A local court in Kyiv ordered to arrest assets and land of the Odessa Oil Refinery, the Interior Ministry said on April 22. The freeze comes in the wake of the police investigation into fraudulent schemes related to oil and gasoline import and trade, allegedly committed by a group of companies affiliated with Ukraine’s youngest billionaire Serhiy Kurchenko.
The police claim that Kurchenko’s
schemes allowed his companies to have an illegal turnover of Hr 36
million (about $3.1 million) in 2011-2013.
The freeze is effective as of April 24.
Odessa oil refinery is one of the
biggest in this industry in Ukraine. It has the capacity to refine
2.8 million tonnes of oil per year. It was bought by Kurchenko’s
VETEK group of companies from Russia’s Lukoil in July 2013. In
December of 2013 the refinery was used as collateral for two loans
issued by Russian state VTB Bank worth up to $370 million. The
interior ministry alleged that the loans were actually a fraudulent
scheme for transferring ownership of the refinery out of reach of
Ukraine’s authorities.
The Interior Ministry alleged that
Kurchenko’s companies imported gasoline to Ukraine under the pretext
of re-export using false documents, which allowed them to evade taxes
on a massive scale. The gas was then sold in Ukraine.
