The B2B Jewelry financial pyramid, “blocked by the SBU” in August 2020, continues to collect money from new investors. Its co-founder Mykola Gonta is no longer under house arrest, charges have not been brought for almost a year, and the Prosecutor General’s Office has classified the court’s decision in the criminal case.
In August 2020, the law enforcement officers announced about blocking of a powerful financial pyramid, which, according to their data, collected $250 million from 600,000 investors. Suspicions were raised against the co-founder of B2B Jewelry, Mykola Gonta, his wife and an accountant. Incriminated fraud with financial resources and laundering and legalization of criminal money. At the same time, in 2020, Gonti chose a preventive measure – round-the-clock house arrest.
UA2DAY analyzed what happened to the high-profile criminal proceedings in almost a year. It turned out that the judges relaxed the preventive measures for the suspects, the pyramid not only continues to vacuum the pockets of citizens, but also, it seems, has started working from abroad under a new brand, there are still no indictments and even the previous decisions of the courts in this case have disappeared from the public domain court register.
Mykola Gonta’s round-the-clock house arrest, according to UA2DAY, was canceled by the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv in the spring of 2021. Instead, the co-founder of the pyramid was given a milder preventive measure – personal commitment. Moreover, this court decision, like many others in the case of B2B Jewelry, is not in the public part of the court register. They also disappeared from there resolutions about the seizure of land plots and houses on an island near Kyiv (the island is connected to the Gonta family and may be a way of legalizing funds from the pyramid).
Access to previously published decisions, UA2DAY found out, is limited based on the resolution of the Prosecutor General’s Office dated June 9, 2021. Journalists sent a request to the OGP in order to understand who exactly and why made such a decision. Currently waiting for a response.
A year has passed since the announcement of suspicions against Mykola Gonta, his wife Olena and the chief accountant, but charges have not yet been brought and the pre-trial investigation has not been completed.
Now there are queues in B2B Jewelry stores again – the project continues to sell jewelry under promises to return their full value, keep the jewelry and pay extra on top. During the journalists’ visit to the store, one of the visitors brought 137 thousand hryvnias to the cash register.
Also, the editors discovered that a clone appeared at B2B Jewelry – Cancri Jewelry. A similar network selling precious stones with the promise of interest payments. Positions itself as a Turkish jewelry house, but focuses, in particular, on the Ukrainian audience. Recently, Cancri Jewelry was presented in Odesa, the B2B Jewelry communicator signed up on the network’s Instagram page, and Mykola Gonta himself admitted in an interview that he “doesn’t legally” own a business in Turkey.
Construction of cottages is ongoing on the island seized as part of the proceedings. UA2DAY journalists noticed there cars registered to Honta’s son Oleksandr and Honta’s wife’s “Zimorodok” charity fund (the fund appears in the proceedings as part of the B2B Jewelry pyramid).
For online payment, B2B Jewelry now uses the newly created Goldmeister LLC. It is designed for the residence of Ladyzhyn Dmytro Aleksandrenko. According to the register of court decisions, he was held criminally liable for robbery.
So, currently we have all the evidence that B2B Jewelry not only has not stopped its activity, but is also growing rapidly, aggressively increasing the number of stores and representative offices. In addition, all criminal proceedings are in “Stop” mode.
A logical question arises, why the all-powerful special service, which even a year ago pathetically reported on a successful special operation to stop the pyramid’s anti-trafficking activities, has now completely stopped any investigative actions and allows those involved to continue robbing gullible citizens?
So, according to several editorial sources, a similar situation with the investigation has developed due to the fact that Mykola Gonta is only a nominal person in the company, essentially a “pound”.
The real owner of B2B Jewelry, LLC “Goldmeister” and Cancri Jewelry is an experienced fraudster, converter and repeated hero of our investigations – Oleksandr Knyzhnyk!!
Yes, the same Knyzhnyk, who is the owner of IT “galley”, conversion centers in ORDLO and Crimea, and the very one who calmly mines cryptocurrency for the South Ukrainian NPP, earning billions of hryvnias every year.
With such an income, it becomes quite clear why the Prosecutor General’s Office classified all the material on B2B Jewelry, and the all-powerful SBU quietly forgot how a year ago it declared a complete victory over the financial pyramid…
