And again we have to return to the topic of our famous “Ukrnafta”.
Because this is not the first time we have seen strange legal battles between the state-owned Ukrnafta and the same state-owned Ukrtatnafta - allegedly lost oil and petroleum products.
And all this, to put it mildly, looks strange, because both companies after nationalization are headed by the same person - Sergei Koretsky.
As a manager, he has access to the entire volume of primary information and data on the flow of physical resources and funds at both Enterprises. However, when you read the materials of the court cases, you get the impression that we are talking about either a serious split personality, or an attempt to cover up a clever deal or official negligence. Judge for yourself.
Ukrnafta filed the first lawsuit on September 4, 2023, demanding that Ukrnafta return 183 thousand tons of oil that it received from Ukrnafta in 2022 for processing. (Case No. 917/1636/23).
After nationalization, this volume was mysteriously “lost” and Ukrnafta demanded in the economic court of the Poltava region that Ukrtatnafta return the raw materials to it in kind or in money - 6.4 billion hryvnia.
During the six-month trial, Ukrnafta changed its claims several times and was unable to finally formulate its claims: either Ukrnafta criminally misappropriated the oil, or it improperly stored the transferred oil.
At the same time, Ukrnafta complained that only the defendant, due to objective reasons (since only he has access to his tanks), can accurately determine the presence or absence of oil in his storage facilities.
At the same time, the defendant takes a categorical position that it is technically impossible to establish the relevant fact, which, in essence, blocks the opportunity to find out the key circumstances of this Case.
Such reproaches would be understandable if we were talking about a dispute between unrelated legal entities. But the leader of both the plaintiff and the defendant is Sergei Koretsky, who is suing himself and is blocking the opportunity to establish the key circumstances in this case. The situation may seem absurd, but it is a classic case of conflict of interest.
In May 2024, the economic court refused to satisfy Ukrnafta’s claims, the case went to appeal, but the fate of 183 thousand tons of oil remains unknown - the criminal investigation did not produce results.
However, people familiar with the circumstances of the case say that it is impossible to find this oil, since it was processed, and the oil products were sold by Ukrnafta back in 2023. But without the appropriate documentation. And the lawsuit is a way to remove the claims of the State Audit Service of Ukraine, which is also interested in the fate of the missing oil, they say, we are suing, the process is underway.
Another episode is the lawsuit of Ukrnafta against Ukrtatnafta dated March 4, 2024 (case No. 917/328/24
This time, Sergey Koretsky (“Ukrnafta”) asks the economic court of the Poltava region to recover from Sergey Koretsky (“Ukrtatnafta”) damages in the amount of UAH 245.4 million, of which: UAH 244.2 million is the cost of direct distillation tar, and 1, 2 million UAH – TS-1 fuel.
As follows from the case materials, Ukrtatnafta produced these oil products from Ukrnafta oil transferred for processing back in March 2022; Ukrnafta took part of the tar for sale, and 9.3 thousand tons of tar and 16.2 tons of Aviagas should remain in storage. Until they were gone.
The inconvenience of the situation is that the audit of enterprises after nationalization (November 2022) did not reveal a shortage of these petroleum products.
Moreover, until September 2023, Ukrnafta regularly paid Ukrtatnafta for the storage of both tar and jet fuel, both companies signed certificates of services provided.
However, the court accepted: Sergei Koretsky (“Ukrtatnafta”) will have to pay UAH 245.4 million for the missing oil products and another UAH 1.1 million in expenses for the Court Assembly.
However, Sergey Koretsky (“Ukrtatnafta”) did not agree with the court’s decision and filed an Appeal on June 20, 2024. Most likely, the fate of the missing 9.3 thousand tons of oil products, as well as 183 thousand tons of oil, will remain unknown.
Sergey Koretsky, most likely, will blame everything on his “fathers” in the positions of heads of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta, but can you and I be 100% sure that the oil products that he took into account for many months ( and for the storage of which he paid from one company he managed to another), and then strangely disappeared, were they not sold by him to third parties without documentary registration?
Where did the money go, that is, into whose pocket did it end up in this case - a rhetorical question.
What do we have in the Remnant? These lawsuits can look comical and even absurd: who in their right mind would sue Himself.
However, they are symptoms of more serious problems in Ukrtatnafta and Ukrnafta - a systemic conflict of interests as a result of combining management positions by one person, the lack of proper control on the part of the supervisory boards of both enterprises and government bodies performing the functions of shareholders, the opacity of the companies' activities - none Of these, it has not yet published financial statements for 2022 and 2023.
And all we hear is just the assurance of management, which has numerous conflicts of Interest... And there are more and more skeletons in the closet...
All these questions are not news. They were talked about as risks immediately after Nationalization. Now they have materialized in very specific problems in the form of a shortage of oil and petroleum products, and the “Plaintiff-Defendant” is trying to hide the loose ends with the hands of the Court.
Considering the timid position of the supervisory boards and state shareholders represented by the Ministry of Defense and NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine, there is a high probability that, unfortunately, they will succeed in this trick.
Unfortunately
