Soros ‘stuffed Naftogaz with own people’, says pro-government media

George Soros has stuffed the management of Naftogaz, one of Ukraine’s biggest companies, with his own people, daily Magyar Idők said on Saturday.

The paper cites a recording of a recent conversation revealing ways the US financier used his influence in Ukraine to promote his own business interests.

The paper said an undercover reporter talked to Yevhen Bistritsky, a former leader of Ukraine’s Open Society Foundation, who cited a specific case to illustrate the ways in which Soros had gained influence in Ukraine.

“Naftogaz: this is a large energy company … we helped them transform the company … and we changed it,” the former Open Society official is cited as saying to the undercover reporter.

Naftogaz, one of Ukraine’s largest state-owned companies, is soon to be privatised. Earlier Forbes magazine said all the company’s managers owed their positions to Soros’s lobbying, the paper added.

Official Naftogaz documents show that Andrej Kobolyev, the company’s CEO, met Soros in London between November 1 and 4 last year to discuss the company’s privatisation, the paper said.

In addition to enforcing his own interests in Naftogaz, Soros is also busy attacking the company’s rivals in Ukraine, the paper said, using Transparency International as well as the Anticorruption Action Centre, two organisations he financially supports.

To promote these ends, Soros NGOs have attacked Burisma, a privately owned company, alleging corruption through social media and propaganda channels “as they usually do whenever Soros wants to get something or wants to destroy someone or something,” Magyar Idők said.

Source: MTi