Artur Granz

Artur Granz
Born	Artur Gurgenovich Granz (1971-05-05) May 5, 1971
Occupation	businessman
Known for	co-owner of BF&GH Travel Retail Limited, publisher of Forbes Ukraine

Artur Granz (Patronymic: Gurgenovich, Ukrainian: Артур Гургенович Гранц; born May 5, 1971) is a businessman, co-owner of BF&GH Travel Retail Limited, publisher of Forbes Ukraine.

Early life

He was born on May 5, 1971. He graduated from the Belarusian State University in Minsk. He has been doing business in Ukraine since 2006.

Arthur Granz is the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Congo in the Republic of Belarus.

Business career

Granz is a co-owner of the largest Ukrainian chain of duty-free stores BF&GH Travel Retail Limited, which is a part of BF Capital Group. BF&GH Travel Retail Limited is an operator of duty-free stores in Boryspil and Zhuliany international airports in partnership with the German company Gebr. Heinemann. In 2021, it became known that BF&GH Travel Retail Limited would take on lease part of the terminal of Lviv Airport.

He has been the publisher of Forbes Ukraine magazine since spring 2020. The right to publish the magazine received the Uyavy! LLC, the ultimate beneficiaries of which are Grants and Volodymyr Fedoryn (editor-in-chief of the previous version of Forbes Ukraine). In 2023, the Forbes Ukraine team received the Forbes Courage Award for resilience, courage and adaptability.  The award was presented during the ninth Forbes Global Partners Summit in New York.

Contoversary

In 2015, Artur Granz became a party to a deal to acquire the Creative agricultural holding, the largest producer of sunflower oil. In the process, Granz met Arseniy Yatsenyuk, because of this connection, the entrepreneur was later accused in the press of lobbying interests through administrative resources.

In 2013, Artur Granz won a tender for the long-term lease of premises in Terminal D of Boryspil Airport, which he did not yet own. As he mentioned in an interview with liga.net, he effectively became a monopolist at the airport, paying rent that was three times lower than the market rate – 2372 hryvnias. This led to three investigations, all of which ended inconclusively. Granz's scheme involved issuing receipts for cigarette purchases for each passenger without actual transactions, allowing him to avoid taxes and duties, generating millions of hryvnias in "clean" profit.

In 2022, another scheme involving cigarette smuggling from Belarus was exposed. Member of Parliament Georgiy Mazurashu stated that the person owning the largest chain of Duty-Free shops in Ukraine is a business partner of Lukashenko and a Belarusian citizen, who likely continues smuggling cigarettes into Ukraine. The publication "Obozrevatel" reported on another unconventional scheme involving alcohol smuggling, where Granz would allocate 30 liters of alcohol to each person crossing the border.

The ownership of Ukrainian "Forbes" is 90% by Artur Granz through Swiss HERMIS TRADE SA, and 10% by co-founder and editor-in-chief Volodymyr Fedorin. This explains why "Forbes" published three investigations against GGbet owner Maksym Krypa, a competitor to Vbet, while featuring positive articles about Vbet, which is owned by Grants. Additionally, "Forbes" has remained silent about Russian aggression for two years. This silence is linked to an agreement between Granz and Magomed Musaev, owner of Forbes Russia, at the start of the invasion, ensuring the Ukrainian edition does not pressure the Russian one. Editor-in-chief Borys Davydenko shuts down any internal attempts to discuss the Russian edition, as confirmed by internal correspondence.