimes used this passport . At that moment, he must have worried about the probability of being put on the international wanted list, so the fact of Serbian citizenship could have helped him avoid the extradition to Ukraine.
“As a rule, the country, the citizen of which is a wanted person, refuses extradition,” Kateryna Ilichkieva, a Ukrainian lawyer, explained in the conversation with NGL.media. “They can also refuse to extradite a citizen of Ukraine if he requested asylum in the country of residence. I don’t rule out the possibility of a favourable attitude of the higher authorities of the country of residence to the suspect either.”
Nikola Kovachevich, a Serbian lawyer, who spoke with our colleagues from OCCRP, also believes that political favour may play a relevant role in making a decision about the extradition.
“In essence, unfortunately, extradition is more of a political matter than a legal one. In some cases, Serbia provides some protection to some people, whose extradition is requested, via the provision of asylum, citizenship, or, for example, via delaying the extradition procedure,” Nikola Kovachevich believes.
In response to KRIK’s inquiry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia confirmed the fact of Petro Dyminskyi’s citizenship, but stated only that it was in state’s interest, without disclosing any details. In September 2020, his wife Olena Dyminska also received Serbian citizenship, and next July, she became the founder of the Ablemark Limited. The Cyprian register states not her Ukrainian but Serbian address. However, this is just the name of a street in Belgrade, on the left bank of the Danube. We didn’t succeed in determining her exact place of registration.
The Cyprus Confidential leak also contained the communication with Vadym Ladnytskyi, Dyminskyi’s helper and lawyer for many years, which demonstrates that in spring 2021, Ablemark intended to buy one of the Belarusian banks. It seems that for this purpose, they planned to use the Serbian passport of Olena Dyminska, because, in Ladnytskyi’s words, the central bank of Belarus advised to make a Serbian citizen the ultimate beneficiary of Ablemark. However, the Bulgarian investigators discovered that the purchase of a bank failed.
Trade in arms
The documents of Cyprus Confidential suggest that Dyminskyi may have ties to Serbia beyond the aforementioned. They show that in March 2020, Ablemark company gave an interest-free loan of at least EUR 2.6 million to another Cyprian company, Jikinto Limited, the actual owner of which was not determined.
During the following months, Jikinto received several permits for the export of arms for a total amount of over EUR 10 million to be sold to the government of Uganda An East African country which is actively involved in a military conflict in the neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo .
In November 2020, Jikinto repaid EUR 1.6 million of the loan to Ablemark, but it is unclear whether an additional million euros was returned. Neither company has published the updated financial reports.
Energy business in Latvia
The money for Jikinto, which might have been used for the trade in arms, is only one of many loans, stated in the financial reports of Ablemark. Prior to the sale of ZIK, this Cyprian company couldn’t boast its financial boom. However, after receiving the money from Taras Kozak, it started giving large loans.
In December 2019, Ablemark Limited signed agreements to give loans to the related Latvian companies, New Fuels RSEZ SIA The largest production of sawdust granules for fuel in Latvia and Energy Resources CHP RSEZ SIA Cogeneration plant for the production of electricity and heat using renewable resources and biomass (wood chips, sawdust, and bark) . This matter involved approximately EUR 17 million. At that moment, according to the data of registers, these companies were controlled by the same Andreas Tserni (Andrii Chornyi) via another Cyprian company, Vulkanit Limited.
The industrial site of New Fuels RSEZ SI company, specialized in the production of fuel granules (a photo from the company’s website)
According to the Cyprus Confidential leak, in September 2021, Vulkanit Limited was transferred under the control of Ablemark NGL.media has a copy of the agreement about the sale of Vulkanit Limited to Ablemark Limited . At that moment, in addition to the mentioned two companies, in Latvia, Vulkanit also owned the management company, SIA EcoEnergy AIFP. The chairman of the board of all three companies, situated in Rezekne town in the east of Latvia, turned out to be a 48-year-old Ukrainian, Roman Vdovychenko, who was also among the guests of the lofty birthday party of Andrii Chorny (Andreas Tserni) in Kyiv.
Dyminskyi’s companies try to maintain good relations with the local authorities – for instance, they sponsored the construction of a new football arena in Rezekne. The Latvian media time and again wrote about the political impact of Dyminskyi, for instance, via Viktorija Pleškāne, a deputy of the Latvian parliament from the pro-Russian party Stabilitātei! [Stability!].
Where is Petro Dyminskyi now?
According to the information from the source of our partner, OCCRP, starting from 2022, Petro Dyminskyi has visited Latvia very often.
NGL.media was unable to determine whether Petro Dyminskyi resides in Latvia permanently. According to the local media reports, in 2022, he lived in Jurmala, a resort town near Riga, for at least several months.
The flights to Latvia and a large energy business may be evidence of his possible residing there. NGL.media sent an inquiry to Roman Vdovychenko and the email address of New Fuels RSEZ SIA, but received no response.
Petro Dyminskyi didn’t answer the questions of NGL.media sent via his daughter Anastasia and lawyer Vadym Ladnytskyi either.
Authors Oleksandra Hubytska and Mariana Verbovska, editor Oleh Onysko, infographics Nazar Tuziak, translation Nelya Plakhota, illustration Marta Kharkovets. NGL.media expresses its gratitude to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) for providing access to the database of documents of Cyprus Confidential.