The authorities of Antonov, the Ukrainian transport aircraft company, informed the Ministry of the Interior that The documents presented by the company based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Aero Express FZE, are completely falseto which it awarded a contract for the construction of an An-74 model aircraft.
On October 31, 2025, during the current government of the President José Jeríthe General Office of Administration and Finance (OGAF) of the Ministry of the Interior, awarded the contract for US$63.9 million to the company Aero Express FZE.
He did so despite the fact that an investigation by The Republic revealed that Aero Express FZE is a front company controlled by Russian citizen Valery Paniklovsince the Ukrainian ambassador in Lima, Yuriy Polyukhovych, alerted the Peruvian government that the An-74 model had stopped being produced years ago by Antonov.
After the Comptroller’s Office detected a series of deficiencies during the bidding process, with the obvious purpose of guiding the contracting in favor of Aero Express FZE, the Ministry of the Interior was only encouraged to ask the Antonov factory if Aero Express FZE was its representative or agent, and if it had been granted a license or permit to build the An-74 model that it had offered to Peru.
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A deception warned
Through diplomatic channels Antonov responded categorically that Aero Express FZE, from the United Arab Emiratesprovided false documentation to the authorities of the Ministry of the Interior. He also pointed out that did not have any link with the aforementioned company represented by the Russian Valery Paniklov and he added that much less has he been given permission to manufacture a copy of the FZE model.
“According to the certification of the State Aviation Service of Ukraine, Antonov is the sole legal owner of intellectual property rights on the design and operation documentation of the An-74 aircraft and its modifications, and has not transferred such copyrights to anyone,” explains Antonov’s director, Yevhen Havrylov, in a response letter to the Ministry of the Interior of Peru, through the Foreign Ministry of Ukraine.
Havrylov reports that Antonov has only issued two licenses for the construction of An-74 aircrafta model that the Peruvian Ministry of the Interior has contracted from Aero Express FZE, which has never manufactured an aircraft of these characteristics. These are:
-To the State Aviation Production Company of Kharkiv, Ukraine, but due to the Russian invasion, this certificate has been suspended since 2022.
-To the Federal State Unitary Enterprise “Polet”, located in the city of Omsk, Russian Federation, and which built only 5 examples until 2003.
Aero Express FZE, from the United Arab Emirates, never received permission to build Antonov aircraft in that country or elsewhere An-74, as he deceitfully guaranteed to the OGAF of the Ministry of the Interior.
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A forged license
“We inform that as of today There are no certified manufacturers of An-74 type aircraft and that the production of aircraft of this type is not possible either in Ukraine or outside its borders,” says Antonov’s acting director, Yevhen Havrylov, in the letter received by the Ministry of the Interior.
However, Valery Paniklov, the Russian who manages Aero Expres FZE, even wrote to the Peruvian authorities that he had documents signed by Antonov’s director, Sergei Bychkov, which gave him the green light to build the An-74 model anywhere in the world.
“The fact that Antonov Company is not manufacturing the AN-74 model in Ukraine has nothing to do with the possibility of that same aircraft being manufactured by another licensee in another territory (in this case by Aero Express FZE in the United Arab Emirates),” Panikov wrote.
And he added: “We are authorized manufacturers of the An-74 aircraft, since we acquired this status from Antonov, as stated in the Letter of
Authorization signed by General Manager Sergei Bychkov.”
None of this was true. Panikov fabricated Bychkov’s letter.
“The ‘letter of authorization for manufacturing and modification work on the AN-74 aircraft’, allegedly issued by Antonov in favor of the company Aero Express FZE,
It’s a complete fake. It does not comply with the current standards for formalizing Antonov documentation, nor with the current legislation of Ukraine, neither in form nor content,” highlights the director of the Ukrainian company, Yevhen Havrylov.
As if that were not enough, he notes: “It should be noted that the signature on the letterhead of General Director Bychkov’s letter is not authentic, since he served as General Director only until April 2022, and not until ‘November 9, 2022,’” as Panikov expressed.
“Based on the above, we affirm that the Aero Express FZE company does not have any authorization from Antonov for the production, modernization or carrying out certification work on aircraft of the An-74 type, and does not have the technical capabilities to carry out this type of activities,” concludes the director of the Ukrainian aircraft factory.
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Who are responsible
Antonov’s director’s letter states that the OGAF of the Ministry of the Interior awarded the US$63.9 million contract to Aero Express FZE for the manufacture of an An-74 aircraft knowing that it was a paper company registered in the United Arab Emirates and does not even build a toy.
Any moderately informed public official knows that the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine in 2022, so it should have set off alarms when a company based in the United Arab Emirates, in this case Aero Express FZE, represented by a businessman of Russian nationality, offered to manufacture an An-74 aircraft that is an exclusive model of the Antonov company.
How is it possible that the Russian citizen Valery Paniklov, whose country destroyed the Antonov facilities during the war, proposes to Peru the sale of an An-74 model aircraft, precisely from the factory of said Ukrainian company?
The acquisition was conceived during the period of the former Minister of the Interior, Juan José Santiváñez and was completed by officials close to him, the former head of the OGAF, Ronnie Matienzo Mendoza.
Suspiciously, a few days after taking office, on October 31 of last year Matienzo awarded the contract to Aero Express FZE and very shortly after, on November 14 of last year, he resigned from the position.
