Olena Sosyedka, a former mortgagee of Bio Energy Dnipro LLC, has found herself at the center of a scandal over the possible withdrawal of millions of hryvnias from the state-owned Ukrgasbank to Austria. According to open sources, during the three years of the Russian Federation's full-scale war against Ukraine, Sosyedka traveled abroad 26 times, including to Switzerland, France, Italy, Israel, and Austria, where her children and sister Yulia live.
Olena Sosyedka's ties to Austria are not limited to family ties. The father of her second son, Serhiy Dovgalyuk, former head of the associated association "Concord Industrial and Financial Group", was at various times the managing director of the Austrian companies Concord Engineering GmbH, APS Power Technology GmbH and Concord Solutions Lab GmbH, which are associated with Concord bank and the Sosyedka sisters.
In 2018, Sosyedka acted as a mortgagee on a loan from Bio Energy Dnipro to Ukrgasbank for the construction of a biogas power plant. The project was never implemented, but a loan of almost 3.4 million euros was issued. Part of the funds, including 100 thousand dollars recorded in the export-import operations database in 2019, was transferred to Concord Solutions Lab GmbH, which probably indicates that money was taken out of Ukraine.
The court banned Bio Energy Dnipro LLC from building a biogas power plant, and the state bank loan was not repaid. The director of the Austrian companies in 2016–2018 was Alexandre Egger, the lawyer of former Prime Minister Mykola Azarov at the ECHR, which suggests that he could have been involved in the schemes to withdraw Ukrgasbank funds abroad.
This case highlights the risks of fictitious projects and potential schemes to siphon public funds abroad, as well as the need for careful monitoring of the use of credit resources by state-owned banks.
