Yermak’s man on the supervisory board of “Centrenergo” agreed to the transfer of over 130 million to a laying company
The head of the Office of President Andriy Yermak, former advisor and former head of his cabinet, Andriy Gota, at the head of the supervisory board of Centrenergo, lost more than 130 million hryvnias from the budget, which were “drained” to the laying company for undelivered coal.
This is mentioned in the Bihus.Info story.
In September 2024, Centrenergo concluded an agreement with Teplosfera UA LLC for the supply of 33.5 thousand tons of coal for the Trypilska and Zmiivska TPPs. The agreement was concluded under a simplified procedure without an open tender, since it was about providing the TPP with coal for the heating season. The company was given UAH 132 million in advance, but it broke the schedule, delivered only 1.5 thousand tons and did not return the remainder of the unused advance. Centrenergo filed a lawsuit with the court, and the court ruled to recover UAH 127 million from the company (the debt itself, fines, interest, etc.).
However, journalists reported that during the consideration of the case, the judge revealed a number of circumstances that called into question the integrity of not only the supplier, but also of Centrenergo itself, and even the coal procurement system for the TPP as such. The judge outlined these circumstances in a separate ruling.
“In particular, he established that the advance payment was not mandatory – the contract provided for payment after delivery. The advance payment could only be given subject to guarantees from the supplier, but the supplier did not provide a bank guarantee, but simply a letter that did not affect anything and did not provide anything,” the story says.
In addition, in court, “Centrenergo” stated that it had concluded an agreement with a private company because state-owned producers allegedly did not have coal. However, after demanding additional explanations, the court found that “Teplosfera” purchased coal from state-owned producers. At the same time, the intermediary concluded agreements with producers after the contract with “Centrenergo”, after the letter of guarantee and even after part of the prepayment. That is, at the time of concluding the contract, “Centrenergo” did not have not only insurance for money, but also a guarantee of receiving coal in general.
Ultimately, having found that the company’s purchase price of coal from the mines was equal to the sale price at Centrenergo, the judge concluded that the lack of commercial logic could indicate the supplier’s desire not to fulfill the contract, but simply to appropriate the money from the advance. The judge qualified everything that was discovered as a systemic flaw in Centrenergo’s activities as a whole.
“This whole mess happened right under the nose of the supervisory board. Which, among other things, approves the company’s significant transactions. On the official website of “Centrenergo”, where the same anarchy flourishes as in the company itself, we could not find approval of the contract with “Teplosfera”. There, in the reporting for 2024, there is a “failure” for six months. But from the documents for previous months, we see that the supervisory board approved transactions for amounts tens of times smaller than this coal contract. And therefore, that purchase should have gone through their approval,” the investigators said.
They emphasized that since 2023, the supervisory board of Centrenergo will be headed by Andriy Gota.
“Gotha is considered Yermak’s man, because he was his advisor and headed his office as the head of the President’s Office,” Bihus.Info added.
As noted by People’s Deputy Yaroslav Zheleznyak, Gota held these positions in 2020 – 2022, immediately before his appointment to the supervisory board of Centrenergo.
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