A company believed to be close to the fugitive former Party of Regions member and Russia's Vnesheconombank is demanding more than UAH 1 billion from the Kyiv Metro.
The Kyiv Metro municipal enterprise is facing significant problems. As DS has learned, the Cypriot company Ukrrosleasing Cyprus Limited has filed a lawsuit in the Kyiv Commercial Court seeking to recover over UAH 1,15 billion in debt from the enterprise. The case will be heard at the end of September, and until then, the parties must reconcile payments under the agreement concluded on July 16, 2009.
The leasing contract in question was concluded by the Kyiv Metro with Ukrroslizing LLC, which at the time was a subsidiary of the Cypriot firm Impofirm Consulting and considered close to businessman Serhiy Tyshchenko's Fortuna Bank. Media outlets attributed Tyshchenko's influence to the former acting head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine, Serhiy Pashinsky, then a member of parliament from the BYuT.
According to the contract, the company was to deliver 100 railcars to the metro system for a total value of UAH 800 million. The total contract value is estimated at UAH 1,39 billion, based on the lease payment schedule. The railcars were initially scheduled for delivery between September and December 2009. However, in March 2010, following Viktor Yanukovych's victory in the presidential election and the change of government, the deadline was moved to November 2010. The payment schedule for the railcars was approved by the Kyiv City Council in May 2009. According to it, no more than 15% of the lease amount was to be allocated from the city budget for the purchase of the railcars by 2010, with the remaining debt to be repaid by 2015.
The ownership structure of Ukrroslizing after its arrival
Yanukovych's rise to power almost completely replicated the distribution of power within the most famous agro-industrial "gasket" of those times - Khleb Investbud LLC
Where did Ukrrosleasing, founded only in November 2008, get its railcars? The scheme was simple: a few days after signing the contract with the metro, the company entered into an agreement with a little-known Donetsk firm called Buenor (its capital was only 42 hryvnias, and its founder was listed as a certain Natalia Kuznetsova), which agreed to supply it with railcars manufactured by the Russian companies Metrovagonmash and Vagonmash. After the scheme was completed, Buenor was successfully liquidated, and the company itself changed hands—in April 2010, Ukrrosleasing was re-registered to the Cypriot company Ukrrosleasing Cyprus Limited. Its director was Svetlana Zhukova, the former head of VTB Leasing Ukraine. It was later revealed that the company's beneficiaries included the Russian company VEB-Leasing, part of the Vnesheconombank group, which is controlled by the Russian government. On the Ukrainian side, Ukrrosleasing's roots traced back to Ihor Filipenko, co-owner of the oil trader Vik Oil, behind whom loomed the shadow of Yuriy Ivanyushchenko, the Party of Regions' power broker. The ownership structure of Ukrrosleasing itself, after Yanukovych's rise to power, almost completely mirrored the distribution of power within the most notorious agro-industrial shell company of the time, Khlib Investbud LLC, to which Filipenko had a direct connection as its overseer.
After the fall of the Yanukovych regime last year, Ukrrosleasing remained largely silent. However, the issue of repaying the metro's debts remained unresolved. In February of this year, the head of the Kyiv Metro, Viktor Braginsky, even appealed to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Prosecutor's Office to investigate the legality of the contract signed for the purchase of 100 railcars in 2009. At the same time, he disclosed the amount of the debt owed to the supplier. "As of today, the metro already owes UAH 950 million for the procedure for purchasing railcars through a leasing company," Braginsky stated, lamenting that the corresponding program was adopted by Kyiv City Council deputies in 2009, and "now the company has received railcars and a colossal debt." The head of the Kyiv Metro Municipal Enterprise added that legal proceedings had previously been initiated against the supplier, but Ukrrosleasing had won all of them, right down to the final instance. This state of affairs means one thing: it will be virtually impossible for the utility to fight off the leasing company. Moreover, according to DS, neither the Ministry of Internal Affairs nor the Prosecutor's Office are currently investigating Ukrrosleasing or the circumstances of the contract signed with it in 2009. Therefore, it's unlikely that anything will prevent the court from upholding Ukrrosleasing Cyprus Limited's claim, putting the capital's metro on the brink of bankruptcy.
Published in the weekly newspaper "Business Capital" on August 24, 2015 (No. 31-33/741-743)
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