Swiss company accused of supplying Ukraine with coal from Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics Tuesday, December 31, 2019 2:00:26 PM

The largest Swiss coal trader, Adelon AG, has been accused of buying coal from the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics (LDPR) and reselling it to Ukraine, the Ukrainian news outlet Delo.ua reports. The Swiss company denied the allegations. The company specializes in supplying coal from the Kuzbass (Russia’s Kemerovo and Novosibirsk provinces) to a number of European and Asian countries, but it does not work with Ukraine.

Adelon AG does not accept Donbas coal, and this applies not only to the LDPR, but also to the mines in Russia’s Rostov province, which are geologically also part of the Donetsk coal basin. The Swiss traders are convinced that, even from a logistical perspective, such deliveries to Europe or Ukraine don’t make sense. It’s hard to understand their calculations, if one looks at where the Kuzbass and the Donbas are on the map.

Furthermore, they claim that the banks with which the company works inspect all deals extremely scrupulously, so that “gray schemes” are not possible.

However, information appeared in the Ukrainian media in November that the Ukrainian state company Centrenergo had bought coal from Adelon AG according to an “interrupted transit” scheme. Coal supplied from Russian mines to Switzerland, supposedly by transit through Ukraine, ended up in Ukraine and went to local thermal power plants.

It’s hard to say what actually happened, but it would not be surprising if cheap coal from Russia or the LDPR was ending up at Ukrainian thermal power plants. Especially since even Ukrainian President Zelensky said previously that it would make sense to purchase coal directly from the LDPR.

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