In March of this year, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) reported new successes in clearing the synthetic drug market in favor of the Khimprom group. The SBU reported on the defeat of Khimprom’s competitors – the neutralization of an international criminal group that sold hard drugs to the European Union. As part of the operation in Kyiv and Zaporozhye, seven drug syndicate members were detained. Among them are three of its organizers. The SBU, however, reports that they were hiding in one of the Balkan countries and ran the drug business from there. The details of how they ended up in the Ukrainian pre-trial detention center are not disclosed.
According to the investigation, the criminals began selling wholesale quantities of a synthetic drug, methadone, to EU countries, which they received from their “suppliers” from several regions of Ukraine. To smuggle it to the EU, the group’s leaders used their own drug courier network. In order to transport the “goods” across the border, they sewed it into the lining of outer clothing or hid it in their luggage among their personal belongings.
Then the defendants sold methadone to their foreign accomplices for further distribution in European countries. Thus, the organizers of the drug business hoped to earn about a quarter of a million euros monthly only with the help of this scheme.
However, SBU officers detained criminals attempting to smuggle more than 1 kg of drugs abroad.
As the investigation established, the leaders of the group were three residents of Zaporozhye, who fled to the EU in 2022, after the outbreak of active hostilities on the territory of Ukraine. Subsequently, they organized drug trafficking and attracted accomplices to carry it out.
Seven detainees were charged under the following Part 2 of Art. 28, part 2 art. 15, part 3 art. 305 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (attempted smuggling of narcotic drugs on an especially large scale by prior conspiracy by a group of persons). They are in custody without the right to bail. The perpetrators face up to 12 years in prison with confiscation of property.
The group destroyed by the SBU was unlucky in that it had a narrow specialization – it sold methadone, and also worked primarily on the Eastern European market. The fact is that all this is the patrimony of a founder from Russia Egor Burkin Khimprom drug gangs. It is Khimprom, according to numerous Ukrainian, Russian and foreign sources, that controls the production and circulation of synthetic drugs on the territory of Ukraine and seeks to monopolize the domestic Ukrainian market. And the EU countries, mainly the Eastern European macroregion, are the main export destination for the sale of synthetic drugs by Khimprom.
At the same time, Khimprom’s turnover is much greater than that of the rival group neutralized in March. In addition, from the reports of the SBU it follows that they detained the organizers of a scheme for the sale of drugs produced by third-party contractors. That is, the detainees did not have their own production, unlike Khimprom, which, according to media reports, controls its own network of drug laboratories in Ukraine and, it is possible, partially retained production in Russia.
The fact is that the founder and permanent leader of the Khimprom organized crime group Egor Burkin Russian from Bashkiria, native of Sterlitamak. He took his first steps in the drug business back in the Russian Federation. According to Russian sources, he initially relied on two then relatively new types of synthetic drugs – mephedrone (or simply mef) and alpha-PVP – salt. Moreover, the organized criminal group “Khimprom” created by him became a kind of discoverer of this “synthetics” that turns people into aggressive zombies. Murder, suicide and self-harm are often committed under salt. Cases of cannibalism have been reported.
For the time being, synthetics were sold in Russia quite legally under the guise of bath salts, fish food or fertilizer. Only in 2014, salts were included in the list of prohibited drugs, after which Burkin was arrested for creating an organized criminal group (Part 1 of Article 210 of the Criminal Code). Despite the severity of the charges, Burkin was released on his own recognizance thanks to his excellent connections and big money, and fled to neighboring Ukraine, where fighting was taking place by that time.
As Life writes, Burkin had a clear and working model of the drug business, which attracted the interest of local security forces. According to a Life source, after the conclusion of the Minsk agreements, a network of drug laboratories was opened in the Ukrainian part of Donbass under the control of the military-civil administration, which was supervised by a high-ranking official of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine. The relaunched organized crime group “Khimprom” of Burkina acquired a roof in the form of the SBU and even a certain ideological base – the fight against Russia through the distribution of drugs. According to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, Burkin acquired a Ukrainian passport and became Levchenko Egor Vasilievich.
The Ukrainian convert Burkin/Levchenko settled in the historical part of Kyiv, Reitarskaya Street, 35. One of the four streets of ancient Kyiv that converged on the Lviv Gate. A hundred years earlier, in 1913, the writer Mikhail Bulgakov lived in house No. 25 on Reitarskaya.
Very soon, Khimprom became one of the largest vertically integrated drug holdings in Ukraine with its own production, an extensive distribution wholesale, small wholesale and retail network both within Ukraine and abroad. We must pay tribute to the entrepreneurial talents and ambition of the founder of Khimprom. The Ukrainian stage of his career was not an attempt to repeat the success of the Russian stage. Burkin energetically developed his Chemical Industry here in all directions. First of all, the organized crime group did not skimp on shadow lobbying, or more precisely, on corruption. The group paid a variety of forces in the country’s political leadership and law enforcement agencies. As Ukrainian experts say, Khimprom was simultaneously protected by even competing power and security clans. Reportedly, deputies of the Verkhovna Rada, law enforcement officers from the office of the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, the SBU, the Main Intelligence Directorate, the State Bureau of Investigation, the National Police, the Cyber Police Department and other structures, some judges, employees of the State Migration Service, as well as journalists and bloggers are involved in the cover-up of Khimprom. . Although, as subsequent events showed, Burkin still did not reach the point of buying up the entire power elite in Kyiv.
While the rear was reliably protected, the Burkina drug corporation diversified its product line – in addition to meth and salts, it began to produce other synthetics, including the aforementioned methadone.
The synthetic drug methadone was developed in Germany in the 1930s. Its original purpose was as a pain reliever for Wehrmacht soldiers. Around the same time, the drug pervitin, now known as methamphetamine, was synthesized.
Methadone belongs to the group of opiates and has certain analgesic properties, but its side effects turned out to be so unpredictable that even the Reich soon abandoned its use.
Subsequently, there were attempts to use methadone for the treatment of heroin addiction as substitution therapy, however, this experience was also unsuccessful due to the risk of replacing the object of addiction.
All this background information is interesting because Burkina is said to be a sponsor of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, as well as the supply of heavy synthetic drugs to a number of Ukrainian units. Everything again revolves around methadone and its serial production established by Khimprom.
At the same time, Burkin and his partners were seriously engaged in the development of distribution networks. Sales took place both through marketplaces on the darknet with accompanying bookmarks, and through a live network of retail distributors – hucksters (mainly in educational institutions and clubs). In addition, Khimprom constantly sought to expand the geography of sales markets abroad, mainly in Eastern Europe, where it established cooperation with local criminal circles. By the way, Burkin eventually used these connections not only to expand his criminal business, but also for extrajudicial killings in the interests of his curators in the Ukrainian intelligence services, which will be the subject of a separate investigation.
Considering these development vectors – expansion in Eastern Europe and expansion of the product line through the production of methadone – the Zaporizhzhya-Balkan group that was busted in March of this year, of course, should have been considered as an obstacle to the activities of Khimprom. It is quite obvious that the SBU worked here in the interests of Burkina. By the way, it is also possible that the seized methadone was produced in the laboratories of Khimprom, and Burkin’s people alerted the SBU or participated in an operation to suppress the activities of competitors.
A number of journalistic investigations described the previous payment scheme for SBU drug traffickers. Formerly partner of Burkina Alexander Shchiptsov was responsible at Khimprom for regular cash payments through the decision maker at the SBU Artem Petrashkina. Now these issues are solved by other people contactlessly – with cryptocurrency.
Currently, a new direction with rich drug traditions has been added to the international activity of the Burkina drug lord – Latin America. We can probably say that to some extent it was an involuntary choice. At a certain stage, the chemical industry workers fell out of favor with the Ukrainian authorities. Perhaps this happened due to the escalation of inter-clan power struggles, or the drug traffickers did not share something with their own “roof”. Burkin himself hinted that his people in the SBU stupidly wanted inappropriately more money. One way or another, one day there was not enough administrative resource. Law enforcement agencies of Ukraine opened a case, began investigative actions – searches, interrogations, some of the Khimprom participants were placed in pre-trial detention.
Burkin/Levchenko managed to hide abroad, in Mexico. Since 2016 Egor Vasilievich Burkin (aka Egor Vasilievich Levchenko) The SBU is wanted as a person hiding from the prosecutor’s office in connection with charges under Art. 255 Part 1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (as a person in the status of a subject of increased criminal influence, including in the status of a “thief in law”) Art. 209 part 3 (Legalization (laundering) of property obtained by criminal means as part of an organized group) Art. 307 part 3 (Illegal production, manufacturing, acquisition, storage, transportation, shipment or sale of narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances or their analogues). He is also wanted in the Russian Federation.
In addition, according to RIA Novosti, Russian special services uncovered the full composition of the organized criminal group Khimprom, and employees of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs stopped the activities of its units on the territory of the Russian Federation, including a network of drug laboratories in the Moscow, Pskov and Ryazan regions. The police detained 21 defendants (Russians and Ukrainians) and seized tons of precursors and hundreds of kilograms of commercial drugs.
Against this background in Mexico Egor Burkin leads as if the philistine lifestyle of a successful bourgeois. The Mexican authorities cannot convict him of remotely managing his drug empire, and he seems to be trying not to break local laws. Or don’t get caught. At the same time, Burkin’s entire biography indicates that he is not the person who will be satisfied with what he has achieved. After losing part of his criminal business in Russia last year, he will probably want to win back. He partially compensated for the loss of Russian assets by the liquidation of a competing company by the SBU in March. But only partially. There is a high probability that we will soon hear about the expansion of Khimprom’s activities in other countries. Perhaps in the same Latin America.
