The temporary management of SE "Odesa Port" is increasing the company’s losses

The temporary management of SE "Odesa Port" is increasing the company’s losses

The leadership of the "Odesa Commercial Sea Port", temporarily and illegally appointed almost six months ago, continues to thoughtlessly bankrupt the enterprise, pursuing a non-market tariff policy for its services to benefit the personal interests of Krykliy’s temporary appointees. 

Decisions regarding tariff manipulation are made by Acting Director Oleksandr Harmash, with signatures from a certain Shvets and the head of the port fleet Serhiy Bakalo.

Earlier, the Odesa port was similarly attempted to be bankrupted by Ihor Tkachuk, who headed the state enterprise until October 2019. As a result of Tkachuk’s actions, the enterprise incurred a loss of 180 million hryvnias. After the dismissal of the ineffective manager, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Security Service of Ukraine, and other law enforcement agencies began investigating numerous violations in the port. Due to this, many foreign firms refused to cooperate with the state enterprise. 

Oleksiy Myaskovskyi, who replaced Tkachuk, was able to normalize the situation in a short period, eliminating corruption schemes and unjustifiably low tariffs. By the end of 2020, the Odesa port under his leadership showed a profit of 66 million hryvnias. However, after such success, Myaskovsky was relieved from his position through a non-transparent and illegal procedure by now ex-Minister of Infrastructure Vladyslav Krykliy. Allegedly only for the duration of an inspection, which, however, has been ongoing for almost six months. 

Instead of Myaskovskyi, who had achieved profitability for the enterprise, Krykliy appointed Oleksandr Harmash, with a new deputy director of OMTP for security, Denys Lutyi, assigned to assist him, who arrives at his government job in a car worth $300,000. Lutyi’s task was to reinstate the so-called "tugboat" schemes in the Odesa port, which resulted in revenue losses for the port. Lutyi is working on this task together with the deputy head of the AMPU and former SSU employee Oleksiy Koshyn. 

Such actions by the temporary leadership could not but affect the financial indicators of the Odesa port. In the first six months of this year, the enterprise incurred a loss of 9 million hryvnias. Although, for the same period in 2020, under the illegally dismissed Myaskovskyi, it had about 30 million hryvnias of profit.

Recently, law enforcement officers once again conducted searches at the enterprise. Thus, the inconsistent policy and thoughtless decisions of the temporary leadership of the Odesa port are once again threatening the port’s profitability, the tugboat market, and the enterprise’s cooperation with foreign businesses in principle.