– This is our first meeting with you. And it was very important to me that so many people are interested in the activities of our company and people who worry about us, said Oleksiy Vadaturskyy. It was really nice to communicate with you. Thank you for your personal involvement, for your awareness, for your patriotism and the desire to understand any issue. In the future, I plan to communicate with you on a regular basis by organizing similar online press conferences on specific topics. As always, we are open to communication, and you can leave any questions on our official Facebook page. Together with you, we are in fact reforming the economy and improving our society. Thank you for your support and understanding.
During the press conference, which lasted more than two hours, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy answered about 40 completely different (by their format, topic and mood of the authors) questions. Of course, that’s not all the questions we received. Therefore, after his return from Kyiv, Oleksiy Vadaturskyy immediately decided to prepare answers for those whose questions, unfortunately, were not answered on the air. All this information, as well as the text version of the press conference, has been already published on our company’s website. There is a lot of information, so we have divided it into several parts.
This part covers the following issues: 1. Work of foreign subsidiaries and offshore. 2. Implementation of the investment project (Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia regions). 3. Land market. 4. Personnel policy. 4. Social responsibility. Additional questions that weren’t asked during the conference: transportation of watermelons along the Dnipro River; the future of agrarian industry; conflict with MIU.
Work of foreign subsidiaries and offshore

Is it true that before you became the head of NIBULON’s Swiss daughter, David Clark, a businessman, headed it? In accordance with documents from Mossack Fonseca (so-called Panama Papers), he was a head of several other offshore companies belonging to Russian grain traders before he was NIBULON’s employee.
Yaryna
July 3, 2018 12:56 p.m.
How often do you visit Switzerland? Is it true that you and your family have a residence permit in Switzerland or even Swiss citizenship? How can you explain the fact that Ukrainian journalists recorded your name and the names of your family members at the door of the house in the Swiss city of Neuchâtel (49 Avenue de la Gare)?
Snizhanna
July 3, 2018 12:51 p.m.
Is it true that NIBULON has foreign companies in its structure and that they are paying taxes not in Ukraine but abroad? What amount of taxes has NIBULON paid to the state budgets of other countries, bypassing the Ukrainian one, over the past years?
Thank you for such frank questions. I understand who wrote them and who is happy with this “discovery”. I answer such people the following way: I am Ukrainian. I have only Ukrainian passport. I live in Ukraine. I and my family can withstand any check. I, as a citizen of Ukraine, established enterprises in the Netherlands and in Switzerland under the name Nibulon S.A and Nibulon Trading B.V. We didn’t set up a company with the name of a flower, but we chose Nibulon. We didn’t establish a company on the Seychelles or Bermuda Triangle. We set up the company in a civilized world with civilized law and access to the banking system. We had no other way to withstand competition with large multinational commercial houses, which have cheap financing, cooperate with the first-class financial institutions, which came to Ukraine to do exactly what we do. Therefore, we had to take a step towards and create our subsidiaries in Switzerland and the Netherlands. We set up them under the license of the National Bank of Ukraine and in accordance with the legislation of these countries; we report on a regular basis to the National Bank of Ukraine.
In 2003, banks invited us as a company that was already known in the trading world, and asked why we were not working directly with Switzerland, and for them it was a convenient way. And if you have a company in Switzerland, it will operate under Swiss law, it will be a successful business, you will have access to financial institutions in Switzerland and Europe. Therefore, an idea emerged; they advised us how do it. We did it and it happened.
David Clark, who was the head of the Swiss company, had a history of dealing with Russian business – he was not a director of Russian companies. He did not do business. He was not an operating director of a Russian company. He helped to set up the company is Switzerland. People who set it up are responsible for this company. And he was not responsible for it. Long before we set up an enterprise in Switzerland, he has already helped the Swiss companies to close this business.  He was still not engaged in operational activities. That’s all. When we learned about this situation, and that were reputation risks for our company, despite the fact that he stopped working with Russian companies, we talked to him and the person retired. We officially dismissed this person from our company. But I ask a question, who of our officials was dismissed and who of our officials was dismissed when family members were involved in Panama Papers and all these cases? As soon as we learned about it, we quit him in a week. I thank David Clark that he understood us and quit.
Another situation: Andriy Vadaturskyy became a people’s deputy. He wasn’t an asset manager. We, as it should be, could use funds of this company and be responsible for the activities of this company. I am a signatory of all banking operations and, as well as directors of our 50 production branches, I have the authority to sign documents in banks. After dismiss of David Clark, I remained the head of this company. And I appreciate it because it means trust. After his election to the Verkhovna Rada, Andriy Vadaturskyy left the leadership of this company, as he should have done in accordance with the law. This information is available in open registers.
I often have to travel abroad to meet foreign business partners and monitor the activities of our two companies. Earlier, every three months I needed to get a Swiss visa, because it was not given for six or nine months.  Now Switzerland helps in such situations. Each year it gives the right to a person who owns companies and asset manager to residence, the right to visit, visa-free visit to this enterprise in this country. Therefore, I have this right so I could come there any time, to negotiate with any business partners, etc. But I am a citizen of Ukraine, I have a Ukrainian passport. I am not a Swiss citizen. I do not have a Swiss passport. I am not a citizen of Switzerland according to the status.
As for the names on a post box. There has long been a civilized world and there are post boxes. And every person who runs business and should keep correspondence with his/her partners should have a post box. That’s my surname. I am Vadaturskyy here and Vadaturskyy there. And I am proud to be able to go where happy people live. It is strange that for some reason you don’t pay attention to the fact that tens, hundreds of thousands of our people live abroad, officials’ families and children also live abroad. Why don’t you pay attention to them? Why do you ask me if I plan to live in Ukraine or Switzerland? I asked many people where they would like to live. They said that they would like to live where happy people live, where it is better to live. Why don’t I have the right to live my life the way I want to? Did I steal money? Did I deal with the budget? Did I have any benefits in my life? No. I set up the company. I did it with people. I work in the company. And our company is known. Mind you own business. Do some real things. Build at least a kennel. Or do repairs in the apartment in a month, two months, as we construct our UAH 500-600 million facilities in three months. Organize it and then you will perceive Vadaturskyy differently. The thing is that you and your people who lead you and write fake articles about me and my son, you will have no money.
Snizhana, I apologize for not answering this question during the press conference. But there were really a lot of questions in different areas. In 5 years in Ukraine, our company has paid UAH 1.8 billion of taxes and fees. But the amount of taxes paid by our subsidiaries operating in European countries (Switzerland and the Netherlands) is less. Each company of the group works in accordance with the legislation of the correspondent county where it is located. Pricing in the supply of agricultural products for export takes place with strict observance of the principle of ALP (arm’s length principle) in accordance with the legal requirements and rules of transfer pricing.
Implementation of the investment project (Kherson, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia regions)

Implementation of the investment project in Kherson region, E-40 
Eleonora Huskova
Oleksiy Opanasovych, I would like to know about NIBULON’s plans to implement an investment project “Water Gates of Ukraine”, namely the construction of a new port in Kherson region, which will enable one to revive navigation on E-40.
Irene Mikhailova
What are your new projects in Kherson region? Do you plan to build a recreation center at the seaside?
Implementation of the investment project (Dnipropetrovsk region)
Vira Kovalenko
Oleksiy Opanasovych, whatplans does NIBULON have for the development of river elevators in Dnipropetrovsk region?
Implementation of the investment project (Zaporizhzhia region)
Nataliia Zvorygina
What infrastructure projects as socially responsible company does your company implement in Zaporizhzhia region? What are the results for the development of local communities?
By what principles do you build relationships with local communities, head of the region? Haveyoubeenaskedtogiveabribe?
Irene Mikhailova
Who are your competitors in Ukraine in terms of the number and quality of elevators, cargo and passenger transportation by water?
I thank the head of the Kherson region Andrii Hordieiev and his team, teams and heads of Zaporizhzhia region (Kostiantyn Bryl) and Dnipropetrovsk region, mayors and governors, who are on the Dnipro River and help us. Thanks to their enthusiasm, we are developing infrastructure in these regions. And I thank all the heads of enterprises for their support. If we relied upon ministers and the legislative field that we have, we would not have done anything. Therefore, I am pleased to attend the forums that are held in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, I visit economic forums, attended by a lot of investors, by doers who organize the business and build the investment attractiveness of these regions.
Last year, at an economic forum together with the governor of Kherson region Andrii Hordieiev and governor of Vitebsk region I signed a Memorandum on the revival of the Dnipro River in order to restore navigation up to Belarus and higher. We have planned to construct a facility in Kherson region. We did not give up on the idea and we are ready to do it. Andrii Hordieiev, like nobody, understands how it is difficult to start construction in the legislative field and therefore he does a lot. So do we, firstly, in order to be heard in the Ministry of Ecology. Because all coastal zones now have the status of reserves. It is difficult to construct a facility even if the territory doesn’t look like having this status of a reserve. Therefore, we do not lose hope that we will build this facility.
We plan to construct two facilities – in Marianske (Dnipropetrovsk region) and in Ternivka (Zaporizhzhia region). We planned to construct these two facilities by July 1, 2018. We haven’t fulfilled our plans about construction. We haven’t even started to construct them. That’s because last year the legislation of Ukraine changed; and very high powers were given to the public, public hearings, so that they could influence the construction of a particular enterprise. Our company was ready to build. But for 6 month it was impossible to find out where to transfer UAH 19,000 to organize public hearings. If we don’t pay money to this organization, then this organization should hold a tender in order to choose an organization to check the legality of maintaining the environmental norms during construction. They have to announce public hearings a month before, conduct public hearings. Then a certain period of time is given to all the comments. The expert group should check should check how well the comments are taken into account. After that, we should conduct public hearings again and to report that all the citizens’ warnings were eliminated and we can construct a facility. For almost half a year, we did not know an organization to pay. And public authorities refused to receive these funds, because it is a direct path to the prosecutor’s office. And the prosecutor’s office could at any stage prohibit the construction, prohibit the implementation of any initiative, etc. So it’s very difficult today.
The Prime Minister knows about this problem. And we addressed ourselves to him; we addressed ourselves to the Minister of Ecology and the committees of the Verkhovna Rada in order to speed up the regulation of all these by-laws to the law on the beginning of construction process. Fortunately, these problems have almost been solved. We already know whom to contact, to pay and how to work, how to get official permits. Therefore, we will start construction process, preparatory works, at least in September-October at these sites. We will construct the facilities in Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions. It has nothing to do with our plans to invest money in Egypt. These are projects within Ukraine. We have had them and we will continue to do so in Ukraine. 
Land market

 Your opinion on the land market
We cultivate 82,000 ha of agricultural land leased and work with almost 30,000 landowners, who have entrusted us with their land plots for cultivation. Every day, people ask me to buy land, to pay money 10,15,20 years ahead. We face it every day.
I am for the land market in order to solve this problem and allow landowners to take advantage of their right to use their land the way they want. People get older, people want to share their property with children, and want to do it when they are alive. We support lifting the land moratorium.
We must understand that the Verkhovna Rada and the central authorities with the participation of business, public, landowners, representatives of different associations, are doing everything to prevent another war on the domestic market, illegal takeovers, the loss of land, the loss of land as a result of documents forgery. We have tens of cases: under the auspices of the dishonest heads of district state administrations new state acts are issued when the landowners are alive. We are forced to address ourselves to central authorities, local regional state authorities in order to deal with these dishonest people.
Today, there is a hidden land market. The right to sell this land is sold. One company sells another company land, and after a certain period of time landowners are not able to defend their ownership. Therefore, it is necessary to put a lot of normative acts in order to make the land market open and let people use their right to sell their plots or not when there will be better price for land.
Personnel policy
 
What is a benefits package for employees of your company? What are the criteria to employ staff? How many jobs did you create in Zaporizhzhia region?
Nataliia Zvorygina
How do you take care of training specialists for your company? Do you support specialized educational institutions? Inwhatway? 
Irene Mikhailova
What is the recruitment process? Did the company face a staff shortage? Thank you. The questions are asked by the journalists of Grivna newspaper (Kherson)
There is no staff shortage in our company. We employ more people. After the Revolution of Dignity, the number of our team has increased by 2,000 people. These are people who came to the company that is being developed. Therefore, we have no such a problem as staff shortage: we are on market conditions and wages are high enough to work at our company.
Yes, we have cases when certain people quit and move to civilized countries in search of better life. Since our facilities are automated, for us it is a possibility not to hire additional staff. When certain people quit, we expand an area of responsibility of others, raise wages, thereby stabilizing and revising certain conditions of compensation in order to maintain stability of the team. We invest a lot in automation, so that there is no manual labor. At the expense of this we quit unskilled specialists, hire qualified ones and pay decent wages. We have high sanitary conditions, normal compensation, and thus we stabilize the work in the team. And when people travel abroad, they work several times more intensively abroad. We can raise wages in order to introduce a piece wage system based on the final result of the work performed. It is just an aspect we are working on. People support us. Thanks to this, we will stabilize the situation with our personnel. 9,000 specialists are next in turn to be employees at our shipbuilding and repair yard. It means that they appreciate our company. Now we are introducing a bonus pay system for these people. There is certain budget to construct these vessels, and we can allocate a certain sum of money so that they could understand our situation and motives in order to work more intensively.  We say that we switch to this payment system and you get 10 % more. We stimulate such a switch to wage and bonus payment system. We are revising the improvement of the people’s bonus system, organizing payment according to qualification.
Cooperation with higher education institutions. We have agreements with 32 higher education institutions across the country. We sponsor purchase of high-tech automated equipment in order to prepare students of these universities for work at our company. After 2, 3, 4 years of studying at these universities, students have practical training at our facilities. Upon graduation, they know the payment rate and what we are doing. There is no need to prepare them for cooperation.
We have a training center for training and retraining blue-collar workers. We expand the training unit, implement a system of grade and qualification promotion. Unfortunately, a national economy is neglected, and we have to deal with it from the very beginning. We are already implementing training colleges, work with vocational schools, preparing people and give them an opportunity to undergo practical training, introducing the training system for these people under the supervision of specialists, so that they can convey their experience of shipbuilders or the experience of another occupation in our company. Therefore, the company will not be able to develop itself without its employees. Qualified specialists and a strong team is a strong company; t’s a prospect of growth in our company for the future.
Social responsibility
 

What is your contribution in social and economic development of Zaporizhzhia region (taxes, socially responsible business, infrastructure projects, etc.)?
Slide No. 21. Left upper corner: here you can see the territory before construction process. As you can see, there is a blue lake. It’s just the lake of the impurities that were at that time. 2,000 cubic meters of sewage that accumulated there and was discharged into the Dnipro River.
It is our newly built terminal (right upper corner). When constructing it, we have also constructed treatment facilities. We spent about UAH 16 million to construct them and to eliminate the environmental problems in this district. We also constructed a football pitch with natural green covering and irrigation system. It is likely that the highest league players can play on this football pitch. There are no such football pitches in any district of the region. We also equipped a classroom with computers. Our company has been implementing NIBULON’s standard, and we have more than 100 sponsored schools. We have schools where we have 10-12 computer classes that we opened in these schools. NIBULON’s standard is being implemented. Thus, we are a socially responsible company. We came with new technologies, with a new vision, we came and gave people everything so that they could get settled and live, and their children could study at good schools. We understand that without preparation of a new generation and specialists, our facilities, even the most modern ones, will be just metal. Therefore, we have made sure that these objects and locals, the infrastructure of settlements, people understood that there is partnership, normal civilized relations between us and local authorities. We are not afraid of the arrival of any delegation from any country or any settlement that plans or invites us to construct a facility there. We are not afraid of bringing them to any of our branches so that they could talk to our employees, to see local authorities and not afraid of difficult issues.  After they leave, there will be no need to agitate them. They will support us and convince any official to sign documents so that we could come with investments. 
However, there are different cases and different attitude towards our company. There are various corporate interests, there are interests of some financial groups of people, and there is opposition in certain regions. But when we come to this or that village council with a proposal to construct a facility there, they answer “Yes”. And the leadership of the village council presents conditions and speaks through clenched teeth, saying that if you implement a UAH 40 million social package, then we will decide whether you are going to build this facility or not. And when head of the village council tells that they will act in such a way, then excuse me, but that’s I, as an investor, will decide to construct there or not. We should have normal partnership. Therefore, in such cases we refuse to do it in a polite way. Fortunately, when other villages find out about such situations, we are invited and we become partners and cooperate. For six months we have receiving letters from the village we refused to work with. The community is indignant because we left the territory, “If you need, we will remove all leadership of the village council. We want you to create new jobs. We want to work with you”. We explain them that you will have next elections. You will understand who they are and that investors should be invited. They should not be treated as people with a big bag of money who are going to do everything to make you happy. And at the same time, you don’t want to do anything to be happy.
 
Maybe I have not answered all the questions. Maybe sometimes I was too emotional. I feel better after that. I am not ashamed of what I’m doing and planning. By the way, I will answer one more question about the meeting with the President of Ukraine. Yes, I had an opportunity to welcome the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko once again. I was so offended by the attitude of the Ministry of Infrastructure and a number of deputies of the Verkhovna Rada towards me. I addressed myself to him, and then I did it from the stage. We asked about an official meeting, but I understand that he has a very busy schedule. There hasn’t been a meeting since May 15. I hope that we will have this opportunity .When he was at our facility, I even told him about deals of some people’s deputies of Ukraine. I could afford it, because it was really painful.  It is necessary to care about Ukraine, so people could live better, but not to deal with backstage affairs.  I hope that I will have an opportunity to tell him it all and to achieve justice in Ukraine.
On the whole, I am very grateful for this opportunity, thank you for this meeting, thank you Olena for providing such an opportunity to communicate with Ukraine, with business people. We have emphasized that we are open and we are not afraid of any questions. After the program “Stop Corruption” on Channel 5 that appeared on the third day of the President’s arrival, when he said very good words to my address, we sent a request asking to give us information (who prepared the program, who is responsible for it, who is responsible for legality of statements, etc.) so we could legally try to fight these people. And we have received a response that nobody knows. I even thought that there are probably hackers on the channel that broadcast programs and they aren’t controlled by anyone in the information space at all. It’s some kind of a hacker’s hole, and you can place any information there. After this information we wrote that we have no property, yachts, and planes abroad. You can look for it. If you find, you will be able to live there for a while, we will help you. I don’t have debts to the EBRD. We have paid off our loans. Please, what questions do you have? No questions. Don’t discuss this question. And those who will continue discussing this topic should know that we have officially announced and we will go to the court; you will answer all the questions. We will not leave it, because we cooperate with famous people, famous companies. It is not the image of NIBULON; it is the image of Ukraine and its investment attractiveness. It is not the issue of humiliating Vadaturskyy. It is not Vadaturskyy, you humiliate Ukraine, banking institutions that trust Ukraine, Vadaturskyy, who believe in real transformations in Ukraine, and hope that Ukraine will be a European country not only because of its location.  Let’s together make this country European and not endure these attacks, but fight corruption, fight the mess that we have. One or two people will not do anything. Let’s do it together. I do not pursue any corporate interests here. I will not complain about government. I have never done it. I have a reputation. I work. I struggle. And we will achieve everything, whether you want it or not. Thanks God, there are people who want us to be a successful company and support us. Thanks to this support, we will develop ourselves.
Transporting watermelons along the Dnipro River
Katia Kapustina
Will NIBULON send a barge with watermelons to Kyiv this summer?

In the evening after this press conference, the Minister of Infrastructure said, “Watermelons have started a trip again”. He obviously took this information from my recent interview with “Tsensor. Biznes”.It is very good that the Minister is so closely following the activities of our company. Maybe he understood something wrong or his subordinates have prepared the wrong information, but watermelons haven’t started a trip. As always, Minister has made a false start. It can be understood, because it is quite normal when you absolutely do not care about watermelons sailing along the Dnipro River. The main thing is to tell the whole Ukraine about it.  This kind of profanation and plagiarism of our thoughts and implemented projects is typical, and we can give a lot of examples. The main difference between us is that we do, and he only speaks.
In order to share the most up-to-date and most relevant information, yesterday I called the President of the Southern Union Cooperative Oleksandr Synenko, who is on the Field Days in Spain. He doesn’t rest in the resort, as our officials like doing. He is working, obtaining European experience of cultivating melons. He extended greetings from sunny Spain to all our readers and somehow corrected the information on the shipments: the first batch of delicious and high-quality Kherson watermelons will be shipped approximately on July 25. In addition, I want to share additional information: the first non-self-propelled vessel with watermelons will arrive in Kiev, to Podil. And there is no opposition to this initiative, then all the next “striped trips” will be to Kyiv. And there will be more than 1 trip! Otherwise, the trips will be performed to our terminal in Pereiaslav-Khmelnitskyi. 
The future of agrarian industry
Sasha Zhylianyn
Agrarian Ukraine is a poor country. Does Mr. Vadaturskyy have another opinion?
Yes, I have another opinion. Agrarian Ukraine has a very big future. The potential of our country is to grow up to 100 million tons of grain per year. This is the possible future of Ukraine. The agrarian sector has the potential and is able to raise other sectors. And our company is an example. NIBULON is a successful agricultural company, which revives shipbuilding, develops logistics, builds facilities, processes Ukrainian metal, imports the best equipment and agricultural machinery. That is, we give a powerful impetus to various sectors of the Ukrainian economy. Ten such companies as ours would turn our agrarian Ukraine into an economic miracle. Today, we regularly host farm companies, representatives and experts from the agrarian sector from Europe and the USA, who study the success of our company. Therefore, I am convinced: the future is in agro-industrial Ukraine. And I believe in it.
Conflict with the Ministry of Infrastructure of Ukraine
Is it true that the Vadatursky’s family lobbies the people’s deputy Andriy Vadaturskyy for the post of Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine? Is this the reason for the public conflict with Volodymyr Omelian?
This of course is nonsense and invention of the minister and his entourage. Members of our family have never held executive positions in the executive branch of independent Ukraine. We do not plan this in the future, despite repeated offers. Unfortunately, an honest man has nothing to in Ukraine’s government. We believed the Revolution of Dignity, we believed the changes that must inevitably come to our country. Then, at the personal request of the President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko and in order to assist in carrying out urgent reforms in the economy, Andriy Vadaturskyy decided to run for the Verkhovna Rada from the largest majority constituency in Ukraine. Now he is one of the few struggling with pseudo-reformers there, and I’m here in business. Anyone who wants to harm his reputation implants the idea that he lobbies someone’s interests.  I want to answer the question: why do we have problems in the country? Because the authorities are not professionals, but pseudo-reformers. And when a professional appears in the Verkhovna Rada, he is not allowed to engage professionally in law-making initiatives in the field he knows. Do you think Andriy Vadaturskyy should deal with law-making in the field of health care or space research? Why cannot he be engaged in a legislative initiative in the field he specializes in? Today, the MIU blocks the legislative initiatives our country needs, including our company’s initiatives. This is despite the fact that we are defending the interests of shipbuilding factories, we are defending Ukraine’s interests in navigation, we are defending the Ukrainian flag. But our opponents do not need it; they need smuggling of fuel and “rusty galoshes” that were once built in Ukraine, and now they are flying a foreign flag. That’s the essence of the conflict. And finally, I am convinced that as long as in Verkhovna Rada such a powerful lobby of the ports of Big Odessa remains, we, people from Mykolaiv, will never be ministers.