Ukraine president partner linked to firm that traded gas with Gazprom

A beneficiary of an offshore company that traded natural gas with Gazprom in October 2014 is Sergey Zaitsev, the deputy general director of the Roshen Corporation, which is controlled by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, as revealed on May 10 Ukrainian investigative journalist Dmytro Gnap. Zaitsev is a longtime business partner to Poroshenko who is registered to the same Kyiv address as many of Poroshenko’s other firms and partners. The firm in which he’s a beneficiary, Intraco Management Ltd, was reported by the liga.net news agency as having conducted a gas trade with a Gazprom subsidiary, Gazpromneft-Aero Sheremetyevo. The president’s connection to Intraco was also reported by the guardian.com news site.

Zenon Zawada: In recent months, corruption allegations frequiently surfaced against the president and his entourage, also undermining the new prime minister’s efforts to improve relations with the West in recent weeks. All these scandals have chiseled at public support for the president and his party. This scandal is particularly offensive since the president’s entourage would have been profiting from deals with Russia’s biggest state firm at a time when the two sides were engaged in an armed conflict.