>>18584532
>One of the Ukrainian Oligarchs built his weath with a Candy Empire. Can't remember which one.
>Had me wondering what Candy Factories could run cover for as a side hustle.
>Explosives maybe?
> Turns out Hershey's dedicated part of it's plant to developing munitions during WWII
>>18584567
damson
It was Poroshenko
How did I forget that?
The Chocolate King Who Would Be President
Ukraine just had a revolution to oust sleazy oligarchs. Why is it about to elect one as its leader?
By SARAH A. TOPOL
May 22, 2014
Petro Poroshenko is the Chocolate King of Ukraine. What does that mean in a country where average yearly income still hovers around a few hundred dollars a month, where pensioners are impoverished by just about any definition and where the hunger to blame someone, anyone, for the country’s troubled post-Soviet path has produced not one but two revolutions in the last decade? For starters, that he lives like a king, a real one.
Poroshenko’s palace is a short ride outside central Kyiv in Kozyn, a suburb that, in Soviet times, used to be a proletariat retreat, dotted with tall, slender pine trees and small wooden cabins for workers’ families to enjoy the summer months by the Dnieper River. Today, a few vintage compounds with rusted metal gates remain, and dilapidated houses stand in the center of town. But the choice land close to the river has been bought up by wealthy Ukrainians who have erected mansions along its banks. Poroshenko’s grand manse—complete with a white portico and columns that recall, not at all subtly, the White House, is surrounded by a yellow brick wall. Over the top, you can see rows of freestanding Roman archways, metal-leaf gates and the golden cupola of an Orthodox chapel.
Although it’s technically illegal, Poroshenko and many others in the neighborhood have cut off access to the shorefront along their property. The high gates blocking the water have become a visible symbol of the excesses of a crony capitalism that has walled off much of Ukraine from the prying eyes of its people, turning land that was once for everyone to enjoy into an elite playground. “I don’t like it,” one of Poroshenko’s neighbors told me. “But what can you do?”
By the count of those keeping score, Poroshenko is Ukraine’s seventh richest man today, worth an estimated $1.3 billion, according to Forbes. A 48-year-old with a large jowl and pompadour-styled salt-and-pepper hair, he owns UkPromInvest, a mysterious holding company that has no website but boasts interests in bus manufacturing, car distribution, shipyards, banking and electrical cables, among other things. He is most famous for owning the confectionary firm Roshen, which has factories in both Ukraine and Russia and produces all manner of flashy gold-wrapped chocolate wafers, bars and candies. Perhaps even more relevantly in these troubled times, Poroshenko is also the owner of Channel 5, known as the country’s main opposition television station and a leader of the revolution that toppled President Viktor Yanukovych this winter.
If business made Poroshenko a king, his main occupation has been politics for much of Ukraine’s short, tumultuous history as an independent country, and he has held a high position in every government since the Orange Revolution in 2004—from minister of foreign affairs and minister of economic development and trade to head of the National Defense and Security Council to chairman of the National Bank. Now—three months after a violent uprising in which Ukrainians were united perhaps by only one thing: revulsion at the tyranny of the corrupt oligarchy that has dominated the country since independence— the billionaire is also the strong frontrunner in presidential elections scheduled for this Sunday, May 25.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/the-chocolate-king-who-would-be-president-106998/