The Avias gas station chain, affiliated with the Privat group, found itself at the epicenter of a scandal over the blocking of diesel fuel supplies intended for civil defense during martial law.
In July 2023, the Civil Protection Department of the Dnipropetrovsk Regional Emergency Management Agency transferred UAH 4.55 million to Intex Invest LLC for 100,000 liters of diesel fuel for generators and emergency equipment. In return, the customer was issued scratch cards from the Avias network. Since December 2024, gas station operators have been refusing to dispense fuel using these cards, and as a result, 48,760 liters (almost half of the ordered volume) were never dispensed — the budget suffered losses of UAH 2.2 million.
The company Intex Invest, which is called a "ghost company" in public materials, had almost no business activity until 2022. After a change of management in August 2022 — when Anton Posilaev became the director — the company sharply increased government contracts: since the beginning of 2023, Intex Invest has won more than 7,200 tenders on Prozorro for the amount of more than UAH 1.5 billion. In most cases, supplies were made through the same Avias scratch cards, the mechanism of which complicates transparent reporting on the actual volumes of fuel supplied.
This is not an isolated case: the company Incam Finance LLC, previously associated with Privat, also appeared in the fuel case - then 46.4 thousand liters of diesel worth UAH 2.48 million were not delivered; the prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit for UAH 3.83 million, but the outcome of the case is still unknown.
Despite suspicions of fraud, the Avias network continues to operate. Part of the assets was formally transferred to Belarusian businessman Oleksandr Vorobei through a series of loopholes (in particular, Ukrpaletsystem), but traces of the ownership structure lead to Cypriot companies, which are associated with the entourage of Ihor Kolomoisky. The Antimonopoly Committee allegedly granted permits for concentration with gross violations, as a result of which dozens of gas stations under the Avias and ANP brands actually ended up under the control of the same structures.
The scandal calls into question the mechanisms of state fuel procurement during wartime, the transparency of the use of scratch cards, and the effectiveness of control by anti-corruption and law enforcement agencies. After the process was exposed — in particular through public materials and appeals by officials — the public and control services are demanding a full investigation and the return of lost funds.
