opten_cegtort_eural
For obscure reasons, instead of re-exporting Turkmenian gas to Ukraine independently, Gazprom ceded its gas exporting rights to a company called EuralTransGas (ETG). The company had been registered in the Hungarian village of Csabdi by Zeev Gordon, Mogilevich’s attorney, with András Knopp, former head of Gazprom’s Hungarian office, as CEO. Knopp is known to have been at least closely acquainted with Mogilevich (in the early 2000s, the German investigators of the Solntsevskaya gang’s money laundering activities came across Knopp’s notes, which included Mogilevich’s phone number in Knopp’s handwriting). As of today, Knopp is a defendant in the Indian corruption case along with Firtash.
In 2003 ETG’s turnover amounted to no less than $2 billion. The financial reports for the following two years were not released.
ETG received 227 million rubles in loans from Gazprom bank and Vnesheconombank, which was declared at the company’s website, now unavailable (a copy has survived). It also stated that a 25-percent stake in the company belonged to Hungarian company DEG (its full name is D.E.G Handels- und Unternehmensberatungsgesellschaft m.b.H).
From the present deed of foundation of ETG from the Hungarian business register follows that D.E.G was located at the same address as Dmytro Firtash’s current company, Group DF International: 12/2/9 Löwelstr., Vienna.
Hermitage Capital Management told “The Moscow Times” on 16 June 2005 (as recalled here by Radio Free Europe) that Gazprom is losing out on $478 million in annual revenues from the Eural Trans Gas and RosUkrEnergo deals [Rosukrenergo replace ETG] and that this money is going to unknown beneficiaries participating in RosUkrEnergo via Raiffeisen Investment. At that time Hermitage Capital was minor shareholder of Gazprom.
See more, on Firtash, Mogilevich and Rosukrenergo.
See also Spanish Guardia Civil’s report mentioning the Itera company, existed before ETG and involved in similar schemes (from the page 130).
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