We continue our series of publications on materials and episodes of crimes committed by the "Prokhorenko organized crime group," which has established itself within the state-owned company Ukrgazvydobuvannya, and is quite successfully and brazenly enriching itself.
That's exactly how—"an organized crime group"—the executives of Ukrgazvydobuvannya and their patrons within the Naftogaz system are described in an analytical report obtained by the editorial staff. The analytical report was prepared for a team of investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau.
Investigators will conduct further investigations into certain incidents of activity, as well as into specific executives of the state-owned company Ukrgazvydobuvannya. Following the high-profile scandal surrounding the Onishchenko organized crime group, the case came to the attention of the Security Service of Ukraine. There are many reasons for this: banal thefts on a large scale, the creation of a system of extortion from tender participants, and the extortion of businesses from individuals who have been part of the corrupt system of the Ukrainian state-owned fuel and energy sector since the Yanukovych era.
But the SBU is particularly interested in another point: the management of the state-owned company Ukrgazvydobuvannya is almost entirely made up of former representatives of the Russian oil industry.
Having taken control of a Ukrainian gas production company, the Prokhorenko organized crime group is promoting the interests of Russian businesses in public procurement. This is utter nonsense! Money flows from a state-owned company of the Ukrainian state to the Russian Federation. And yet, if we believe the fiery speeches of Ukrainian political leaders, Ukraine and the Russian Federation are in a state of war.
"One's own way to one's own"—this Ukrainian rule is used by the "Russian" leaders of a Ukrainian state-owned company. The most revealing episode from the investigative team's analytical report is the rather close and mutually beneficial cooperation between the Prokhorenko organized crime group and a pool of Russian banks: Sberbank, Prominvestbank, and Alfa-Bank.
"The new pro-Russian management of PJSC Ukrgazvydobuvannya, on the instructions of the management of NAK Naftogaz, repaid loans and paid interest on them to banks in the aggressor country, such as Sberbank of Russia, Prominvestbank, and Alfa-Bank, in the second half of 2015, totaling UAH 366,782,848.31 million, from which they received a kickback of 20 to 30% for the payment," the investigators write.
As is well known, since the onset of Russian aggression in eastern Ukraine, the government has recommended that businesses, especially state-owned ones, cease all cooperation with banks of Russian origin and transfer operations to banks with Ukrainian capital. As part of the sanctions package against banks controlled by the Russian government—Sberbank and Prominvestbank in Ukraine—they are overseen by the National Bank, and restrictions have been imposed on these banks' operations in the capital markets.
Nevertheless, neither the war, nor government sanctions, nor NBU restrictions prevent the new team of patriotic reformers from continuing their close and even mutually beneficial cooperation with the state-owned businesses of the occupying country. This episode is also reflected in the analytical report for the investigative team, excerpts of which we published earlier. Immediately after Prokhorenko and his associates joined the management of Ukraine's state-owned gas company, they "injected money" into Sberbank and PIB, for which they received considerable "gratitude" in the form of kickbacks.
Prokhorenko and his team aren't even ashamed to brazenly steal from a state-owned company through fraudulent schemes with Russian businesses, even after the head of Ukrgazvydobuvannya officially assigned himself a salary of one million hryvnias, despite the company's rather dubious performance: in 2015, it was the state-owned company that reduced gas production, while private producers increased it. But even the exorbitant salary doesn't stop Prokhorenko's rampant corruption—there's no such thing as too much money.
Interestingly, some of the facts from the analytical materials prepared for investigators from the Prosecutor General's Office, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), and the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) overlap in some respects with the facts repeatedly presented by parliamentarians in their inquiries to law enforcement agencies. We will present one of these, as the most comprehensive, inquiries into the situation here.
The most interesting thing is that Ukrgazvydobuvannya's management is getting away with everything. Even after the publication of a fairly detailed correspondence between the state-owned company's executives, which confirms the horrific scale of corruption and brazen manipulation during tenders, as well as political and business connections that lead to the very top—to the management of Naftogaz and beyond.
We'll cover tender manipulation and the political patrons of Prokhorenko's organized crime group in more detail in future publications. As always, there will be documentary evidence.
Mark Varshavin for Politica-UA.com
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