The Vienna-based Ostchem Holding has hit back at allegations of embezzlement by Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, calling the accusations “wrong, at the very least.”
Avakov had accused the company, owned by multimillionaire Dmytro Firtash, of stealing nearly $100 million from the state in a statement released on April 2. Company officials of the holding’s four fertilizer producers – Azot, Rinezaot, Concern Stirol and the Severodonetsk association Azot – were said to be involved in the embezzlement scheme, according to Avakov’s statement.
A criminal case had been opened on charges of large-scale embezzlement and was on its way to the prosecutor general, Avakov said. Ostchem released a statement on April 3 denying the allegations, arguing that company officials could not have committed the crimes of which they are accused.
The four companies facing the accusations “are not managers of (state) budgetary funds, so they cannot dispose of them, much less ‘plunder’ them,” the statement said. The company also lashed out at the government, noting that “the debts owed by state-owned companies to Ostchem far exceed the debts owed by Ostchem factories to the government.
In particular, the state-owned Odesa Port Plant still owes Ostchem more than Hr 5 billion.
Nevertheless, Ostchem has not taken any measures to collect these debts, considering the financial and economic situation of the state.”
“We believe that the current disagreements between economic entities with different forms of ownership should not be the basis for public accusations against employees of Ostchem, and more importantly, only the judiciary of Ukraine has such a right,” the statement concluded.
Firtash, who was a backer of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych and has close ties to many of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s allies, is currently in Vienna awaiting an extradition hearing on April 30.
He was arrested there a year ago on a warrant from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. He faces criminal indictment in a U.S. federal court on charges that he and five other businessmen allegedly conspired to give an $18.5 million bribe to an Indian politician in exchange for a license to develop oil fields in India. Firtash has denied the accusations and described the case against him as political.
Kyiv Post staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected].
