Sergey Kurchenko wants to buy Khartsyzsk pipe plant?

Residents of Khartsyzsk on Monday held a picket near the administration building of the local pipe plant KhTZ, owned by Rinat Akhmetov's Metinvest group. Like Donetsk news agency reports , about 100 people protested against the prospect of acquiring KhTZ by Ukrainian businessman Serhiy Kurchenko.

According to the message, the employees of the plant were the first to go to the demonstration, and then local residents joined them.

Earlier, a group of initiative townspeople turned to the head of the Khartsyzsk city administration, Vasily Tkachuk, with a request to investigate, according to them, the illegal actions aimed at changing the leadership of the Khartsyzsk pipe plant.

The participants called for the nationalization of KhTZ, although it is not clear which state they were addressing.

“Take the plant into state ownership. This is our factory. People have worked here all their lives and will continue to work, ”Aleksandra Generozova, a representative of the protesters, told DAN.

Recall that criminal cases were opened against Kurchenko in the DPR and LPR in connection with the failure of his structures to fulfill their obligations to supply fuel and lubricants to the self-proclaimed republics. At the same time, according to the authorities of the LDNR, his company managed to receive an advance payment.

On July 30, 2015, the US government put Kurchenko on the list of persons who fall under the anti-Russian sanctions in connection with the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Kurchenko is the owner of the Gas Ukraine group of companies, the UMH Group media holding, the owner and president of the Metalist Kharkiv football club, the chairman of the supervisory board of VETEK Group. After the change of power in Ukraine in February 2014, he left the country and moved to the Russian Federation.

PJSC Khartsyzsk Pipe Plant, part of the Metinvest Group, is the largest manufacturer of longitudinal electric-welded pipes of large diameter from 508 to 1422 mm with external anticorrosive and internal anticorrosive or smooth coating for main gas and oil pipelines in the CIS.

Since July this year, the plant has been idle, and for 9 months the production of pipe products at KhTZ decreased by 58.8 percent to 66.3 thousand tons.