Redistribution of the Transformer Market: How a Company Linked to URM Head Belotskyi Secured 4 Billion in Tenders

Redistribution of the Transformer Market: How a Company Linked to URM Head Belotskyi Secured 4 Billion in Tenders

A resonant story is unfolding at JSC "Ukrainian Distribution Networks" (URM) about a possible redistribution of the market in favor of private companies with multi-million turnovers.

The new head of URM, which oversees as many as 8 state-owned regional power distribution companies, is Oleksii Belotskyi. If you trace his connections with contractors, it becomes interesting. The main supplier for the controlled regional power companies in recent years is LLC "Energy-Group" (EDRPOU 40169080, registered in December 2015).

Under the management of nominal director Maksym Desyatkov, the company participated in more than 900 tenders.

It won over 700 procurements totaling about 4 billion UAH with seven state joint-stock companies “Oblenergo.”

Maksym Desyatkov is co-founder of Kharkiv’s LLC "Estate Energy" together with Viktoriia Belotska (Oleksii Belotskyi’s wife) and the wife of another notorious figure — Andrii Harmash.

Oleksii Belotskyi’s career in public service — from head of Krasnokutsk District State Administration to director of the capital construction department of Kharkiv Regional State Administration — has been accompanied by noticeable enrichment.

By conservative estimates, Belotskyi’s wealth exceeds 500 million hryvnias. He owns a luxury estate valued at about 1 million dollars in the village of Lisne in the Kharkiv region, and he currently lives in upscale property in Kyiv. Despite these indicators, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) somehow consistently “does not notice” discrepancies between his declarations and his actual standard of living.

Now, through URM’s control over the transformer market for all regional Oblenergo companies in Ukraine, "Energy-Group" is effectively gaining a monopoly position. Schemes developed over years are now being legitimized at the highest state level.

Particular attention is drawn to Belotskyi’s partnership with Andrii Harmash. During the period 2015–2021 he was in the leadership of "Kharkivoblenergo." During that time, investigators say, Kharkiv’s municipal enterprises, due to agreements with the then-city leadership, were driven into debt of more than 2 billion hryvnias.

The scheme was simple: funds that residents officially paid for communal services were diverted to offshore accounts instead of being used to settle with "Kharkivoblenergo." The result was billion-hryvnia holes in the company’s budget, causing outrage in other regions of the country over the threat that this so-called “successful experience” could be replicated across Ukraine.

Despite this, the new URM head Belotskyi is actively lobbying today for the appointment of his long-time business partner Andrii Harmash to the position of head of "Kharkivoblenergo."