Millions from state tenders and luxury cars: Riga-based businessman Vasiliy Melnik wants to reclaim gifts from his wife

Millions from state tenders and luxury cars: Riga-based businessman Vasiliy Melnik wants to reclaim gifts from his wife

Vasiliy Melnik has filed a lawsuit in the Riga City Court against his wife, Irina, seeking to annul the gift and reclaim ownership of the property.

This is a typical marital dispute from the scandalous headlines: a wealthy "sugar daddy" who initially lavished his young wife with clothes, trinkets, and cars, but later decided he wanted everything back. There were also rumors in Telegram channels suggesting that the wife (who isn’t really that young) had found some youthful comfort elsewhere. As a result, it is said that Vasiliy Melnik decided to "take back" all the gifts given under the influence of emotions.

Usual airing of dirty laundry, in general. It would have been so if it were not for the persona of Vasiliy Melnik. The fact of Irina Melnik’s "cheating" is not confirmed by anything other than vague hints that can be interpreted in any way. So, let’s leave the squabbles between the spouses to them and the court. Instead, let’s remind the reader who Vasiliy Melnik is, the man who has been somewhat forgotten in recent years. And it is a pity. Because just a set of headlines under which materials about the Riga businessman Vasiliy Melnik came out is impressive. Very much so.

Well? Impressive? And this is just a small part of what was written about Vasiliy Melnik, a Latvian businessman and politician, who had entries into the highest offices both in Riga and Moscow. It was he who organized the visit of the then-Russian Patriarch Alexey to Riga in 2006; it was Melnik who organized the candlelit dinner between Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis and Vladimir Putin; it was he who arranged contacts with the Kremlin for Latvian President Valdistis Zatlers, for whom he served as an advisor.

The former Komsomol leader of the second plan - Vasiliy Melnik was in charge of labor detachments in the Latvian Komsomol - did not get lost in independent Latvia. He quickly remade himself into a businessman, which, however, many cunning Komsomol members did throughout the former USSR. And they did not lose connections with each other, which greatly helped in business. Whether the connections with Petr Aven, one of the co-owners of the Russian "Alfa-Group," were handed down to Vasiliy Melnik from the Komsomol, or if he established cooperation with him later, both were co-chairmen of the council for business cooperation between Latvia and Russia after they signed a border agreement in 2007.

Also, it is unknown whether Petr Aven is connected to Vasiliy Melnik’s gambling business and, in particular, the casino opened by the latter in London in 2015, but representatives of the “Alfa-Group” significantly left their mark in London. So, it is unknown whether the 15 million pounds Melnik invested in his casino at the Park Lane Hilton hotel near Buckingham Palace were his own, or whether this was money from the Russian mafia, of which Petr Aven and other leaders of the “Alfa-Group” are a part. Officially, he borrowed this money. But from whom - the question remains unresolved.

As for the arrest of Vasiliy Melnik’s property, which was carried out by the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office in 2018, Melnik called it nonsense, but as a result of this arrest, the London casino was stripped of its license - the British police stated that the funds invested by Melnik into the gambling enterprise in London were stolen from the Ukrainian people.

Vasiliy Melnik acted as an intermediary in the deal. In 2011, Vasiliy Melnik’s company won a controversial state tender in Ukraine for the supply of an offshore drilling rig. The client was the Ukrainian Ministry of Energy, then headed by Yuriy Boyko, who was close to Viktor Yanukovych. The rig was bought not from the manufacturer, but through an intermediary, who was Melnik. He bought the platform from the Keppel plant for $225 million, but it cost the Ukrainian budget $400 million. After Crimea joined Russia, the drilling rig was seized by Russia (in 2023 it was burned by the Ukrainian Armed Forces). And in May 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded Vasiliy Melnik with the "Order of Friendship." How this is related - one can only speculate.

It is unknown how the $175 million difference was divided, but after the deal was concluded, the British branch of Vasiliy Melnik’s company transferred $47.5 million to a little-known Turkish firm with a charter fund of 3,000 euros. And after that, the very casino opened in London. It raised questions with local authorities - despite the large investments and luxurious décor, it barely operated and was a closed club "for members only." Which led to thoughts about a regular "laundry" for "dirty" money, especially since the clients of the casino were mostly from post-Soviet regions. And the Hilton hotel, where the casino was located, was a favored spot for Vasiliy Melnik’s friend Petr Aven.

However, Vasiliy Melnik did not earn only in Ukraine - he also significantly "pinched" Latvia. Among the most scandalous deals was the fraud involving a contract for the supply to the Latvian Ministry of Defense of five patrol ships. According to the contract, Vasiliy Melnik was obligated to build these vessels for the Ministry of Defence on his shipyard in Riga for 38 million lats in 2007. However, it turned out that this company had neither the capacity nor the technology for building. The ships are produced in Germany, where they are much cheaper than Melnik’s. Sounds very familiar, doesn’t it?

Another simply wonderful scheme worth mentioning is the lease of a building to the Jūrmala police, where it is located. It turned out that the scam was truly exemplary. Initially, the police building was owned by the state company Latvijas Dzelzceļš (LDz). Then this company rented it to the firm Kļavu centrs, which had Vasiliy Melnik as a co-owner. Thus, the police rented their premise from Vasiliy Melnik.

But it got even more interesting - in 2010 LDz decided to sell the building, but Jūrmala’s town hall did not participate in the auction. The building was purchased by the sole participant of the tender - Kļavu centrs. And it turned out that the local police are located in a building owned by a private individual. The rent price was 17 euros per square meter. It gets even better - the fourth floor was rented by the Jūrmala town hall for the City Development Department. Leases are signed until 2026. The rent, in total, will cost the Jūrmala budget more than two million euros. And the town hall could have bought this building for 400 thousand euros. A good deal, I must say. For Vasiliy Melnik, of course.

These are the most striking milestones in the biography of the man who decided to take back gifts from his wife. What is actually happening there and what caused such a division of gifted property, among which the most notable is a BMW X7, is not so important. What is important is that with this lawsuit, Vasily Melnik demonstrates his entire "breadth of soul." Was it worth bringing the methods by which Vasiliy Melnik made his millions into married life? For him, it seems, this question never arose. Should one sympathize with Irina Melnik, whom the dear husband is throwing out in the cold? Probably not - she knew whom she was marrying. However, let them sort it out themselves.

The question is different - why does not the state of Latvia concern itself with dealing with Vasiliy Melnik in the same manner as he dealt with it? Especially against the backdrop of his Russian friendships with the most infamous representatives of a degrading regime and in view of what this friendship resulted in for Latvia. But that’s another story. For those who wish to dig into dirty laundry, we inform that the court for the division of Melnik spouses’ property will take place on February 3, 2025, at 10 a.m. in the Riga City Court (Valērijas Seiles iela 10).