On Monday evening, information appeared that the current chairman of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia, Yevgeny Lyashchenko, unexpectedly decided to resign.
The reasons for such actions are not reported, however, information quickly appeared in the media that a replacement for the desired position has already been found - the media predict that the new chairman of the board of the railway giant will be Alexander Pertsovsky, who currently holds the position of head of the Passenger Company branch of the Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company "
The railway workers immediately burst out with criticism and opposed such an appointment. There were several reasons for this.
Pertsovsky is a “layman” in railway matters, as noted by ANTIKOR’s source. He has been working in the UZ structure for only 4 years, and before that the high-ranking official had nothing to do with the railway. In 2016, he was considered for the position of head of another state company, Ukrposhta, but lost the competition to the permanent general director of the postal operator, Igor Smelyansky. Since 2020, he has been heading passenger transportation at Ukrzaliznytsia. As people who worked with Pertsovsky from the first days of his work in the joint-stock company recall, he did not understand at all how the system of activities in railway transport was structured.
However, this is a weak argument against the appointment of Pertsovsky as chairman of the board of Ukrzaliznytsia. Still, the place is extremely attractive, because the head of the railway enterprise receives one of the largest salaries in our state - more than a million hryvnia monthly. It is impossible to establish the exact salary of the head of UZ, because the company has stopped publishing monthly financial information, citing “martial law.” How the war prevents the publication of information about the income of the management of an enterprise that is 100% owned by the state is unknown, but this is precisely the position.
Returning to the position of opponents of Pertsovsky’s appointment, the source of our publication continues, the main problem under him was total corruption on the railway. Moreover, it starts from the smallest: it seems that a transparent tool for purchasing tickets has been created, which could make manipulation impossible, but strangely, these same tickets end up with “hucksters” who resell them at a markup.
Separately, it is worth paying attention to the fact that, surprisingly, it was after Pertsovsky’s appointment to Ukrzaliznytsia that the company began to sharply lobby for the interests of the richest man in Ukraine, Rinat Akhmetov. In 2021, Alexander Kamyshin was appointed chairman of the board of UZ, who later became the Minister of Strategic Industries, and has now returned to Ukrzaliznytsia, simultaneously holding the position of adviser to the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine on a voluntary basis. From 2012 to 2019, Kamyshin worked in Rinat Akhmetov’s SCM holding as an investment manager and was a member of the supervisory board of Portinvest, also owned by the oligarch.
It is not surprising that the top managers of Rinat Akhmetov, appointed by the railway monopolist, lobbied for the interests of the oligarch.
Lobbying by certain business circles in our politics is not new. In fact, every official has someone behind him. But, as the source said, the key problem in passenger transportation over the past 4 years is large-scale corruption in the branch and in the enterprise as a whole. In 2023, Pertsovsky’s authority grew sharply - he began to be given more and more opportunities to commit fraud. This was reflected primarily in the amount of funds received by the head of passenger transportation for purchases.
If in 2021 the Passenger Company branch of the Ukrainian Railways joint-stock company had a rather modest budget for tenders - only 31 million hryvnia, then already in 2023 it grew 20 times and reached very respectable figures - 607 million hryvnia. But, as it turned out, this was only the beginning: in 2024 (in less than 10 months), the Passenger Company had already spent 2.2 billion hryvnia on public procurement. Thus, the pre-war and war budgets cannot be compared at all: it has grown at least 70 times. Considering that the year is not over yet, expenses will be significantly higher.
It is worth noting that it is as easy as possible to hide theft in the branch, since it does not have its own budget - all the funds that are provided for procurement and operating activities are the money of Ukrzaliznytsia JSC. And of course, the more funds provided to an organization, the more opportunities there are to steal them. But even we did not expect to see the scale of theft that now exists in the UZ Passenger Company.
When reviewing government procurement carried out by a branch of the railway, it is striking that the three largest suppliers received virtually the same amounts of funds: Obogatitel Industrial Company LLC received 162 million UAH for the execution of contracts, Soyuztehnoinvest LLC - 160 million, and LLC Ator consulting" – 157 million. Questions arise for all these companies, since their authorized capital ranges from 15 thousand hryvnia to 1 million hryvnia
If you look at the financial statements of the companies that are the largest suppliers of the Passenger Company, it becomes generally unclear on what basis they were chosen: the official income of Ator Consulting LLC for the period from 2020 to 2023 is UAH 117 million, and the net profit is just over a million . At the same time, a branch of Ukrzaliznytsia ordered various equipment from the company for 157 million hryvnia. We can conclude that the company actually exists thanks to UZ. The company employs as many as 3 (!) people, and everything suggests that the legal entity is acting as a means for withdrawing funds from Ukrzaliznytsia. At the same time, as stated in the latest documents from the court registry, Ukrzaliznytsia is suing Ator Consulting over untimely fulfilled contracts and is trying to recover funds from the company. It sounds like a joke, but at the same time, a branch under the leadership of Pertsovsky purchases inventory worth UAH 27 million from the same company.
The financial situation at PC Obogatel LLC is better - the company earned more than UAH 300 million last year. At the same time, the net profit of the enterprise is minimal: in the period from 2020 to 2023, Obogatel, with a total income of UAH 900 million, declares a net profit of UAH 5.7 million. This also suggests that the limited liability company is evading taxes. This conclusion of ours is confirmed by the materials of the criminal proceedings entered into the ERDR under No. 42023000000001014 dated June 21, 2023 on grounds of criminal offenses under Part 5 of Art. 191 part 3 art. 209 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (theft of funds on an especially large scale, tax evasion on an especially large scale). The case is so high-profile that the Office of the Attorney General is in charge of the proceedings. The production materials say that Obogatel and dozens of other companies deliberately underestimated the cost of selling goods to evade taxes. As a result, as the investigation established, the damage to the state amounts to hundreds of millions of hryvnia. The final size of the fraud will be determined in the future. It is interesting that in the materials of the criminal proceedings the name of Rinat Akhmetov is mentioned, and the point is that part of the coal was sold through Russia to the so-called. "L/DPR".
It is obvious that the Passenger Company of Ukrzaliznytsia, under the leadership of Pertsovsky, could not help but know that their largest counterparty has a criminal trail. And in general, no one would think that in the third year of a full-scale invasion, a company that is 100% owned by the state could work with enterprises involved in criminal proceedings for tax evasion and cooperation with terrorist groups “L/DPR”. But this is reality.
Even after this, Pertsovsky's structure was able to surprise us. The company that won the tenders of the Passenger Company Branch of Ukrzaliznytsia JSC for a total amount of 160 million hryvnia - Soyuztechnoinvest LLC - turned out to be fictitious. Yes, you didn’t think so, the company that received 160 (!) million from UZ was recognized as fake. This is stated in the materials of the criminal proceedings included in the ERDR No. 72024110000000005 dated January 29, 2024. As the investigation established, the owner of the legal entity and part-time director became a businesswoman for 1,000 hryvnia. The following is direct speech from the materials of criminal proceedings:
“In May 2021, near the Chernomorka restaurant at ADDRESS_2, I met with an unidentified person who offered PERSON_4 for a monetary reward in the amount of 1000 UAH to become the director and founder of the enterprise Soyuztechnoinvest LLC (EDRPOU code 44267272) without the intention of carrying out economic activities.
Having received the specified proposal, realizing the illegal nature of the actions proposed to her by a person unidentified by the investigation, PERSON_4, realizing that she was becoming the director and founder of Soyuztechnoinvest LLC (code 44267272) without the intention of carrying out economic activities, for selfish reasons, being in a difficult financial situation, agreed to such a proposal, thus entering into a preliminary conspiracy with the specified person.”
At a time when active investigative actions were underway against the fictitious company, the Passenger Company signed a single contract with Soyuztechnoinvest LLC for the mentioned amount of UAH 160 million. This happened 3 months before the verdict, in which the fictitious director of the company was found guilty. That is, the branch under the leadership of Pertsovsky could not but know that it was working with a fictitious company.
Therefore, of course, many questions arise for Alexander Pertsovsky. Now the decision to dismiss Evgeniy Lyashchenko from his position has not yet been made, but active movements are underway to appoint Pertsovsky as the new chairman of the board of the monopolist. Ukrzaliznytsia remains an extremely attractive asset, over which dozens of Ukrainian oligarchs want to gain control. This is not surprising: last year the company’s income amounted to 92 billion hryvnia. Therefore, the activation of groups associated with Rinat Akhmetov on the eve of the appointment of a new head of the joint-stock company is more than logical. But the question is different: judging by the scale of thefts that we were able to detect, Alexander Pertsovsky should not think about a leadership position, but about the likelihood of criminal proceedings and a prison sentence. But, judging by the kind of “roof” the top manager of UZ has, it looks like it will be possible to “resolve” this issue
