REUTERS
Head of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's administration Boris Lozhkin says Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is in active search for a buyer of Roshen Corporation's Russian-based confectionery factory, which is located the city of Lipetsk, through intermediary companies.
"He [Poroshenko] is in active search through professional intermediaries for potential buyers of the Lipetsk factory, and it should be noted that it [the factory] has been closed many times by the [Russian] tax authorities, and currently, many buyers in Russia consider it a problem asset," Lozhkin told Radio Vesti on Sunday.
"The president has made a clear decision that it [factory] should be sold, and I think it's only a matter of time," Lozhkin said.
As UNIAN reported earlier, on May 26, 2014, Poroshenko being a candidate for president, stated he would sell his business assets, except for Ukrainian news Channel 5. Later, Rothschild Investment Corporation was involved to assist in the deal.
In January 2016, Poroshenko signed an agreement to transfer his stake in Roshen Corporation to an independent trust managed by a foreign bank, which had been authorized to hold talks on the sale of the company's assets.
Under the Ukrainian Constitution, the country's president is not allowed to hold a position in the government or run a business, be a representative of a company's supervisory board that aims at making profit.
UNIAN's memo. Roshen is Ukraine's largest confectionery producer. It is owned by Petro Poroshenko. Roshen's annual output is 450,000 tonnes of confectionery. It consists of confectionery factories in Kyiv, Vinnytsia, Kremenchuk and those in Lipetsk (Russia), Klaipeda (Lithuania) and Bonbonetti Choco Kft in Budapest (Hungary). It also incorporates a dairy factory, which sells its produce to the confectioneries.
Back in 2014, Russian security forces repeatedly hampered the activity of the Lipetsk confectionery factory with the seizure of its assets.