Poroshenko orders Naftogaz top managers not to stop on three countries in recovering debt from Gazprom
Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has ordered that top managers of national joint-stock company Naftogaz Ukrainy do their best to ensure the recovery of $2.6 billion debt of Russia's Gazprom and the arrival of the money to Ukraine awarded by the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce.
"The process of the enforcement of recovery of $2.6 billion from Gazprom has been moved to practice. Today, the encumbrance of shares and other assets of Gazprom in European countries, in particular, Switzerland, the U.K. and the Netherlands was started. My clear order is that we must not stop on these three countries and do our best to ensure the arrival of awarded funds to Ukraine. We discussed this at a meeting with Naftogaz Ukrainy CEO Andriy Kobolev," Poroshenko wrote on his Facebook page on Wednesday.
He said that these should be assets and maybe, shares of Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 and the funds that have high liquidity that would ensure the quick enforcement of the awards.
"The second position is that the matter should also concern the assets, I do not exclude that including the shares of Nord Stream, Nord Stream 2 and cash that have high liquidity and will quickly ensure implementation of decisions," Poroshenko said.
According to the presidential press service, Kobolev at a meeting with Poroshenko said that, despite the fact that Gazprom will try to appeal the decision of the Stockholm arbitration in the court of Sweden, this does not stop the already made decision.
"It remains in force and, accordingly, we will fulfill it," he said.
"The only reason the Russian monopolist has found to contest is that there is some kind of linguistic expertise they are going to present as evidence. We all remember the expertise on Almaz-Antey type matters - that they did not shoot down the plane, and other things. It seems to me that here Russians play some kind of a PR game," the head of Naftogaz said.
The president of Ukraine, in turn, stressed that this situation demonstrates Russia's unreliability as a gas supplier to Europe.
