The company of the richest Ukrainian citizen Rinat Akhmetov became the owner of two more power companies.
The antimonopoly committee at a meeting on April 25 issued a permit to DTEK Neftegaz LLC for the purchase of shares of Kyivoblenergo and Odessaoblenergo in VS Energy in the amount that provides control over more than 50% of both enterprises.
Voting for this decision was a separate one – by a majority of the members of the AMCU present at the meeting. Their names will be known after the Committee’s response to the request.
With this acquisition, the Rinat Akhmetov group substantially exceeded the threshold of 35% in the electricity supply market, which is a structural sign of a monopoly in the market.
On the eve of the vote, Andrei Gerus, who deals with antitrust issues in Volodymyr Zelensky’s team, informed that the de facto network operator (regional power company) will have a decisive influence on the economic activities of the relevant electricity suppliers in the regions established on the basis of energy sales divisions of regional power companies .
The People’s Deputy Victoria Voitsytska publicly appealed to the National Security Council of Ukraine to consider the situation with the “energy hypermonopoly of Akhmetov”.
Now the Rinat Akhmetov group controls more than 80% of thermal power generation, more than 80% of power coal production but does not import cheap electricity from Ukraine into Ukraine.
The issue of concentration of the regional power company was submitted to the AMCU meeting on April 18, three days before the loss of Petro Poroshenko in the presidential election. Then the decision was postponed for a week.
According to Economic Pravda, in early January 2019, DTEK announced its intention to concentrate 68.2949% of OdesaOblenergo shares and 93.9978% of Kievoblenergo shares owned by the VS Energy group.
In the same month, DTEK Neftegaz became the owner of 24.99% of the shares of Kyivoblenergo and 16.773013% of Odessaoblenergo.
The real owners of VS Energy are the Russians Evgeny Giner, Mikhail Voevodin and Alexander Babakov.
After closing this deal, DTEK plans to absorb the remaining 5 power companies, which currently remain in Russian ownership. Thus, Khersonoblenergo, Kirovogradoblenergo, Zhytomyroblenergo, Chernovtsoblenergo, Rivneoblenergo will come under the control of Akhmetov.
Since 2014, the companies of the Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov have acquired assets worth about 22 billion hryvnias.