Food Crisis Speculators

Kyiv - Ukraine is investigating hundreds of firms, many created since Russia’s full-scale invasion scrambled the grain market, for allegedly failing to properly document their trading in Ukrainian grain or to pay taxes on it.

Reporters looked into who bought hundreds of thousands of euros of “black grain” in the European Union. They found liquidated companies, proxies — and multinational agribusiness giants.

Some of the EU companies that bought this grain from Ukraine raise serious questions themselves.

Several had been ordered shut down by Hungarian authorities but continued trading. Some of the men listed as their owners and directors were patients in psychiatric hospitals; one is an aspiring Tik-Tok influencer.

The Romanian subsidiaries of major international agribusiness traders — COFCO International, Bunge, Viterra, and Ameropa Holding — imported grain through Ukrainian companies under investigation.