Naftogaz CEO Andriy Kobolev replaced with his ex-colleague Yuriy Vitrenko, one more concern for the IMF prospects

UKRAINE - In Brief 29 Apr 2021 by Dmytro Boyarchuk
We have another discouraging piece of news from our leadership. The Cabinet fired CEO of Naftogaz Andriy Kobolev, openly ignoring the independence of the supervisory board of the company. The Cabinet leveraged a legal trick to remove Kobolev. The head of the management board could be fired only with approval of independent supervisory board. That is what good corporate governance rules used to be. However, to overcome formalities the Cabinet terminated the authority of supervisory board members, dismissed Kobolev and then shortly returned the same members of the board to their positions. Thus, strictly speaking, no formal rules had been violated. A very similar technique was seen with removal of the head of the NBU Yakiv Smoly who "resigned by himself," mentioning political pressure (no formal rules violated). Yuriy Vitrenko, former executive director of Naftogaz and acting Minister of energy. was appointed to lead the energy company. Why was Kobolev replaced? Nominally he was fired for making losses with Naftogaz in 2020 and for the steady decline in natural gas extraction the company experienced. However, in reality it’s a continued cleaning of cadres appointed under previous leadership, we believe. The Head of the President's Office, Andriy Yermak, systemically reshuffles all top officials and replaces them with new people loyal to him personally. Yuriy Vitrenko, a former comrade of Andriy Kobolev, was apparently irritated to be in the shadow of the shining Kobolev when Naftogaz had a triumphant victory over Gazprom. The conflict eventually translated into exodus of Vitrenko from Naftogaz. Yuriy Vitrenko, an ambitious person, managed to get sympathy and strong suppo...

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