Oh Wait! Who owns Emfesz?

To add to the ongoing saga of what is happening with the shutting down of RosUkrEnergo, here is this very interesting piece in Portfolio.hu describing what appears to be an illegal taking of the whole Emfesz company.

Mabofi Holdings Limited has on Thursday claimed it is the “legal owner of 100% of the issued share capital" in Hungarian natural gas trading company Emfesz, which was sold to Switzerland-based RosGas. Mabofi said it would seek legal ways to have its ownership restored.

Since the article will soon be restricted unless you register with Portfolio.hu, I'll describe what they write.

Cyprus-registered Mabofi is part of Group DF Limited, the holding company of the business assets of Dmitry Firtash.

The rest below is from a statement released by Director David Brown(cf Portfollio.hu), it really is classic.

“Mabofi discovered on the morning of the 6th May 2009, that the shares in Emfesz had been fraudulently transferred to a Swiss company registered in Zug, Switzerland, RosGas A.G. This purported transfer has been registered with the authorities in Hungary. There is no information available as to the beneficial ownership of RosGas, but one of its directors is Mr Tamás Gazda, a Hungarian lawyer, who was employed by Emfesz, under the direct instructions of the Emfesz General Director, István Góczi."

“Neither Mabofi, Group DF or any of the senior management of the group had any knowledge of this transaction, and have given no approval whatsoever. Our understanding is that István Góczi (who is in the process of being removed from the board of directors of Group DF Limited) has carried out this transaction based on a power of attorney given to him in October 2004, primarily giving him the powers to carry out the original acquisition of Emfesz." “Mabofi is now actively pursuing all of its legal rights in Hungary, Cyprus and Switzerland, and is confident that the ownership of Emfesz will be restored to its rightful owner as soon as possible." (my emphasis)

I guess I should amend my last post. But then it is only Friday afternoon and who knows what will emerge by Monday morning. Either way, just when you start to formulate an analysis and perceive some strategic moves, there emerges some completely different information that throws the analysis into the trash. Now the only step is to dig into who Istvan Goczi is and why he is being removed. I think one could speculate that he may not have been working with only Group DF Limited interests in mind. But let's wait and see what crops up next week.