The Transport and Communications Ministry has warned Ukrtelecom board chairman Heorhii Dzekon he can be sacked from the post if the company shows a negative financial result for the first half of 2010.
Transport and Communications Minister Kostiantyn Yefymenko announced this at a press conference.
“He has taken commitments that Ukrtelecom will finish the first half with a profit. I have warned Heorhii Dzekon that I will be forced to break the contract with him if Ukrtelecom will be in the red,” said the minister.
Yefymenko said the losses of the enterprise for 2009 were estimated at UAH 500 million. The company finished the first quarter with a loss of UAH 35 million, he said.
Also, Yefymenko assured the press that the enterprise will finish the first half of 2010 with a profit.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, Yevhen Hryhorenko, a member of the supervisory board of Ukrtelecom, on February 23, 2010, said that pressure was exerted on the supervisory board members that voted in favor of removal of Dzekon from the post of board chairman of the company.
According to Hryhorenko, he had received via telephone threats that a criminal case will be opened against him if he does not withdraw his signature from the supervisory board’s decision to remove Dzekon from the post of board chairman of the company.
According to the protocol of the supervisory board’s February 10 meeting, five of the eight members of the supervisory board voted in favor of removal of Dzekon from the post of board chairman of the company because of the company’s poor financial results in 2009.
Three members of Ukrtelecom’s supervisory board (Serhii Bukhalenkov, Mykola Burmak, and Ihor Ruban) withdrew their signatures from the decision to dismiss Dzekon on February 22.
Dzekon later said that the supervisory board’s decision was fabricated and that he intended to report the fabrication of the decision to the Prosecutor-General’s Office.
Ukrtelecom Company, the largest telecommunications company in Ukraine, finished 2009 with a loss of UAH 456.4 million having boosted the net revenues by 3.39% or by UAH 225.202 million over 2008, to UAH 6,870.931 million.
Ukrtelecom accounts for 78.5% of the market of fixed telephony and renders services to 9.9 million subscribers.
