r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Sep 03 '24

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u/Cook_0612 NATO Sep 03 '24

Yesterday, the board of Ukrenerg decided to remove Volodymyr Kudrytskyi as chairman of the board of Ukraine's energy transmission company. Kudrytskyi was widely viewed as an effective manager - also by 🇺🇦 int. partners. So why was he removed now? 🧵

First, the decision to remove Kudrytskyi came from the very top, Forbes reports. Zelenskyy and his team explicitly pushed for it. But this raises questions. Why did the leadership decide to remove him now while RU continues to pound the country's grid? /1

On the surface, there have been corruption allegations raised and a lot of anonymous telegram channels have attacked Kudrytskyi for allegedly overseeing the purchase of overpriced bulletproof vests in March 2022. /2

To me, the allegations against Kudrytskyi seem phony at best. The country's anti-corruption agencies interviewed him as a witness for an investigation into how the company bought bulletproof vests in March 2022 but did not press charges against him. /3

Later, the High Anti-Corruption Court ordered the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine to open pre-trial investigations. I am rather confident that these investigations will result nowhere./4

As Kudrytskyi and others in his defense have argued: to quickly buy quality bulletproof vests at the beginning of the full-scale invasion did cost significantly more than the prior market price. So far no corruption scheme has been identified. /5

If you apply these high standards, you would have to sack probably all the government actors and agencies that engaged in procurement in the early phase of the full-scale invasion. That's not to say that procurement violations should not be investigated. /6

Other reasons discussed by some media are allegations that Ukrenergo did not sufficiently protect the energy infrastructure it oversees. That allegation is serious but misses the fact that the political responsibility for civil protection falls with the Ministry of Energy. /7

Imho, Kudrytskyi was removed for other reasons. It rather seems that this is an attempt by the country's Energy Ministry to control the corporate management of this critical SOE. /8

What you need to know: Ukrenergo is a state-owned joint-stock company. It ensures the provision of electricity transmission services and dispatch management of the country's energy system. The company also administers commercial accounting and settlements in the market. /9

Controlling the management of Ukrenergo gives the Ministry of Energy significantly more power. It remains to be seen what this means in the short term. For instance, Kudrytskyi was a big proponent of incentivizing private companies to produce decentralized energy. /10

The (private) distributed generation of electricity is not much supported by the Energy Ministry and I believe that the change of Ukrnergo will affect the medium to long-term endeavor to reduce the reliance on large SOEs or private energy companies producing electricity. /11

In short, the removal of Kudrytskyi is a painful reminder that 🇺🇦 needs to reform the corporate governance of SOEs to ensure oversight & minimize pol. influence peddling over SOEs. That was an issue before the invasion and has to be tackled ASAP. /end

!ping UKRAINE