Today, June 15, PrAT «Kharkivenergozbut» is holding remote annual general meetings of shareholders to elect a new composition of the company’s supervisory board. Since 65% of the company’s shares belong to the state, managed by the State Property Fund of Ukraine (SPFU), this agency holds a decisive influence over the personnel of the frontline energy supplier’s management body. At the same time, the process of forming the candidate list is accompanied by a lack of transparency and the alleged promotion of individuals closely linked to SPFU Head Dmytro Natalukha.
According to available information, the contenders for positions on the supervisory board include individuals with a long history of cooperation with the current head of the SPFU. Specifically, in addition to the previously mentioned Artem Glazunov, Mykhailo Lev—a former Deputy Minister of Economy and former Head of the State Space Agency of Ukraine (SSAU)—has been named as a new candidate.
Mykhailo Lev and Dmytro Natalukha share a long-standing professional and political biography. In 2015–2017, they simultaneously headed neighboring district state administrations in the Odesa region (Kominternivske and Sarata RDAs). Later, in 2020–2021, while Lev served in the Ministry of Economy and the SSAU, Natalukha chaired the parliamentary Committee on Economic Development, directly interacting with these institutions.
In October 2021, both officials were featured in investigative journalism reports. They were accused of attempting to implement a corruption scheme worth approximately 2 billion UAH through the Export Credit Agency (ECA) to fund political objectives. Despite this, the current SPFU head publicly defended Lev and praised his performance at the time.
In the context of the current nominations to a strategic enterprise, several critical questions arise regarding corporate governance transparency:
Who exactly officially nominated Mykhailo Lev?
Did the SPFU, as the majority shareholder, consider the risks of a conflict of interest and past media allegations?
What are the candidates’ specific qualifications in the energy sector and crisis management?
The supervisory board is not just a formal body. It approves the strategy, appoints and dismisses management, and controls financial flows and risks. In a company that supplies electricity to a frontline region, this is of paramount importance.
Despite the state controlling more than two-thirds of the company’s shares (with another 30% held by the Cypriot structure Smart Holding), the SPFU has not yet published an official list of candidates along with their biographies, declarations, and motivational letters. The lack of transparency in the selection procedure for the «Kharkivenergozbut» supervisory board during wartime heightens the risks of inefficient management of Kharkiv region’s critical infrastructure.