The Interior Ministry and the Prosecutor's General Office (GPU) of Ukraine started a criminal investigation against the top managers of the state-owned gas and oil company Naftogaz who conspired with the private company Ostchem to steal Hr 5.7 billions The company is owned by oligarch Dmytro Firtash and lawmaker Serhiy Lyovochkin, according to Ukraine's Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Yatsenyuk announced the beginning of the investigation at a Cabinet of Ministers meeting on April 29.
“The oligarchs were feeding on Naftogaz like vampires for decades, stealing billions,” Yatsenyuk said.
The Interior Ministry and Prosecutor’s Office have asked the court to arrest 500 million cubic meters of gas that belongs to the companies owned by Firtash and Lyovochkin in order to compensate HR 4.3 billion that they’ve stolen from Ukraine, according to Yatsenyuk.
Firtash, a Ukrainian oligarch with a net worth of $270 million, as estimated in 2015 by Forbes Ukraine, has suffered much in the last year. In 2013, he was worth $3.3 billion. Now Firtash resides in Vienna. He was arrested there in March 2014 on the order of a U.S. court that charged him with bribing officials in India. He paid 125 million euros to be released on bail. A hearing on his extradiction to the U.S. will take place on April 30.
His alleged business partner Lyovochkin was head of the administration of former President Viktor Yanukovych. He quit the job during theEuroMaidan Revolution, weeks before Yanukovych was ousted. Today Lyovochkin holds a seat in parliament, elected with the Opposition Bloc, a successor of Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions.
