MOSCOW, July 30. /TASS/. Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak has instructed the government to consider ways of providing support to the Antipinsky Oil Refinery, Ilya Dzhus, spokesman for the Deputy Prime Minister, told TASS.

Kozak instructed them to work on it, that should be done in one month," Dzhus said, when asked if the government is considering the possibility of supporting the refinery as it was proposed by head of Sberbank Herman Gref.

Sberbank is the largest creditor of the refinery.

In May 2019, the refinery came under the control of Sberbank. After that, 80% of the refinery was sold to the Socar Energy Resource company, a joint venture of the bank and Azerbaijani Socar

Earlier, the plant's general director Maxim Andriasov told TASS that the debts of Antipinsky Oil Refinery to creditors exceed $5 bln, which includes the debt to Sberbank in the amount of $3.2 bln.

Problems with Antipinsky Refinery

Oil supplies to the Antipinsky Refinery in the Tyumen Region were repeatedly halted throughout 2018, particularly in December, due to absence of route orders. Transneft completely halted oil supplies to the refinery on May 16 of this year.

The refinery had to suspend its operations in May 2019 in view of a challenging financial situation and went into receivership by Sberbank, its major lender. On May 18, the refinery filed a bankruptcy petition to the Arbitration Court of the Tyumen Region

Antipinsky oil refinery, Russia's largest independent oil refinery. It is located in the Tyumen region. The refinery was the main asset of the New Stream group, whose chairman and founder, Dmitry Mazurov, was detained in July as part of a criminal fraud case.

Arrest

On July 14, the New Stream Group reported that its owner Mazurov was detained on July 13 at the Sheremetyevo Airport, as a suspect, the prosecution has petitioned the court to arrest him. According to the Kommersant newspaper, Mazurov is suspected of embezzling credit funds from Sberbank, Promsvyazbank and Absolut Bank for a total of more than $ 3 billion.

He was detained until September 12. Mazurov denies the charges.

Earlier, Sberbank head Herman Gref filed a complaint, based on which the criminal case was launched. "Sberbank has filed a statement with the law enforcement on numerous uncovered facts of illegal actions carried out by the controlling shareholder of Antipinsky Oil Refinery Mazurov and the former Director General of Antipinsky Oil Refinery Lisovichchenko, which falls under the definition of "fraud on a large scale committed by an organized group. "Based on this statement, law enforcement agencies opened a criminal case under part 4 of article 159 of the Russian Criminal Code," the bank reports.

The credit organization also revealed "numerous facts of signing Antipinsky Oil Refinery on non-market conditions with affiliated intermediaries, including export contracts, as a result of which the company suffered significant damage and significant amount of money was taken abroad.".