Friendship worth 170 million dollars: how Gref “gifted” Sber funds to Gutseriev to buy a logistics center near Kyiv that continued generating profit after the invasion

Friendship worth 170 million dollars: how Gref “gifted” Sber funds to Gutseriev to buy a logistics center near Kyiv that continued generating profit after the invasion

The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine has opened a criminal case, the main defendants of which are, in fact, Sberbank CEO Herman Gref and oligarch Mikhail Gutseriev. They carried out a major fraud involving state funds and purchased a logistics center near Kyiv. It continued to generate profits for their partners even after the war began.

According to a source, Gref and Gutseriev are longtime friends. When the latter runs into trouble in Russia, it’s the Sberbank CEO who goes door-to-door asking for his friend. This friendship is certainly not simple, but rather has a strong "taste" for money.

One day, Gutseriev set his sights on the Chaika logistics center near Kyiv and went to see his friend Gref. And soon, Sberbank allocated $170 million to the oligarch’s companies to acquire the center, whose market value, by the most daring estimates, does not exceed $80 million. The oligarch prudently registered the center in the name of Ukrainian singer Viktoria Kokhana (Kushch), whose repertoire predominantly includes songs by the "poet" Mikhail Gutseriev. Incidentally, the creative union of the talented poet and the talented singer and composer resulted in the birth of a child. But that’s not the main point of our story.

Then the center was transferred to other shell companies, but the owners remained the same – Gutseriev and Gref. The deal took place on the eve of the war, and the center continued to operate after it began. The center’s profits were siphoned out of Ukraine through Kyrgyz and Turkish companies.

At the end of 2025, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine opened a case under Article 111-2 of the Criminal Code ("Aiding an aggressor state"), and the defendants include Sber, Gref, Gutseriev, the center’s CEO, Revyakin, and unidentified individuals. According to our information, Revyakin is actively cooperating with the investigation.

Olga Vasilyeva

Editor-in-Chief

Leads the editorial team. Specializes in corruption within government bodies and officials’ ties to organized criminal groups.