Last Wednesday saw a heated discussion within the Ukrainian political- energy elite about the mutual offsets by which the natural gas debts of the Dniproenerho Electricity Company had been settled.
This time the peace was disturbed by Naftohaz Ukrayiny (Oil & Gas of Ukraine). Its acting chairman Ihor Didenko, said that he considers the financial operations in question as totally market-oriented and within the limits of Ukrainian law. As UNIAN reports, he is convinced that the mutual offset agreement (worth UAH 650 million — Author) could not have caused damage to the state, and moreover made it possible to avoid fining Russia’s Gazprom.
Even before the May holidays, Deputy Premier Yuliya Tymoshenko characterized such a situation as criminal. Interfax-Ukraine reports her as saying, “The criminal actions that have taken place today at the level of Minenerho [Ministry of Energy] and the Naftohaz Ukrayiny National Joint Stock Company officials will have a prolonged effect on the state.”
Deputy Premier Yuri Yekhanurov also rated the Cabinet’s draft document, canceling the mentioned mutual offsets, as “the most scandalous.” According to him, Minenerho, having permitted this transaction, broke the law. Mr. Yekhanurov said that one of the deputy ministers would be severely punished. However, as the agency reports, Minister of Fuel and Energy Serhiy Tulub regards cancellation unlikely.
Last Wednesday, the political big guns came into play. However, one got an impression that Viktor Medvedchuk, the First Deputy Chairman of Verkhovna Rada and SDPU(o) leader, in his interview with Nasha hazeta — Plus took a defensive, rather than offensive stand, which is more customary for him. He maintained that his parliamentary faction or his party “have never put forward a claim against anyone, including the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister, that Ms. Tymoshenko should not hold her post.” He even alleviated the negative estimate given to Ms. Tymoshenko by the President, indicating, that the post was given “not directly to Ms. Tymoshenko, but to the state of affairs in the energy sector, which is utterly unsatisfactory.” At the same time, Mr. Medvedchuk denied rumors about the connection of his party’s leadership or commercial structures that had founded with the privatization of energy facilities.
Although all this seems to have no immediate relation to the subject of the discussion, The Day’s experts say it could mean a try to secure one’s own position by means of personnel regrouping in the Court Holding Investment Pool which controls, according to Interfax-Ukraine, eight oblast energy supply companies that participated in the scandalous mutual offset.
Simultaneously, Ms. Tymoshenko gave signs of softening her position. Her press service has disseminated a statement which denies the contention of the Naftohaz leadership concerning the Deputy Premier’s bias against toward the company, but confirms the assertion of damage to the state based on findings by the Cabinet’s leading specialists, and insinuates that “oligarchic groups” are trying to impede reforms in the energy market and conceal the private interests of financial- and-political clans enriching themselves at the expense of the Ukrainian energy market.
However, one of The Day’s experts expressed quite a contrary view. In his words, while Ms. Tymoshenko “is putting things straight in the energy market, the companies that detached from the Unified Energy Resources of Ukraine (Mr. Didenko mentioned the Bosfor Company), are getting various preferences and growing fat. Then, as the energy lady is declared a victim of anti-reform forces, the funds will be used for election technologies.”
P.S. As became known, Yuliya Tymoshenko is running for People’s Deputy of Ukraine in a Kirovohrad oblast constituency.
