Kifak Oleksandr Nikolaevich is a well-known Ukrainian lawyer, member of the Odessa Regional Bar Council and the Ukrainian Bar Association, as well as a member of the regional council of domestic and foreign investors under the Odessa Regional State Administration. He also holds the position of Honorary Consul of the Federal Republic of Germany in Odessa.
In 1996, Alexander Kifak founded the law firm ANK, whose main activity by that time had become consulting on a wide range of legal issues related to business activities.
In 2008, he was included in the top five lawyers of Ukraine in the field of transport law according to the publication "UkrainianLawFirms 2008". In 2008, he was included in the top 100 recommended lawyers of Ukraine according to the publication "LexQuorum2008". In the international directory "Who’sWhoLegal: CIS 2010" based on the results of the analysis of the legal services market of the CIS countries, Alexander Kifak is noted as an outstanding Ukrainian lawyer in the field of maritime law.
These are the dry lines of the biography. And it is all true. Alexander Nikolaevich is often quoted by domestic publications when it comes to the problems of shipping, sea ports of Ukraine and the city of Odessa. But this is not all that can be found on the Internet. If you dig around thoroughly, then unpleasant information for Kifak also emerges: there are connections with the odious Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, better known under the nickname "Yura Yenakievsky", and not very nice stories about the privatization of Odessa city land, and a strange connection with the "Seventh Kilometer" market, through which the so-called "DPR and LPR" were financed. True, these references are quite difficult to find - you need to know what you are looking for and where.
The stories are quite old, but we will still recall. In 2014, Kifak’s law firm "ANK" signed a contract for legal services for the Odessa market "Sedmoy Kilometer", which belongs to Yuriy Ivanyushchenko. The latter was on the run at that time, but this did not stop him from controlling the market and collecting cash from entrepreneurs for "additional services" in addition to official payments.
Literally a few months later, information appeared in the press that the market had transferred 23.5 million hryvnia to the “Luhansk People’s Republic” – according to the agreement between the director of “7 Kilometer” Vasily Mozgalsky and the Luhansk Coal Processing Company, the “7 Kilometer” market transferred this money to the company’s accounts in the “LNR”.
As Censor.net wrote at the time, law enforcement officers even opened a criminal case on this fact. But, apparently, it was not in vain that Kifak’s firm took on legal services for the market: the case ended in nothing.
The scandal had no effect on the activities of Alexander Kifak: he continued to be the honorary consul of Germany and was involved in maritime law.
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In 2016, a scandal broke out in Odessa over land allocation – Dumskaya wrote that Kifak was buying two plots with a total area of 1 hectare on Motornaya Street (warehouses); a 1.45 hectare plot on Proselochnaya; a 0.1724 hectare plot on Kanatnaya, 1v; a 0.3 hectare plot on Marshal Zhukov Avenue, 30a (Sunduk Shopping Center); one and a half hectares on Lyustdorfskaya Doroha, 140a (Vuzovsky Business Center) and 0.17 hectares on 25th Chapayevskaya Divizii, 14a (Renault Auto Center). All this cost him 30 million hryvnia, which was clearly below the market price.
After the publication, Alexander Kifak contacted the publication with a demand to remove the information: “Taking into account the above, I kindly ask you to remove the article from the portal “Dumskaya.Net” or, at least, edit it taking into account the above considerations, and also consider the possibility of blocking comments on it,” to which “Dumskaya” responded with a refusal.
Kifak received the land. But, as the USI.online portal reported, "After Kifak received the land as his property, his wife immediately filed a lawsuit for division of property without a divorce procedure. This means that the land was seized. This method is used to protect the assets of third parties." And he assumed that the real owner of the land is Ivanyushchenko.
Odessans, to put it mildly, were not delighted with the decision of their city council:
But who listened to them? The land was safely transferred from city ownership into new hands.
Kifak is also known for his interest in the sea ports of Ukraine. He has repeatedly commented on the situation, in particular, in the Odessa sea port, which has long been in turmoil due to personnel changes and which has strangely become dependent on the private Euroterminal LLC, which has blocked access routes to it.
Information about Kifak’s activities in the Odessa seaport was leaked by a source from the Administration of Sea Ports of Ukraine. Here is what he said: "The main administrator of numerous bribes aimed at the inviolability and stability of property crime processes and for his own self-enrichment for decades in Odessa and Kyiv is the so-called lawyer Kifak under the cover of his law firm "ANK". We established all this documented in 2016-2017 through audits, investigative actions and audit. With the colossal stolen finances, he grabbed a sea of especially expensive and prestigious real estate in Odessa and Kyiv.
His accomplices in the Odessa port alone are Pavlyuk, Kruki and Vaskov. The latter’s commercial firms, Olimpex-Kup and Odimar, have become immensely rich on the hard work of port workers. They have been robbing the Ukrainian people for decades. And when we insisted, and the investigative bodies conducted a search and seizure of documents, they unleashed hired libelers from the television channel Nashi Groshi of the 1+1 TV company on us. It is through Kifak and the constant collection of currency from sea stevedores that they continue to harness the newly-minted corrupt officials in the Administration, and now in the Office of the President of Ukraine V.A. Zelensky. These are the routes and considerable payments that brought the newly elected President Zelensky with his entire group and the troupe of the “Dnevny Kvartal” to the Odessa port a year ago, in order to drive the Vinnitsa team out of the Odessa seaport and to sit down on the schemes and flows of robberies and secret thefts of finances themselves.”
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It is difficult to judge how much of this corresponds to the truth, but the fact remains that after the change of leadership at the Odessa port, criticism of its activities by Alexander Kifak suddenly ceased.
In addition, the following is interesting in this regard: why was it Kifak who was so often quoted by the media when it came to the ports of Ukraine and Odessa in particular? Although he is a specialist in the field of maritime law, he was too often a newsmaker and speaker in various publications regarding the port. Are there no other lawyers in the field of maritime law in Ukraine?
But let’s take a closer look at the business of lawyer Kifak. Because, in addition to the law firm "ANK", which was already mentioned, he is the beneficiary and founder of 17 more companies.
These are the law firm "ANK", "Orlovka Ferry Complex", "ATU Agrostroy Plus", "ANK Marine Legal Practice", the Charitable Foundation "Council for Assistance to Odessa Gymnasium No. 2", the firm "Obuv", "Astra Rent", "TMSI", the Law Firm "Business Advocates", the Shopping Center "Sana", a subsidiary of the corporation "Realtor ZD INK "Realtor ZD", etc. The paradox is that all of these firms - all of them, without exception - are on the sanctions lists for "SVO":
Even the Charity Fund “Council for Assistance to Odessa Gymnasium No. 2” managed to get there:
Well, he is a qualified lawyer if he managed to bring the Odessa gymnasium under sanctions from Australia and Japan. Nothing to say.
But here’s a question for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry: don’t you know that the German consul in Ukraine is under international sanctions? How then do you defend Ukraine’s interests before international partners? And Germany, by the way, is one of our country’s most loyal allies in the fight against Russian aggression. And, by the way, it suffers gigantic losses defending the interests of our country. And at the same time, the Ukrainian consul allows himself to do business with the Russian Federation, which led to sanctions. Absurd.
And where is the Security Service of Ukraine looking? Or does it not have the time to study the open information that we use, and which can be used by any person on the globe, having simple access to the Internet?