"Monaco Battalion": is it easy for him on the Cote d’Azur, or "the rich also cry"

On the Cote d’Azur, Ukrainian “VIP-refugees” with millions of dollars of income faced difficult challenges: local criminals started hunting for their valuables and luxury cars.

On Cap Ferrat, in Nice, Monte Carlo and Monaco, criminal gangs rob certain houses and cars. This problem is not new, but recently it has intensified, as local dodgers have realized that many non-poor Ukrainians have arrived, and the hunt is specifically for them.

Almost 2,000 kilometers from Ukraine, on the Cote d’Azur in France, the locals wonder, as our publication said, to the increased number of luxury limousines with Ukrainian numbers on the streets. The impression of this picture is absolutely not “joined” with the news from the country suffering from the invasion of Russia. Since mid-September, the investigation has been ongoing against more than 80 people, today it continues with respect to several dozen. At the height of the war, Ukrainian investigators are dealing with a very painful topic for their country: corruption, which persisted on a significant scale even after the pro-European protests on the Maidan, and circles, belonging to which people often have ties to Russia. International arrest warrants have already been issued against two super-rich “refugees” from Ukraine.

Sources told the UP, conducting its own investigation on the issue of elite refugees, that the police receive many reports of the theft of funds and valuables. But there are many who do not turn to law enforcement officers, because they cannot explain the origin of their property.

During the investigation, it also turned out that large-scale construction of the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov, is in full swing on Cap Ferrat. It is being conducted on the site of a villa that he bought from Pavel Fuks in 2016. The oligarch himself, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, did not leave the territory of Ukraine.

However, on the Cote d’Azur, the newspaper’s correspondents met with a number of other people’s deputies and businessmen, whose expensive cars with Ukrainian numbers have long become a familiar attribute on the streets of this “paradise” corner of the world.

For example, Vitaliy Khomutynnik, ex-deputy of five convocations of the Verkhovna Rada and ranked 21st in the list of the richest Ukrainians, travels to Cap Ferrat in a car with Czech numbers. After he noticed that he was being watched, his yacht “Apostrophe” began to drift between the Greek islands. A few weeks later, Khomutynnik ended up in Vienna, and then flew to London. He left Ukraine on the eve of a full-scale Russian invasion.

Were also seen on the Cote d’Azur: Deputy Chairman of the Board of Privatbank Igor Lebedynets, ex-deputy of the Donetsk Regional Council from the Party of Regions businessman Vladislav Gelzin, several cars registered at FC Dynamo – one of them is the daughter of a people’s deputy from the banned pro-Russian party Opposition Platform for Life Grigory Surkis Svetlana (the Surkis brothers rent an apartment in the Monte Carlo Bay hotel).

The probable unofficial beneficiary of the Euroenergotrade company Eduard Kokhan, the former head of the state property fund Dmitry Sennichenko, the stepson of the late mayor of Kharkiv Gennady Kernes Rodion Gaisinsky came to the attention of journalists. They also visited the mansion of the people’s deputy and colleague of Igor Kolomoisky Igor Palitsa, who twice traveled abroad during martial law.

In Cannes, the yacht of the most famous Ukrainian resident of Monaco, who has a residence permit here, Valery Khoroshkovsky, was seen. The yacht is up for sale. During the journalists’ stay on the Cote d’Azur, Khoroshkovsky’s private plane flew to Nice airport.

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