Ukraine’s most scandalous industrial saga took another twist on New Year’s Eve as the country’s metallurgical jewel Mykolaiv Alumina Plant (MAP) again got a new boss.
In previous battles in the long-running war over control of the plant, another of MAP’s former directors had criminal charges filed against him, and the most recent director, Mykola Naboka, was reported to have been arrested.
The government sacked Naboka on Dec. 25, giving no clear reasons for his dismissal. Naboka was replaced with Mykhailo Stolyar, a long-serving manager at the factory.
Stolyar was not available for comment on the circumstances of Naboka’s dismissal and his own appointment. The Agency for the Management of State Corporate Rights, the government body in charge of appointing and dismissing top executives at the state-run factories, also declined to comment.
However, the STB television channel, quoting an anonymous source, reported Dec. 29 that Naboka had been arrested. Anatoly Sakhno, spokesman for Ukraine’s State Security Service (SBU), could neither confirm nor deny that report. The government gave its own version of events.
According to Industrial Policy Minister Serhy Hryschenko, Naboka ‘was not able to properly manage the plant.’ Hryschenko told Ukrainian News that Naboka was denied access by the SBU to secret documents that were necessary to manage the factory. The SBU had refused to grant Naboka access to the documents because he had failed to pass security checks, he said.
Naboka was appointed MAP’s director in June last year. Two weeks later, a group of parliament deputies asked the SBU to conduct an official inquiry into Naboka’s background, claiming there was ‘sufficient evidence’ that he had ties to organized crime.
Before coming to MAP, Naboka was employed by the Trans World Group (TWG), a Russian-controlled aluminum consortium, as the director of the Don coal processing plant in Kazakkhstan.
Gaining control of MAP is a long-term goal of TWG. MAP was a strategic link in the aluminum production chain in the Soviet era, processing bauxite for factories in Central Asia and Siberia. Control of MAP would allow TWG, which already has extensive holdings in the Russian aluminum industry, to complete the last link in its CIS aluminum production chain.
But TWG’s attempts to gain control of MAP have met bitter resistance in Ukraine.
TWG has been repeatedly accused in Russia and Kazakstan of the improper conduct of business, money laundering and siphoning money out of enterprises into its offshore accounts.
According to Oleksandr Ryabchenko, the head of parliament’s privatization committee, Naboka’s dismissal was directly connected with the failure of Valery Pustovoitenko, Ukraine’s previous prime minister, to hold on to his post. He said Pustovoitenko had been TWG’s most powerful ally in the previous government.
Meanwhile, the SBU announced on Dec.29 last year it had completed an investigation and filed criminal charges against Naboka’s predecessor, Vitaly Meshyn. Anatoly Sakhno, the SBU’s spokesman, told the Post that Meshyn has been charged with a number of financial crimes. In particular, Sakhno said, Meshyn is accused of opening a foreign bank account without the sanction of Ukraine’s National Bank. Some $3.5 million that appeared in Meshyn’s account since then had been used to buy stakes in state property sold by the government, he said.
Sakhno would not specify other charges against Meshyn, but said the SBU has also brought charges against Kateryna Boharchuk, MAP’s former financial director.
Meshyn was fired from the post of MAP director in June last year after the government blamed him for the plant’s poor economic performance. He was also accused by the authorities of setting up a web of intermediaries who were buying MAP’s alumina at dumping prices and reselling it to Russian aluminum plants at a 100 to 200 percent markup, without returning the extra profit to the plant. At the same time, MAP owed four months of back wages to its employees and millions of hryvnas in unpaid state taxes.
Meshyn refused to go quietly – Naboka was only able to take up his post at MAP after Meshyn was forcibly removed by police from his office at the plant.
MAP’s status as Europe’s largest alumina producer has been the cause of incessant battles for its control since the breakup of the Soviet Union.
Two Russian metal trading giants, TWG and Siberian Aluminum, have persistently attempted to gain control of the lucrative plant. Siberian Alumina (SA) has so far been the more successful of the two, having managed to gain control of the board of TK MAP, a company that represents plant employees and owns a 26.4 stake in the plant. Some 55 percent of the factory is held by the state, with the remainder in the hands of various private companies and individuals.
The Russian government also had its eyes on MAP – the factory appeared on a list of enterprises that Russia would accept as payment for Ukraine’s gas debts, said by Moscow to be in excess of $1 billion. The list, presented to the Ukrainian government last year, was compiled by the Russia’s gas giant Gazprom.
MAP produced 893,000 tons of alumina over the first 11 months of last year, 9.2 percent less than in the same period of 1998. In 1998, output at MAP reached an 18-year high. According to the plant’s latest production plans, MAP will increase its output to 1.2 million tons this year and 1.5 million tons by the year 2003.
According to a recently published government privatization plan, the sale of controlling stake in MAP later this year is expected to generate about Hr 190 million for state coffers.
