Billionaire Igor Kolomoisky's ousted ally at 100 percent state-owned oil pipeline operator Ukrtransnafta still runs the company.
Oleksandr Lazorko says he has yet to receive documented notification
following a March 19 vote by the pipeline operator’s supervisory board
to remove him as acting chief executive officer, according to a letter
he wrote to the chairman of Ukrtransnafta’s parent company, 100 percent
state-owned Naftogaz Ukraine CEO Andriy Kobolyev.
Member of
parliament Serhiy Leshchenko posted the letter as well as other
correspondence between the ousted CEO, his first deputy and Kobolyev on
his Facebook page on March 30-31.
The challenge means that the
standoff between Kolomoisky and the government for control of the oil
pipeline operator hasn’t been resolved.
The former Dnipropetrovsk
governor was accused of sending armed men in military fatigues into the
offices of Ukrtransnafta on the day his ally was sacked. The same
occurred at the offices of state-owned oil producer and retailer
Ukrnafta on March 22 where Kolomoisky controls a 42 percent stake.
Parliament
had passed a bill on March 19 that lowers the number of shareholders
required to be present for a vote at a meeting. Before, Kolomoisky’s
so-called Privat Group had been able to block voting, such as on the
disbursement of dividends and management changes.
The moves
prompted President Petro Poroshenko to intervene and for the police to
secure the Ukrtransnafta building on March 20 and culminated in
Kolomoisky’s resignation as governor of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. The two
publicly said they made peace during a pro-government rally in
Dnipropetrovsk on March 28.
Lazroko instead went on sick leave
the day after being ousted and subsequently requested a 14-day vacation
on March 30 that he revoked the next day, according to the letters that
lawmaker Leshchenko posted on Facebook.
Naftogaz spokesperson
Aliona Osmolovska confirmed that the exchange of correspondence had
taken place in a comment provided to the Kyiv Post by phone.
In a
letter dated March 31, Lazorko requests that Kobolyev cancel his
vacation notice from the previous day because he “doesn’t have documents
regarding my removal.” The letter was in response to Kobolyev’s
acknowledgement in writing of having received and approved a vacation
request from Lazorko as being the “ousted acting CEO” of Ukrtransnafta.
Lazorko
went on sick leave starting on March 20, the day after the supervisory
board removed him from office. He appointed first deputy company head
and chief accountant Nataliya Parakhonyak as acting CEO in his absence,
according to a company order he signed on March 19.
Lazorko and
Parakhonyak had both worked together at two western Ukrainian oil
refineries – Naftokhimik Prykarpattya and Halychyna – that were
controlled by Kolomoisky’s so-called Privat Group, according to
Leshchenko, Dzerkalo Tyzhnia newspaper as well as other Ukrainian media
reports.
According to Ukraine’s labor law, employees cannot be
dismissed if they are either on sick leave or vacation. The
Ukrtransnafta website still lists Lazorko and Parakhonyak as CEO and
first deputy head, respectively.
Parakhonyak, moreover, on March
26 filed a claim with a Kyiv economic court to annul the appointment of
two supervisory board members at a general shareholders’ meeting that
had taken place two weeks earlier. In the claim, Parakhonyak says her
superior’s removal isn’t valid because the vote to appoint the two
supervisory board members wasn’t conducted in accordance with
legislation.
Thus, the supervisory board lacked a quorum on March
19 to sack Lazorko because two members didn’t have the right to vote
that day, according to the petition to sue submitted by Parakhonyak.
Ukrtransnafta
manages oil transportation from the east to the west of the country,
and from the north to the south, according to Nataliia Slobodian, energy
policy expert at the International Centre for Policy Studies in
Ukraine.
“In addition, the company runs the full oil production
cycle: production-maintenance-transportation. At the same time, Ukrnafta
has a strong productive capacity, a wide network of petrol stations and
is important for the Kremenchuk oil refinery. Thus the importance of
UkrTransNafta and Ukrnafta for the Ukrainian economy and energy complex
is beyond doubt,” she wrote in an essay published on the policy center’s
website on March 24.
Kyiv Post editor-at-large Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected]
