The State Auditing Service of Ukraine at the behest of Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman on Monday, August 7 will start an audit of financial and economic operations of Ukrzaliznytsia, Ukrainian Infrastructure Minister Volodymyr Omelyan wrote on his Facebook page.

"But we don't have time. We can't wait for the results of the audit, which will only be complete in September-October. We already have enough to bring the manipulators and their willing accomplices to justice," he said.

He also accused Board Chairman Wojciech Balczun of manipulations with the financial report of the company for H1 2017. He said that net profit of UAH 0.12 billion in January-June 2017 is linked to the effect of the exchange rate difference of UAH 1.23 billion, while net loss of UAH 3.79 billion in January-June 2016 was the exchange rate loss of UAH 1.4 billion.

The minister said that a decrease in 2017 of depreciation costs was due to the increase of the fixed assets' periods of operation (artificially lengthening the period of depreciation), bringing the value of certain fixed assets to zero - UAH 1.72 billion. A transfer of capital repairs of the fixed assets from the "cost" category to the "capital investment" category added UAH 0.47 billion.

Omelyan said that this analysis is confirmed by the EBITDA indicators and the EBITDA profitability. Indeed, the EBITDA for the first half of 2017 came out to UAH 9.1 billion, which is UAH 1.1 billion (11%) smaller than the value from the analogous 2016 period.

He said that some production indicators worsened.