The name of oligarch Igor Kolomoisky is well known to every Ukrainian. Today he is one of the most mentioned Ukrainian businessmen in the media. In addition, he is known for his scandalous and outspoken antics. Kolomoisky is not afraid to openly criticize representatives of the highest Ukrainian politicians. It doesn’t matter to him the president in front of him or the prime minister, if they say something he doesn’t like, he won’t remain silent. Obviously, President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk are quite fed up with this. They decided to get even with Igor Valerievich by organizing a “big shake-up” for his business projects. Over the past 2 weeks, at least six enterprises of various levels under his control have been subjected to direct or indirect “attacks.” From the outside, this looks like a declaration of a full-scale state war against the oligarch Kolomoisky, and to be precise, this is an attempt by Poroshenko & Co to weaken the influence of Igor Valerievich on political decision-making in Ukraine. Time will tell whether this will be possible, but there is no doubt that serious oligarchic showdowns are coming.
“Lone oligarch”
The history of the confrontation between Igor Kolomoisky and Petro Poroshenko has been going on for the second decade. For example, in 2005, as the head of the National Security and Defense Council, Pyotr Alekseevich wanted to put Igor Valerievich in prison, accusing him of attempted murder of the lawyer of the Russian oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin, Sergei Karpenko. This was just one of the first charges of a crime. And there were at least several dozen such people in the future.
It should be noted that Kolomoisky at different times entered into confrontations with many Ukrainian oligarchs, making many enemies for himself because of his temper. For example, he had conflicts with Victor Pinchuk over the Nikopol Ferroalloy Plant, and with Vadim Novinsky over the Southern Mining and Processing Plant, and even with Rinat Akhmetov over the Dneprenergo company. All this is just a small part of the points of confrontation between Kolomoisky and influential Ukrainian businessmen. During his “business outrages” a lot of them accumulated. It seems that the opponents could not stand it and finally decided to get rid of Igor Valerievich, whom they did not like.
The last straw was that Kolomoisky began to use his main business asset “PrivatBank” (the central bank serving a third of Ukrainians’ deposits and accounting for about 25% of the entire banking system of Ukraine) in political blackmail, making it clear to his opponents that his opinion must be taken into account .
“Empire” by Igor Kolomoisky
Kolomoisky’s last little joy before his companies began to have “massive problems” was the victory of the Krivoy Rog Iron Ore Plant controlled by him in court against the company Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after. Ilyich” (part of the Metinvest group, owned by Rinat Akhmetov) in mid-January. According to the court decision, MMK im. Ilyich is obliged to recover UAH 1.32 billion (including fines) from KZHRK for the iron ore supplied by him. It is quite possible that it was this event that became the “last straw” in the sea of those dissatisfied with the actions of Igor Valerievich. And that’s what started next.
PrivatBank, the largest Ukrainian bank, has been at risk for a long time due to its owner Igor Kolomoisky. Igor Valerievich turned his main financial asset into a weapon against Petro Poroshenko and political opponents. By threatening the authorities with the bankruptcy of PrivatBank, he for a long time restrained the desire of our oligarch president to fight him. However, every system has a “critical threshold” and it seems that Poroshenko’s team has crossed it. Today’s actions by the presidential administration are aimed at “systematically” reducing the level of PrivatBank’s presence in the Ukrainian banking system.
Last week, the Ukrainian media erupted in a sensation; according to their information, all salaries of budgetary organizations, pensions and social payments will only be made by state banks. Journalists unanimously began to shout that this would deal a serious blow to PrivatBank, because Igor Valerievich’s bank is the leader in the number of pension and salary accounts serviced, and in addition, their network of ATMs and terminals has no competitors in Ukraine.
It should be noted that they began to talk about the nationalization of PrivatBank even during the presidency of Viktor Yushchenko, but due to the difficulties in implementation, it could not be implemented. The conflict between Poroshenko and Kolomoisky escalated significantly before the local elections. It was during this period that the authorities began talking about the possibility of nationalizing the banking monopolist. The official reason for nationalization may be the inability to fulfill the requirements of the National Bank of Ukraine to recapitalize PrivatBank by UAH 8 billion. The period given by the NBU to fulfill these requirements expires in 1.5 months. This fact makes it possible for Petro Poroshenko to influence Privat through the NBU. After all, if the bank does not fulfill its obligations, it will come under state control.
According to financial analysts, the nationalization of PrivatBank could backfire on the state. After all, now the state does not have access to the documents and databases of the financial institution, and it may well turn out that a significant part of the business of the Privat group itself took out loans from its structure (and this was the case). In this case, the loans will have to be equated to irrevocable status, which will entail even more financial losses. In order to save the bank, about $20-25 billion will ultimately be needed for additional capitalization. Otherwise, with such a development of the situation, the banking system of Ukraine may simply collapse, because the bankruptcy of a systemically important bank with such a market share will entail very unpredictable consequences.
On January 21, the State Property Fund proposed returning the Dnepravia company and Dnepropetrovsk airport to state control. According to the official position, this is due to the fact that the Privat group, which is actually the owner of the company, did not fulfill its obligations
In mid-January, the State Property Fund filed a lawsuit against the Galtera company in the Economic Court of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Its essence was the demand to terminate the agreement on the sale of Dnepravia, which was concluded back in August 2009. It is very strange that the State Property Fund remembered this “sale” 6 years after the transaction was completed. It all started with the August audit of the SPF, which showed that Galtera contributed only 142 million instead of the 882 million promised under the contract.
On January 27, the State Service of Geology and Subsoil of Ukraine suspended special permits for the use of the Golubovskoye, Yuryevskoye and Lopushnyanskoye fields. It turned out that this was due to the debts of the Ukrnafta company, controlled by Igor Kolomoisky for the use of the geological subsoil of Ukraine. In fact, the company stopped paying money for rent back in August 2014, but they began to deal with this fact right now. Previously, at the request of the State Fiscal Service, several criminal cases were initiated against the management of Ukrnafta, but their investigation was actually frozen.
In addition, according to media reports, former members of the board of Ukrnafta, who were fired for “ineffective management” Mikhail Gnap and Vladimir Pustovarov, again received positions at the enterprise and actually manage it. This is stated in the previously published “secret contracts” of the offshore companies-shareholders of Privat with Pustovarov. It was Pustovarov who was accused by Naftogaz of tax and rent evasion. Ukrnafta did not pay taxes even when it transferred billions of dollars in revenue to enterprises controlled by Privat.
On January 28, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine opened cases against the company Ukrtatnafta (http://skelet.info/20270-2/) for creating obstacles to the committee’s investigation. As reported by the AMCU, the enterprises Ukrtatnafta, Galnafta, NPK-Galichyna, Kotlas and Polygonal violate competition law by committing “anti-competitive” actions during oil and gas auctions.
It should be noted that Ukrtatnafta is the largest oil refining company in Ukraine, 43% of the shares of which are owned by the state through Naftogaz of Ukraine. The enterprise is controlled by the Privat financial group. A number of companies controlled by the structure of Igor Kolomoisky actually single-handedly buy oil from the Ukrnafta enterprise. It is very profitable for the group to do this, because it owns the only active oil refinery in the country in Kremenchug.
On February 2, the Security Service of Ukraine, together with the Kyiv prosecutor’s office, conducted a search in the Odessa office of the Sintez Oil company, owned by Igor Kolomoisky.
According to a statement by law enforcement officers, the searches are related to thefts on an especially large scale by the management of the Ukrtransnafta company (wholly owned by the state).
In 2009, Sintez Oil and Ukrtransnafta signed a contract to transport oil from the Odessa region directly to the Kremenchug oil refinery. In 2012, Igor Kolomoisky introduced his own man, Alexander Lazorko, into the management of Ukrtransnafta, who, as the head of the company, “unexpectedly” reduced the cost of using an oil pipe from UAH 6.14 million to UAH 835 thousand per month. The results of the audit showed that the Sintez Oil company underpaid about UAH 13 million to the treasury. In addition, under the guise of the beginning of the revolution, Lazorko signed an agreement according to which Sintez Oil could use the oil pipeline at reduced tariffs until 2012. If the agreement is not terminated, the state’s losses will amount to UAH 228.5 million.
Igor Kolomoisky
As we see, Igor Valerievich’s companies have serious problems on all fronts at once. It is a pure coincidence that it is difficult to call simultaneous attacks from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and the State Property Fund. The hand of Pyotr Alekseevich and his associates is clearly visible here. It is not yet clear how Igor Kolomoisky will get out of the “siege”. He himself always says that he “fights for justice” by defending his interests. The oligarch delicately keeps silent about the methods by which he does this…
Dmitry Samofalov, for SKELET-info