Court stops sale of gas giant for USD 1

http://www.budapesttimes.hu/content/...

Monday, 08 June 2009

A Swiss court on 29 May issued an injunction against the sale to Rosgas of Mabofi’s 100% stake in Hungary’s largest independent gas distributor Emfesz. Mabofi deems the transaction fraudulent and appealed to the Cantonal Court Presidency in Switzerland, the country in which Rosgas is registered, albeit within a complex ownership configuration.

The court ruled that Rosgas is forbidden to sell or transfer any of its own issued share capital, neither can it dispose of its share quotas in Emfesz nor liquidate its assets, according to a statement from Mabofi. Rosgas was given ten days to appeal against the decision.

Emfesz, which handles around a quarter of gas imports into Hungary, was bought from Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash by Russian energy giant Gazprom, the company rumoured to be behind RosGas: although this assertion was recently denied by the Russian-state-owned company’s press secretary. Firtash, who owned Emfesz through the Cyprus-registered holding company Mabofi, apparently had no knowledge of the deal, as it was concluded by the latter company’s managing director, who was granted power of attorney when Mabofi acquired Emfesz in 2004.

“Mabofi discovered on the morning of the 6 May, that the shares in Emfesz had been fraudulently transferred to a company registered in Zug, Switzerland, RosGas AG,” the former company’s statement underlined when reports of the deal first appeared in early May.