How Vyacheslav Mishalov became a bitcoin billionaire: a story of family contracts, budget schemes and criminal investigations

25 листопада 2025 р., 17:59

Микола Богданович   704   0  

How Vyacheslav Mishalov became a bitcoin billionaire: a story of family contracts, budget schemes and criminal investigations

Vyacheslav Mishalov is a Dnipro city council member from Samopomich, former city council secretary (2016–2017), and co-owner of the I.UA portal and the Fregat internet provider.

In his 2020 asset declaration, he reported owning 18,000 bitcoins — at the time worth more than $1 billion — along with a collection of luxury watches and firearms. The origin of such wealth has never been officially explained. However, investigators have repeatedly documented Mishalov’s ties to multimillion-hryvnia budget schemes.

In 2020, police and prosecutors investigated the possible embezzlement of ₴33.7 million by the company Master-Bud during the installation of boilers in Dnipro’s kindergartens and schools. The investigation found inflated equipment prices by ₴7.1 million and fictitious transport expenses of another ₴588,000.

At the time, Mishalov was city council secretary and had direct family ties to Master-Bud: until 2018, the company belonged to his father, Dmytro Mishalov — one of Dnipro’s most influential businessmen. In 2010, his company received a $100 million state contract to build the roof of the NSC Olimpiyskiy during the government of Borys Kolesnikov.

Moreover, the boilers for the scandalous project were supplied by the company Liberator, whose trademark is owned by Vyacheslav Mishalov himself. Financial operations were conducted through Concord Bank — an institution closely linked to the family.

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In 2019, Dnipro mayor Borys Filatov publicly accused the Mishalov family of corruption and of derailing the repair of the New Bridge, which was carried out by another company from their business clan — Zavod Master-Profi. The contract cost the city ₴250 million, but the work failed, triggering scandal and the mayor’s demand to hand the case over to law enforcement.

It is also significant that the Mishalov father and son were members of the board of trustees of the Dnipropetrovsk Jewish community, alongside influential figures such as Ihor Kolomoiskyi, Hennadiy Boholyubov, and Hennadiy Korban. This only strengthened their informal influence in the region.

After Mishalov was elected a city council member in 2015, Master-Bud received state contracts totaling ₴2.03 billion.

Thus, within just a few years, the Mishalov family built an entire empire of budget-funded contracts, while Vyacheslav himself accumulated billion-dollar assets whose origins remain unexplained.