A businessman close to the Presidential Office, Timur Mindich, spent years building a diamond empire on the basis of former Kolomoisky assets. As it turned out, the business developed not only in Ukraine but also in Russia — even after 2014. And even after the start of the full-scale war in 2022, it continued to generate profits on both sides of the front line.
I, Yaroslav Zhelezniak, will tell you how the scheme operates under brand names you can see even in the heart of the capital. Watch our seventh investigation on the Zaliznyy Nardep channel. Don’t forget to subscribe and leave a comment!
Diamonds are not only a girl’s best friend — they’re also the best friends of people close to the President’s Office. Or rather, one person in particular. Today, we’ll tell you the story of how a businessman close to Bankova spent years building a diamond empire in both Ukraine and Russia. Even after 2014, when Russia began its war in eastern Ukraine and annexed Crimea. And even after the full-scale invasion in February 2022 — this business continues to operate.
This businessman is Tymur Mindich. You definitely know him as a co-owner of “Kvartal 95” and a friend of Volodymyr Zelenskyy. In recent years, his influence has expanded enormously into many areas across the country — from media to energy. Our colleagues at Bihus.Info have mentioned Mindich as a possible beneficiary of budget funds from the “United News Marathon.” He has appeared in several of our investigations related to energy schemes, and, more recently, rumors say that he is even involved in a NABU case.
Sources say that Bankova was so actively trying to rescue Tymur from the NABU case that they even attempted to undermine the independence of NABU and SAP themselves. But today, we’ll talk about Tymur Mindich as a man who built a successful diamond business. Behind the shine of the precious stones lies an empire connecting Kyiv, Luxembourg, Dubai, the British town of Maidstone, and St. Petersburg. And, according to documents, this business is still generating profits on both sides of the front line. So let’s begin.
On the first floor of Kyiv’s TSUM, somewhere between the Jimmy Choo and Dolce & Gabbana boutiques, there is a store of Ukrainian jewelry brand Solo for Diamonds. Similar corners can be found in Lviv and even in New York. Its specialty lies in diamonds grown in a Ukrainian laboratory.
The brand’s jewelry is worn by famous stars — Jamala, Jenna Ortega, Olha Kharlan, and Elina Svitolina. You may have also seen Solo for Diamonds pieces on First Lady Olena Zelenska. Since 2021, Yulia Kusher has been developing the brand — she’s often introduced as a former manager at 1+1. Since 2015, she has also headed Alkor-D, the laboratory that grows diamonds for the brand’s jewelry in Ukraine.
In one interview with Elle, Yulia admitted: “To be honest, I never dreamed of working in the jewelry business. To say that I didn’t like what I was doing — would be an understatement.” And that’s not surprising, since Kusher runs the lab-grown diamond business under the guidance of its real owner — Tymur Mindich.
She took on this role after serving as chief financial officer of Mindich’s British firm Meylor Global. Remember this name — it will be one of the key elements of this investigation.
It all began in 2014, when oligarch Ihor Kolomoiskyi won a court case over this asset — the Kyiv-based Izumrud plant. Since Soviet times, the enterprise had specialized in processing precious stones. The oligarch indirectly registered the structure under his name and under a trusted couple — Tymur and Kateryna Mindich.
But after Kolomoiskyi’s arrest in 2023, the plant — or rather its ownership — began to undergo metamorphoses: the company owned by Kolomoiskyi disappeared from its ownership structure, and Tymur Mindich also withdrew. The new owner of Izumrud became a firm called Alfa Kros, registered under a certain Viktoriia Dedyshcheva.
On paper, everything looks neat — as if there are no traces of the oligarch or his close partners. But in phone databases, the new owner of the Izumrud plant is most often listed as Tymur Mindich’s lawyer and appears under the name “Viktoriia Kvartal Diamonds.”
Let’s make it simple: as soon as Kolomoiskyi ended up in pre-trial detention, Mindich seized the plant from him — more or less the same way Kolomoiskyi once seized it from the state. Call it karma, if you will.
Why would Mindich want to keep control of a plant that processes metals? The answer is simple: in 2015, he launched a startup on the plant’s base — Alkor-D, a laboratory for growing synthetic diamonds. And quite successfully so. The Kyiv lab has even set several Guinness World Records and received international quality certifications.
It is Alkor-D, as mentioned earlier, that supplies diamonds for the brand Solo for Diamonds and continues to operate on the Izumrud plant’s premises to this day.
“It’s no secret that the main investor and owner of Alkor-D is one of the most enigmatic Ukrainian entrepreneurs — Tymur Mindich, who was a partner of our current president in Kvartal 95. And what is his role in this business now?
He’s the owner of this business. It’s his business. He’s actively involved, I think, in all the processes — both in production and in the technological side. He’s definitely interested in it, he wants to develop something new in Ukraine. And I think it started as a startup, but now he sees the potential in it. That’s probably why he continues to develop it.” — quote from a Forbes Ukraine video.
So, Mindich has effectively gained control of an entire production complex: the laboratory grows the stones, and the plant polishes them. What happens next?
Kusher herself said that 99% of the diamonds grown in the laboratory are exported.
“Before the war, the plant produced about 10,000 carats per month — so these are quite large volumes, and 100% of these diamonds went for export.” — quote from Yulia Kusher.
But who buys these hundreds of thousands of carats? As we found out, they are also bought by Mindich — or more precisely, by foreign companies connected to him, such as Meylor Diamonds DMCC in Dubai, which likely handles deals with clients in the Middle East and Asia.
One of the co-owners is the same person who represents and manages Mindich’s Ukrainian diamond business — Yulia Kusher. But the company that interests us more is the British firm Meylor Global, which belongs directly to Tymur Mindich.
The firm positions itself as an international supplier of laboratory-grown diamonds. Incidentally, this same company has already featured in a completely different investigation of ours. In that case, “Energoatom” lost 300 million UAH with the assistance of Energoatomtrade’s head, Yakob Hartmut, who is close to Mindich.
But let’s return to the diamonds. I will repeat once again what the production chain of the diamond business, or rather Mindich’s empire, looks like: Alkor-D grows the rough diamonds, the “Izumrud” factory polishes them into jewellery-quality diamonds, Meylor Global sells them wholesale abroad — to jewellery factories, scientific companies, and dealers. Solo for Diamonds handles retail and PR.
The Kyiv laboratory holds a leading global position in the niche of grown diamonds — on par with foreign competitors. One would think there’s cause for pride: a startup from a warring country is setting the tone in a new industry. But this story has a dark side.
While Alcor-D is breaking records in Kyiv, a mirror project is developing in the aggressor country, Russia — another laboratory connected to the same Timur Mindich. In 2014, already after the Russian invasion, the annexation of Crimea, and the start of the war in the East, a new company, New Diamond Technology, appeared in a Russian city near St. Petersburg. Its ambitions are similar to those of the Ukrainian Alkor-D — to grow large diamonds in a laboratory.
Formally, the company was created by Mykola Khikhinashvili. According to our information, he was the one who helped Kolomoyskyi sue the state for that very “Izumrud” factory. However, he was the beneficiary of the Russian laboratory for only a few months. Already in December 2014, the Russian New Diamond Technology was re-registered to an offshore company in Luxembourg — Mineral Assets Corporation, which was the sole official owner of the laboratory for the last ten years.
And the ultimate beneficiaries of the Luxembourg offshore were 50/50 — the Russian businessman and developer, and brother of the New Diamond Technology founder, Teimuraz Khikhinashvili, and the very same Ukrainian businessman, Timur Mindich. Officially, according to the registries, Mindich only exited this business in December 2024.
Just consider this: for ten years of Russia’s war against Ukraine and three years of the full-scale invasion, a businessman close to the President has been and still is a co-owner of a firm in Russia — a firm that, in 2024 alone, paid about half a million dollars in taxes and fees to the budget of the aggressor country. Money that then, obviously, turns into drones and missiles that the aggressor fires at our Ukrainian cities.
If you think this is rock bottom, you are right. But wait, there will be a knock from the bottom.
On the website of Mindich’s already-mentioned British firm, Meylor Global, it is explicitly stated in black and white that the company is the exclusive distributor of the Kyiv laboratory Alkor-D and a partner of the same “Izumrud” factory. However, Meylor Global was an official distributor of diamonds from the Russian branch of the same Mindich’s business — New Diamond Technology — at least until 2022. This was even indicated on the Russian company’s official website.
It turns out that, under a British wrapper, Mindich combined both Ukrainian synthetic diamonds and products from the aggressor country, Russia. Moreover, he traded them around the world even after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014.
I’ll be frank, we do not have documentary evidence that Meylor Global sold Russian diamonds after 2022. However, the fact that Mindich himself only exited the Russian business at the end of 2024 gives reason to believe that the scheme could have actually continued to operate even after the full-scale invasion.
Foreign companies in Britain and the Emirates connected to Mindich could theoretically have helped Russian stones bypass international sanctions. It was precisely through the commodity exchange in the United Arab Emirates, in the DMCC free trade zone, that many producers redirected the sale of Russian diamonds. Therefore, it is quite likely that Russian laboratory-grown diamonds could have also utilised this scheme — through Meylor Diamonds DMCC, which is connected to Mindich.
Furthermore, similar processes are somehow still taking place in both businesses—the Ukrainian and the Russian ones. For example, as of 2025, Mindich is no longer in the ownership structure of the Russian synthetic diamond manufacturer, but in March 2025, the Russian laboratory New Diamond Technology founded a company specialising in metal processing. And a share of New Diamond Technology itself was acquired by the Russian venture fund “Voskhod,” which is associated with the oligarch Vladimir Potanin, who is close to the Kremlin.
The money is planned to be spent on research and expansion of the production of diamond plates for chips — a strategically important area for the Russian Federation in the context of the war. And the same diamond plates are also purchased for the Kyiv laboratory Alkor-D, which Mindich financed at the “Izumrud” factory.
And you won’t believe it, but this summer, the “Izumrud” factory itself also changed its main line of business. Just like the Russian New Diamond Technology, the “Izumrud” factory in Ukraine will now be engaged in the mechanical processing of metals.
Of course, this may be a coincidence. And we are not claiming that this coincidence proves a direct link. But given the entire history of the diamond business in Ukraine, Russia, and Britain, such coincidences look a bit strange.
So, what do we have in the final analysis? Timur Mindich, a close friend of the president, was not only able to build a successful international business on synthetic diamonds and somewhat squeeze a factory out of Kolomoyskyi. He managed to run this business in two countries — Ukraine and Russia. Even, by the way, after the full-scale invasion.
And Russia’s war in the East and the annexation of Crimea did not prevent him from selling his Russian products all over the world and even positioning his firm as a distributor of the Ukrainian one.
The story of Timur Mindich is not just about diamonds. It is about a real fusion of money, connections, and a sense of impunity, which effectively turned Mindich into a Ukrainian Midas: everything he touches in the state turns into gold for him.
For many years, he remained a grey cardinal, while he was bypassed by NSDC sanctions or even the attention of NABU. Mindich was busy with his affairs, including building that very diamond empire across two countries. His connections to the authorities obviously protected him.
And what should be done about this? Now, first and foremost, we must bring this story to light. Our investigation is a step towards this. The rest is up to law enforcement and, in principle, the state.
This case could become yet another litmus test for the path the government chooses: everything for their own, but the law for outsiders? Or is the law truly one for all? Especially since our government has grown fond of looking for the “Russian trace.”
Do I believe the authorities will go after Mindich? Of course not. More likely, they go after those who go after Mindich — for example, the NABU.
But this issue, firstly, doesn’t just concern our law enforcement agencies — there is, after all, a risk of sanctions circumvention here. And secondly, this is obviously a reputational problem: if you are close to the President’s Office, then the President’s Office is, one way or another, responsible for your actions.
So, friends, publicity helps here. It helps at least to show this video to more people, raise more noise, and somehow force the authorities to at least react to such actions by their associate.
So, subscribe, like, leave your comments — what do you think about such “Russian business,” and stay with us. We will have new high-profile investigations. Goodbye.
Tags: corruption corruption in Ukraine Kolomoisky mindich nabu SAPO Ukraine
