Businessman Ihor Kolomoisky, who is under arrest, is trying to get the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) to investigate the transfer of shares of PJSC Ukrnafta and PJSC Ukrtatnafta owned by private owners to the state and claims that his arrest is an attempt by the state's top leadership to prevent the return of assets.

"They also took away my shares of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta, and they put me behind bars to limit my ability to appeal the seizure of assets," the businessman said in an interview with UNIAN, of which he was a co-owner for a long time.

Kolomoisky points out that at the end of September 2024, he sent an appeal to the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), in which he disclosed in sufficient detail the circumstances under which, in the summer of 2022, he allegedly received from then Deputy Head of the President's Office Rostyslav Shurma an offer to "voluntarily" renounce the shares of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta.

"According to Shurma, it looked like an offer from the president and head of the Office Andriy Yermak, which I allegedly could not refuse: shares of Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta in exchange for settlement agreements on lawsuits filed by PrivatBank against me, including those cases that are being considered in international courts," the former owner of PrivatBank claims, who the nationalized bank is suing in courts in several countries for causing multi-billion dollar losses.

Kolomoisky also claims that at the beginning of these negotiations, his Ukrainian citizenship allegedly became the subject of blackmail, and after refusing to voluntarily transfer the shares, the president secretly deprived the businessman of citizenship.

According to the former owner of Ukrnafta, the decision of the Supreme Commander-in-Chief's Headquarters to transfer the rights of private owners to the state is illegal, since according to the law on the transfer, forced alienation or seizure of property under the legal regime of martial law or a state of emergency, the Headquarters is not authorized to make such decisions.

Kolomoisky noted that the real reasons for depriving 13,000 shareholders, including 12,000 individuals, of Ukrnafta shares were disclosed in detail by him in a message to NABU.

Kolomoisky claims that there was no objective need to transfer all the shares of Ukrnafta minority shareholders to the state, since most of the shares belonged to Naftogaz Ukrainy, whose representative headed the supervisory board, and the state was properly represented in the company's management bodies, had control over it and was able to carry out any management decision necessary for the military.

The businessman specified that he personally directly owned 50 shares of Ukrnafta, he owned another 13% indirectly, and his partners owned about 28% of the shares.

Ukrnafta and Shurma did not comment on this information from Kolomoisky.