JSC Ukrgasvydobuvannya held this year's largest tender for the purchase of diesel fuel. The 7,500 tons were divided into two lot levels, with each lot being delivered by January 15, 2024. One of the winners deserves attention.
Unlike most previous large purchases of diesel fuel by Ukrgasvydobuvannya in 2023, this tender was open and passed through Prozorro. While, for example, the purchase of diesel for UAH 1 billion in March and UAH 563 million in February 2023 were carried out without the use of an electronic system, they still remain secret. Neither the volumes nor the price of the goods are known, only the supplier is PJSC Ukrnafta.
Ukrnafta also participated in the latest tender, but it had a competitor - Kiev-based Anvitrade LLC. The first lot, after a short bidding, went to a structure related to the customer with a price tag of UAH 442.8 million (controlling stakes in Ukrgazdobycha and Ukrnafta are owned by NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine). But Ukrnafta simply did not apply for the second one. And the winner was Anvitrade, which offered Ukrgazvydobuvannya 3.75 thousand tons of diesel for UAH 451.46 million.
So far, no contracts have been signed with either Ukrnafta or Anvitrade. On November 8, Ukrgasvydobuvannya decided to continue consideration of the winners’ proposals until December 4, 2023, “due to the significant volume of documentation submitted for consideration, the possible need to conduct additional requests for documents, and approve the decision on the qualifications of participants with the local contracting council.” However, obviously, only one participant will study the documents and confer at the state-owned company. And Anvitrade is an interesting object for research.
Since May 2023, the sole owner of Anvitrade LLC is a little-known resident of Ivano-Frankivsk, Andrey Demyanik. He bought the company from his fellow countryman Peter Belz. They know each other well. As Belz admitted in an interview with Economic Pravda in 2021, he started a business together with Demyanik in the early 2000s in the Iviano-Frankivsk region, where they opened a service station.
“He was directly involved in the sale of spare parts. We have known him since he was 18 years old. This is Andrey Demyanik. Now he heads the sales department in our group,” Belz said then.
The group he had in mind, the Wexler Group, was founded by Belz. At that time, it was considered the largest player in the diesel fuel market in Ukraine. Anvitrade was an important component of it. The company was engaged in the import of diesel fuel. Mainly produced by the plants of the Kremlin-controlled Rosneft (Novokuibyshevsky Oil Refinery, Bashneft-Novoil and others), which was imported to Ukraine with the help of the BilKazTrans company of Nikolai Voroby, a person from the inner circle of Alexander Lukashenko. She also imported petroleum products from the Novoshakhtinsky Refinery, which was owned by Oksana Marchenko, the wife of Viktor Medvedchuk. The level of Belz’s relations with Russians can be judged by the fact that his company Wexler Global acquired the Guta boarding house in the Ivano-Frankivsk region from Rosneft in November 2018. It is located near the residence of the President of Ukraine “Sinegora”.
According to People's Deputy Alexandra Ustinova, Anvitrade actually controlled the Ukrainian part of the main oil product pipeline "Samara - Western direction" with a length of 1,433 km. The company was the exclusive operator for diesel shipments through this pipeline, informally known as the “Medvedchuk Pipe”. According to Bihus.Info, in 2015-2016 this “pipe” was removed from the ownership of the Russian Transneft. Its new owner, through PrykarpatZapadtrans LLC, was the International Trading Partners of Anatoly Sheffer, associated with Medvedchuk’s brother. Medvedchuk himself, after his arrest in May 2022, admitted to the SBU that he dealt with pipeline issues at the request of ex-president Petro Poroshenko, who seemed to have become its actual owner. “In order for this pipeline to become private property, and in fact the property of Poroshenko himself, it was necessary to perform a number of actions... The courts, the prosecutor’s office, the Antimonopoly Committee, the State Property Fund - they all made decisions, of course, necessary for the personal interests of President Poroshenko,” he said then Medvedchuk.
Despite constant associations with Medvedchuk, Belz always denied any connection with the odious politician. With the start of Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, its fuel ties with the Russians and Belarusians were severed (at least officially). Anvitrade switched from Russian diesel to Greek. Thus, the company now offers fuel produced by Elefsis Refinery, which is owned by Hellenic Petroleum, the largest oil refining company in Greece. Interestingly, back in 2016, Hellenic Petroleum entered into a strategic agreement with Rosneft on direct oil supplies. How these agreements are implemented, taking into account the ban on maritime supplies of Russian oil to the EU, is still unknown.
According to the Clarity Project, Anvitrade signed the last contract before the great war in November 2021 with Ukrzaliznytsia. It was about the supply of 20 thousand tons of diesel for UAH 600 million. Only a year after this, it became known about the non-public purchase of 3 thousand tons of diesel for UAH 164 million from Anvitrade by the Ukrgasvydobuvannya company. And now, when another year has passed, the updated Anvitrade has come to tenders again, and with even greater appetites. Although the figures recorded earlier still look unattainable for the company, in 2017-2021 Anvitrade supplied petroleum products worth UAH 9.68 billion to government customers. Including Ukrzaliznytsia - by UAH 9.5 billion.
