Izvestia: Ukrainian businessman linked to murky Russian-Ukrainian gas venture

MOSCOW (AP) - Two Ukrainian businessmen are among the main beneficiaries of a secretive Russian-Ukrainian natural gas venture thrust into the spotlight during a New Year's price dispute that briefly cut gas supplies to Ukraine and Europe, a Russian newspaper reported Wednesday.

The daily Izvestia, citing documents it said were from auditing company PriceWaterhouseCoopers, said Kyiv basketball club owner Dmytro Firtash and Ivan Fursin, owner of a Ukrainian bank, owned 90 percent and 10 percent, respectively, of a company called Centragas Holding AG.

In turn, it said, Centragas owns half of RosUkrEnergo, which is central to a deal that eased the impact of a drastic hike in gas prices proposed for Ukraine by Russia and its state-controlled gas monopoly, OAO Gazprom. The other half of RosUkrEnergo is owned by Gazprom.

The complicated deal - and the murky ownership structure of RosUkrEnergo in particular - prompted wide criticism of Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's government, even as it helped settle a bitter price dispute that caused a temporary drop in supplies to Europe when Russia turned off the taps to Ukraine.

Izvestia reported that Firtash is a representative of a company called EuralTransGas, registered in Budapest, Hungary, where it said he lives most of the time, and that he was on friendly terms with a former top aide to Yushchenko, Oleksandr Tretyakov.

Gazprom acquired a majority stake in Izvestia last year.

Fursin, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament last year, is the owner of a bank in the Black Sea city of Odessa and a film studio, according to the newspaper. It also said Fursin is president of a branch of Highrock Holdings Ltd., a company it said is owned by Semyon Mogilevich, a Ukrainian-born Russian citizen and reputed organized crime figure who is wanted by the FBI and whose name has been linked with RosUkrEnergo in media reports.

A RosUkrEnergo representative said earlier this year that the company had no connection with Mogilevich.

Efforts to contact both Firtash and Fursin were unsuccessful. A woman who answered the phone at the Kyiv basketball club refused to comment, and Fursin could not be immediately located.

Gazprom initially demanded Ukraine pay $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas, more than a fourfold increase. The face-saving deal reached in early January called for RosUkrEnergo to buy Russian gas at that price and sell Ukraine a mix of Russian and Central Asian gas at $95.

Questions have since been raised over whether the agreement will prove sustainable, and the secrecy surrounding RosUkrEnergo also undermined Russian claims that the agreement marked a shift to transparency after years of opaque gas trade practices.

Apr 26 2006