1. Dmytro Vasylovych Firtash is a Ukrainian businessman who heads the board of directors of Group DF.
53 Facts About Dmytro Firtash
1. 2.
Dmytro Firtash was highly influential during the Yushchenko administration and the Yanukovych administration.
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Dmytro Firtash obtained his position with the agreement of Russian president Vladimir Putin and, according to Dmytro Firtash, Russian organized crime boss Semion Mogilevich.
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Dmytro Firtash was born on 2 May 1965 in Bohdanivka, Zalishchiky Raion, Ukraine, Soviet Union.
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Dmytro Firtash's father Vasyl was a driver and his mother Mariya Hryhorivna had two degrees and worked at a livestock farm and then a sugar mill as an accountant.
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Dmytro Firtash began his business career almost immediately after completing his military service.
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Dmytro Firtash founded a trading company in Chernivtsi, Ukraine, eventually moving to Moscow in the early 1990s.
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In 2010, Dmytro Firtash launched an effort towards consolidation of the Ukrainian nitrogen business.
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In just over a year, the joint marketing strategy of the four fertilizer manufacturers owned by Dmytro Firtash substantially strengthened its domestic market position.
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Dmytro Firtash is co-owner of RosUkrEnergo and controls much of the Ukrainian titanium industry.
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Dmytro Firtash gained control of former state-owned titanium assets across Ukraine in 2004 and owns several chemical plants under his Group DF which he formed in 2007.
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In May 2011, Dmytro Firtash took over Nadra Bank.
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Dmytro Firtash became one of the leading investors in the power sector and chemical industry in Central and Eastern Europe.
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Dmytro Firtash was elected President of the Joint Representative Body, a joint representative agency of employers at the national level, on 29 November 2011.
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Dmytro Firtash bought back 100 percent of InterInter Media Group Limited from Valeriy Khoroshkovskyi on 1 February 2013, for his GDF Media Limited.
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Dmytro Firtash owns seven television channels as well as an influential Kyiv-based Ukrainian News Agency.
17.
In February 2014, the British Ministry of Defence sold the disused Brompton Road tube station to Dmytro Firtash, who planned to convert the site into residential flats.
18.
On 4 August 2021 the previously Dmytro Firtash-owned Zaporizhzhia Titanium-Magnesium Plant was returned to state ownership.
19.
The Commercial Court of Zaporizhzhia Oblast ruled that Dmytro Firtash had not fulfilled its 2013 obligations to the State Property Fund of Ukraine to invest 110 million US dollars in the modernization of the plant.
20.
Dmytro Firtash unified the employers' organizations of Ukraine into a single powerful association, the Federation of Employers of Ukraine, which he presided over from November 2011 to September 2016.
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In 2012, Dmytro Firtash initiated the establishment of a venture investment fund, Bukovina, aimed at supporting small enterprises.
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In October 2013, Dmytro Firtash was introduced into the state commission of cooperation with the World Trade Organization by the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.
23.
In spring 2002, Dmytro Firtash ran for parliament as a member of the all-Ukrainian political association Women for the Future, under the patronage of Lyudmila Kuchma, a wife of Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma.
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In 2010, Dmytro Firtash was involved in financing Viktor Yanukovych's presidential campaign.
25.
In 2011, Dmytro Firtash said that Yushchenko had planned good reforms, but Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had not allowed him to implement them.
26.
In March 2014, on behalf of the business circles of Ukraine, Dmytro Firtash addressed Aleksandr Shokhin, the Head of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, and the wider business community concerning the situation in the political arena and urged Russian businessmen to stop the war between Russia and Ukraine.
27.
On 3 April 2014, Dmytro Firtash announced that he hoped the forthcoming presidential elections would overcome the chaos in Ukraine and strengthen the country on the international political scene.
28.
Dmytro Firtash said: "I will not allow for my reputation to be ruined by those who are driven by political motivations and are not interested in Ukraine and its people".
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Dmytro Firtash reiterated his belief that he is a pawn in the geo-political struggle between the United States and Russia.
30.
In September 2016, after serving as president of the FEU for five years, Dmytro Firtash resigned the position of the FEU President.
31.
Dmytro Firtash promised to provide funds to support the Ukrainian army.
32.
In 2014, Dmytro Firtash financed the construction of the Ukrainian Catholic University campus in the city of Lviv.
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In 2011, Dmytro Firtash made a sizable contribution to construction of the Holy Trinity Cathedral at the Holy Ascension Monastery in the village of Bancheny, Chernivtsi region.
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Dmytro Firtash's support was recognized by Patriarch Kirill of Moscow who awarded Firtash with the Order of Venerable Serafim of Sarov, 2nd Degree.
35.
In 2006, an ally of Tymoshenko stated in the Rada that Dmytro Firtash's Swiss-registered RosUkrEnergo, which has been the dominant natural gas supplier to Ukraine since 2003, replacing the Hungarian-registered Eural Trans Gas, which replaced Itera beginning in late 2002, had Semion Mogilevich as a silent partner.
36.
Dmytro Firtash accused Firtash, who is a key contributor to Yanukovych, of fraudulently using New York real estate through which to launder money from Ukraine through the United States and then back to Ukraine to support various corrupt political activities and politicians.
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Dmytro Firtash claimed in court that Firtash had money laundered revenues from gas to support pro-Kremlin and pro-Putin candidates and officials in Ukraine associated with Yanukovych's political party.
38.
Dmytro Firtash was accused in a New York court of "masterminding" Tymoshenko's imprisonment; the case was dismissed in March 2013.
39.
In 2017, United States prosecutors filed suits alleging that Dmytro Firtash was involved in bribery supporting upper eschelon Russian mafia.
40.
Dmytro Firtash's attorneys obtained a September 2019 statement from Viktor Shokin, the former Ukrainian prosecutor general who was forced out under pressure from multiple countries and non-governmental organizations, as conveyed to Ukraine by then-vice president Joe Biden.
41.
President Donald Trump's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who asserts he has "nothing to do with Dmytro Firtash," has promoted the statement in television appearances as purported evidence of wrongdoing by the Bidens.
42.
Dmytro Firtash made his fortune brokering Ukrainian imports of natural gas from the Russian firm Gazprom.
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Dmytro Firtash denied involvement in collecting or financing damaging information on the Bidens.
44.
US law enforcement authorities sought to have Dmytro Firtash extradited after a judge in Virginia issued a warrant for his arrest on bribery and other charges.
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Dmytro Firtash said: "thankfully, I have the utmost confidence in the Austrian judicial system and will use all legal means to prove my innocence".
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Dmytro Firtash said US authorities were making allegations that were "completely absurd and unfounded".
47.
In June 2019, extradition of Dmytro Firtash was cleared by the Austrian Supreme Court and by Austrian Minister of Justice Clemens Jabloner in July 2019.
48.
Immediately following the verdict, Dmytro Firtash was arrested on a Spanish arrest warrant related to charges of money laundering.
49.
In early September 2017, Yevhen Yenin, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine, noted that Dmytro Firtash's return to Ukraine was "an unrealistic event".
50.
In September 2017, anti-corruption groups including Human Rights Watch, proposed that Dmytro Firtash be placed on the Magnitsky List and sanctioned by the United States government.
51.
On 19 December 2017, Vienna's Higher Regional Court cited insufficient documentation linking Dmytro Firtash to alleged money laundering and organized crime: it decided against extraditing Dmytro Firtash from Austria to Spain.
52.
The sanctions include freezing their assets, with Dmytro Firtash being accused of laundering hundreds of millions of pounds from Ukraine and investing the proceeds in UK property.
53.
Dmytro Firtash was married to his second wife, Maria Kalynovskaya, from 2001 until 2006.