Gazprom’s losses from sale of gas to Firtash estimated at $2 billion

In 2012 and 2013, Gazprom didn’t receive about $2 billion of additional revenue due to sale of natural gas at low prices to companies of Ukrainian businessman Dmitry Firtash (№14 in the ranking of billionaires of Ukrainian Forbes, the state is $673 million), the Reuters reports.

Firtash together with Gazprom owned Rosukrenergo, which in the period of 2004-2009 bought gas from the Russian holding company as an intermediary and resold it to Naftogaz Ukrainy. In 2007, the company reported that it sold gas to the amount of $10 billion and made the net profit of $795 million. Rosukrenergo was excluded from the schemes of the Russian gas supplies to the Ukraine in 2009, when Yulia Tymoshenko, who was then the Prime Minister of the Ukraine, achieved the signing of a contract on the direct supplies between Naftogaz and Gazprom. And in 2010, Dmitry Firtash supported Viktor Yanukovych during the presidential elections in the Ukraine.

With the advent of Yanukovych to power in the Ukraine, partnership of Firtash with Russian institutions continued - Gazprombank began to lend companies of the Ukrainian billionaire, the Reuters writes. In particular, in summer of 2010, Gazprombank opened a credit line to the amount of $815 million to Ostchem Investments, which was registered by Firtash in Cyprus a month earlier, the agency writes with reference to the available documents.