Companies of Wagner Group chief's friend clean up at Ukrainian strategic facilities

Cleaning companies belonging to Eduard Apsit, a Russian businessman linked to Yevgeniy Prigozhin, chief of the Wagner private military company (PMC), have been cleaning Ukrainian strategic facilities for many years.

Source: investigation of an independent Ukrainian agency Slidstvo.Info

Details: Aspit’s companies have been cleaning such Ukrainian strategic facilities as Ukrzaliznytsia [the Ukrainian railway – ed.], Ukrposhta [Ukrainian postal service – ed.], Ukrenergo [Ukrainian power supply company – ed.], the Boryspil Airport and the temporarily occupied Berdiansk port for many years.

For instance, on the day of a Russian attack on Ukrainian critical infrastructure, Ukrenergo conducts a tender for cleaning, mainly of power substations in different oblasts in Ukraine. The Chysty Svit Technologies [Clean World – ed.], which is a part of the Chysto [Clean – ed.] group of companies, wins.

This company belongs to the business group of Eduard Apsit, a Russian entrepreneur of Belarusian descent. He created a whole cleaning empire of companies in Russia, Belarus and Ukraine.

In Ukraine, companies of the Chysto group have had access to strategic facilities like Ukrposhta, UkrTransNafta [Ukrainian oil transportation company – ed.], the Boryspil Airport, Ukrzaliznytsia etc. At the moment, they are working at the UkrEnergo substations and in PrivatBank offices in contact line areas.

A company of the Chysto group worked in occupied Crimea and cleaned the military units of the Black Sea Fleet of the Ministry of Defence of Russia. In Russia, cleaning companies linked to the Apsit families cleaned the Kremlin.

Apsit has Russian and Belarusian passports and a connection with Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner PMC.

The Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), working in conjunction with Slidstvo.Info, detected a link between cleaning companies from the Apsit business group and Prigozhin.

The journalists have established that cleaning companies, connected with Apsit, cooperated with Prigozhin’s companies, and have been cleaning the largest state-owned buildings of Ukraine.

Moreover, in 2017, the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia uncovered a cartel conspiracy at the auctions for maintaining military towns. The two groups of companies were in a conspiracy: one was linked to Prigozhin and the other to the people connected with the companies of the Apsit group. Apsit himself denies knowing Prigozhin, having business relations with him, or having a cartel conspiracy with Prigozhin, but he refuses to disclose other information concerning his business.

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