Ukraine blocking sale of Lukoil fuel retailer suspected of wrongdoing - Alekperov
MOSCOW. Jan 26 (Interfax) - The Ukrainian Antimonopoly Committee is blocking the sale of the Lukoil-Ukraine, which retails fuel for Russia's Lukoil , and via which the Ukrainian Security Service believes Lukoil has been financing terrorism and has been involved in money laundering.
"We've signed official documents, but the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine is blocking [the sale]," Lukoil President Vagit Alekperov said in an interview with the Vedomosti newspaper in Davos on Friday.
"We have a chemical plant in Ukraine which we stopped [operating] due to security issues, but people receive wages," he said.
"I consider that these actions [accusations against the company] are aimed at seizing our property in Ukraine. We are not being permitted to sell our retailer," he said.
"In the past years we had the most positive feedback from the government [of Ukraine]. We've been operating there for 20 years. We've asked [that they] present materials to us. We'll bring court action to defend the company's reputation, as the statement was made in public - today this is being commented on all over the world. We believe that this requires further investigation," Alekperov said.
He said that the company had already been effectively transferred to the buyer, and that he hoped the deal would still be cleared.
Advisor to the Ukrainian Security Service's head, Markiyan Lubkivsky, wrote on social networks recently that "investigators have found that in 2013 and 2014 top officials from Lukoil have arranged smuggling through sea terminals in Feodosia, Kherson, Izmail, Mykolaiv and Odesa and through the checkpoints on our western border and across the border with Belarus in contravention of customs control procedures, through the use of controlled economic entities ( Lukoil, Lukoil-Ukraine, Odessa oil refinery, the First Fuel Company, etc.) leading to the sale of over 2 million tonnes of petroleum products worth about $2 billion."
