Twenty regional gas network companies – or oblgazes – belonging to oligarch Dmytro Firtash are under investigation by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU), its chairman Yuriy Terentyev wrote on Facebook on April 11.
Terentyev said oblgazes in Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Lviv and other regions were being probed.
The news comes only a month after the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Public Utilities, or NERC, launched a probe into suspected overcharging of private consumers. The probe was requested by the government at the end of December.
According to Naftogaz, the overcharging amounted to 1-1.5 percent in October 2018, before the numbers jumped to 5-10 percent in December and January 2019.
The regional gas supply companies were found guilty of altering coefficients in their price formulas since October 2018 in order to swell gas supply volumes and therefore prices.
They were fined Hr 850,000 ($31,500) each for breaking pricing regulations – a miniscule sum in comparison to the money stolen from people, according to state-owned Naftogaz’s statement on their Facebook page on April 12.
The state-owned gas monopoly is asking private consumers to report any irregularities in their gas bills and published a manual to help them detect anything suspicious.
Terentyev said the AMCU investigation was launched due to suspicions of the abuse of the “natural gas distribution monopoly” for overpricing gas supplies for private consumers.
Both the AMCU and the NERC are working together on these cases.
Galyna Tsap – spokeswoman of Ivano-Frankivskgaz – told the Kyiv Post on March 26 that the charges against the oblgazes were “politically motivated” and not backed by evidence.
Seventy percent of all Ukrainian regional gas distribution companies are owned by Firtash, who is in exile in Austria and fighting extradition to the United States on corruption charges.
He denies the charges made against him.
