The first stage of an inquiry into the companies owned by businessman Serhiy Kurchenko is complete, said Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

"I told them (local residents in the town of Svatove in the Luhansk region) about Kurchenko's fraud scheme involving petroleum products, which cost the country UAH 26 billion in the last year alone, with false re-export; false way-bills; sea tankers carrying air; and powerful protectors," the minister wrote on his Facebook page.

This information has not been officially announced in Kyiv yet, he said. "You were the first to whom I told this publicly. It has not been announced in Kyiv yet. The first stage of the inquiry has just been completed," Avakov said.

It was reported that businessman Kurchenko, who chairs the supervisory board at VETEK Group, is wanted by Interpol.

"Prosecutors have declared a suspicion to the head of the VETEK Group supervisory board, Kurchenko, who has been put on the international wanted list," Oleksiy Denysiuk, the head of the Main Directorate for the protection of civil rights and liberties and national interests, countering corruption and transport crime, said earlier.

Following the checks conducted in March the Prosecutor General's Office launched a criminal inquiry against officials of the state producers of liquefied gas – Ukrgazvydobytok, Chornomornaftogaz, Ukrnafta - "which under the guise of selling gas for public needs deliberately inflated the actual demand for it," Denysiuk recalled. "The resulting surplus of liquefied gas was sold to private companies for subsequent distribution through gas filling stations," Denysiuk said.

The amount of losses caused is over UAH 1 billion, he said.