Ukrainian businessman denies connection to persons investigated by BIC and takes legal action

Sergei Semeniuk is now suing the editorial board of Slidstvo.Info and the author of the article, Yanina Korniienko, to defend his personal honour, dignity and business standing. He denies any connection between Eduard Apsit and his company. However, the BIC reporters discovered that the Ukrainian national has been in charge of the Facilicom Group of Companies since 2014. Anna Apsit, the daughter of Eduard and Elena Apsits, is the beneficiary of the group. Her parents were listed as the proprietors of the business at various periods until she became the owner in July 2023. [*][*]

Semeniuk and Apsit have been business partners for a long time. The BIC possesses documents indicating that their partnership dates back to at least 2009 and extended until 2019. During this period, the Russian company Flagman Clean - employing Apsit's staff - cleaned barracks in occupied Crimea. In addition, the contract signed by Flagman Clean with the Russian Ministry of Defence contained the phone number and e-mail address of the Russian Facilicom company owned by Apsit. [*][*]

Our Ukrainian colleagues believe that the lawyers of Sergei Semeniuk attempted to control the process of automated assignment of cases to judges. They did this by submitting an application multiple times and withdrawing it until they received a "favourable" judge. The defendant in the civil proceedings, Vladislav Hrindak, also seems dubious, as maintained by Alexander Yarashevich who authored the BIC investigation on Eduard Apsit. According to Slidstvo.Info, Hrindak is an unknown individual to journalists who posted about the investigation of Apsit on an Instagram account that was created a month after the publication. When the post was made, he had 33 followers and two posts. It is also concerning that there was a request to consider the case in absentia. [*][*][*]

The BIC hopes that the Ukrainian authorities prevent the suit from being tampered with and take all necessary steps to safeguard the freedom of speech and the journalists' right to investigate corruption and war crimes independently.

The BIC scrutinised Eduard Apsit and his relatives' operations. Follow the links to read more:

Dirty play in a clean market. How Belarusian cleaners earned tens of millions of euros in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine and why they are being tried in Latvia 

Cleaning reputations. How businessman involved in laundering tens of millions of euros received help from Belarus democratic forces in exchange for donations