Chornomorsk Fishing Port, to which international shipping companies returned, is under arrest
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By a court decision, piers No. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 4 (prior to the reconstruction of piers No. 7-10) of the port of Chornomorsk were arrested. All of them have been recognized as material evidence in the case of illegal state property appropriation by the private company LLC "Chornomorsky Fishing Port" (“ChFP”), which is controlled by the Ukrainian oligarch, who is under arrest too - Ihor Kolomoiskyi. Although the court didn’t ban the use of the piers, its decision will lead to legal and financial problems for both – for the port itself and the shipping companies: just a year ago, the well-known international company Maersk and several others began to resume container traffic after a full-scale invasion.
According to court decision, these piers, which are the part of the Suhy Lyman’s hydrotechnical structures in the water area of the seaport "Chornomorsk" and belong to the state, have been subleased by LLC "ChRP" since 1997.
The investigation established that in 2019, representatives of the "ChRP" in collusion with the state registrar of the KP "State Registration Agency" issued the right of ownership to this company in order to receive ship fees. However, the real owner of the piers is the State Property Fund of Ukraine (PFMU). So, in fact, that was the theft of state property, namely buildings and a plot of land with an area of 31,000 square meters. Accordingly, the shipping companies did pay fees not to the rightful owner, but to someone unknown.
By Ukrainian law, piers and their water areas are inseparable objects that cannot function separately. This year the court recognized them as physical evidence without the right of alienation and a prohibition on disposal.
The port’s representatives claimed that such court’s decision would lead to financial losses for both, "ChRP" and the Ukrainian state.
Until 2022, the arrested part of the port of Chornomorsk was key for the entire region for transshipment of containers, well-known global companies was delivering containers here, such as:
- Maersk (Denmark) is one of the leaders in the container transportation market
- MSC (Mediterranean Shipping Company) (Switzerland) is one of the largest shipping companies in the world
- Hapag-Lloyd (Germany) is a significant player in sea transportation
- CMA CGM (France) is a large international container operator
- COSCO Shipping Lines (China) is one of the leading Chinese shipping companies
- Arkas Line (Turkey) is a regional operator active in the Black Sea region
- Evergreen (Taiwan) is one of the world's largest container carriers.
After the full-scale invasion in February 2022, most of these companies suspended their operations in Ukrainian ports due to security risks. For example, COSCO Shipping Lines stopped accepting new orders for cargo to/from Ukraine starting February 25, 2022, and MSC stopped new orders on the day of the invasion.
In 2022, the volume of container transportation in the Black Sea region decreased by 28.4% due to the war and the blockade of Ukrainian ports. However, recovery was observed in 2024: Ukrainian ports handled 97.2 million tons of cargo, in particular the port of Chornomorsk — 26.04 million tons, which is 2.3 times more than in 2023.
Despite the risks and rising costs of cargo insurance, in May, 2024, Danish Maersk gradually began to return to Chornomorsk. The company launched a feeder container service between the port of Chornomorsk and the Romanian port of Constanta.
Feeder container service is a system of maritime transportation in which small container ships (feeders) make regular flights between smaller ports (regional) and large hub ports (transit centers), where containers are transhipped onto large ocean-going vessels for further delivery. Containers are delivered from the port of Chornomorsk (or another "smaller" port) to a large international port - for example, Constanta (Romania) or Istanbul (Turkey). In the hub port, cargoes are transhipped onto large ships bound for long-haul flights — to Europe, Asia, America, etc. Conversely, containers arriving from abroad to the hub are delivered by feeders to regional ports. It is not much for the port capacity of Ukraine, but in the war conditions, it would be a good start.
The German Hapag-Lloyd, whose feeders run between Constanta and the Chornomorsk, is also restoring its traffic. And MSC planned to restore a regular feeder connection between the Turkish port of Tekirdag and the port of Odesa, which also affects logistics in the region.
The arrest of the container terminal should not affect its work and the work of the shipping companies. However, it’s not known whether "ChRP" will receive a complete ban on the use of piers. Most likely, it will happen.
"ChRP" is indirectly controlled by the odious and disgraced oligarch, the owner of the "Privat" financial and industrial group, Igor Kolomoisky. He is currently under the arrest by Security Service of Ukraine on suspicion of money laundering, fraud and possession of property.
Kolomoisky's business style is well-known in Ukraine: he created private companies that initially leased or concessioned state assets, such as the state-owned company Ukrnafta, but the income from the activity was transferred only to the accounts of the oligarch's companies. In fact, this form of managing state property can be called parasitism.
On the connection between Kolomoisky, "ChRP" and the port of Chornomorsk indicates the materials of court case in London. In December 2017, former Kolomoisky’s Privatbank, which was nationalized before, filed a lawsuit in the High Court of London against Kolomoisky and his partner Gennadiy Bogolyubov. Other defendants were some oligarchs’s offshore companies - Teamtrend Ltd., Trade Point Agro Ltd., Collyer Ltd., Rossyan Investing Corp., Milbert Ventures Inc. and ZAO Ukrtransitservice Ltd. The last one is the founder of PJSC "Antarktika", which, in turn, is the founder of "ChRP". The beneficiary of "Antarktika" is Yury Kiperman, a well-known businessman and Kolomoisky’s partner. Mykhailo Kiperman's son was a member of the supervisory board of JSC "Ukrnafta".
In recent years, Kolomoisky was removed from almost all state-owned companies, as a result "Ukrnafta" has began to transfer dividends to the state budget after long years of unprofitability. But a similar business concept still exists in the port of Chornomorsk. The Ukrainian authorities are systematically eradicating "parasites" from state-owned companies, but this process is not complete yet.
As for the port of Chornomorsk, everything just begins here, as the representatives of "ChRP" are appealing the court's decision regarding the arrest.
Meanwhile, there are no official comments from the authorities of Ukraine regarding the current situation in the port of Chornomorsk and its future.