Ukrainian state-owned power company Centrenergo will not be privatized this year after bidders failed to provide necessary documentation, Vitalii Trubarov, acting head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, wrote on Facebook on Dec. 11.
Two firms — Ukrdoninvest LLC and the Unitary Enterprise Neftebitumen Plant — were scheduled to take part in a Dec. 13 tender on the ProZorro procurement platform to privatize the power company.
“(Both) participants in the competition, Ukrdoninvest LLC and the industrial Unitary Enterprise Neftebitumen Plant, are denied participation, because the submitted documentation does not meet the requirements of legislation,” wrote Trubarov.
In particular, the companies could not provide documentation on their ownership, Trubarov added. Meanwhile, according to information provided by the police, the owner of one of the companies has business ties with Russia.
Ukrdoninvest LLC is an investment fund owned by businessman Vitaliy Korpachev and linked to Ihor Kononenko, a businessman and lawmaker from the 138-member Petro Poroshenko Bloc. Unitary Enterprise Neftebitumen Plant is a Belarusan bitumen producer.
According to the official website of Interservice Novopolotskoe LLC, the parent company of the Neftebitumen Plant, the Belarusan unitary enterprise focuses on importing petroleum products from Russia.
Centrenergo is a state energy company that owns three thermal power plants — Trypilska, Vuglegirska, and Zmiivska — and the repair service Remenergo. Centrenergo powers Kyiv, Kharkiv and Donetsk oblasts, and accounted for around 14 percent of the total electricity produced in Ukraine in 2017, according to the company’s website.
The company was listed for privatization on Oct. 3, when the government issued a decree establishing tender procedures for the sale. Bidding in the Dec. 13 tender was started on Oct. 26, but the auction would only be held if there were more than two contenders. The starting price was set at Hr 5.9 billion ($212.8 million).
Initially, five companies expressed interest in taking part in the tender, but only Ukrdoninvest LLC and the Neftebitumen Plant paid the entrance fee.
“The fact that the tender to privatize Centrenergo did not come through shows that more thoughtful preparations must take place,” wrote Oleksandr Saenko, minister of the Cabinet of Ministers, on his Facebook page.
Korpachev, owner of Ukrdoninvest LLC, will sue the State Property Fund of Ukraine for “the illegal denial” of participation in the tender, the businessman told the Ekonomichna Pravda site on Dec. 13.
