OKKO Group

The owner of OKKO network is open joint-stock company Galnaftogaz.

The head of the Supervisory Board of Concern Galnaftogaz and the founder of OKKO is Vitaliy Antonov.

Director — Nazar Kupibida.

GNG Retail Public Limited, registered in Cyprus, owns 90% shares of the concern.

The founder and ultimate beneficiary of the group is Vitaliy Antonov. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) owns a minority stake in GNG Retail Public Limited.

The chain includes 404 gas stations, 35 restaurants, 10 oil depots, a gas filling station in the Lviv region, 19 stationary and mobile laboratories for fuel quality control. Over 15,000 people work there.

The company's revenues for 2018 was UAH 34.7 billion. OKKO sells mostly fuel originated from Lithuania and Belarus.

• In the early 1990s, Vitaliy Antonov created his first private trade enterprise Karat that offered everything from champagne to motorized cranes. Then, he sent equipment to Russia through barter, and in return received oil products. Soon, he began to import oil, process it at several oil refineries and sell it to wholesale buyers in Ukraine.

In an interview to Economichna Pravda, Antonov said he sold cranes to Hungary. In exchange, he received gas from a Hungarian plant.

• In 1998, the Russian default also hit the Ukrainian economy, and as the result the enterprises that were buying fuel from Karat could not pay back. Then, Antonov bought out five regional oil product companies for debts: "Ivano-Frankivsknaftoproduct", "Lviv", "Zakarpattya," "Rivne", and "Vinnytsianefteprodukt." After merging these enterprises, Galnaftogaz, a joint-stock company, was formed. Antonov became its general director.

In 1998, Financial and Holdings Establishment became the founder of Galnaftogaz. It was established in Liechtenstein with the participation of the former Prime Minister of Liechtenstein, Markus Büchel.

Antonov met Büchel back in 1994 in Switzerland. He says that they were introduced to each other through a common acquaintance who, like Vitaliy, was fond of mountaineering. By this time, Büchel was a well-known Swiss lawyer.

At the same time, Galnaftogaz received 35 oil depots and 240 old gas stations that were eventually demolished. Instead of the old gas stations, a new ones appeared.

• In 1999, the first OKKO gas station was opened in Stryi, Lviv region. A year later, a large gas station OKKO appeared in Lviv.
• In 2005, Antonov was one of the first to agree on a partnership with the EBRD. This helped attract about $300 million for business development over the following several years.
• Until 2014, the OKKO chain had 15% of the retail market for petroleum products in Ukraine.
• In 2014, as a result of the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbass, OKKO lost 37 gas stations—12 in Crimea and 25 in the occupied part of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The direct total cost of damages estimates $80 million. Antonov told reporters that gas stations on the peninsula are operated by a work team that had been working in the concern for more than ten years.

'They keep on working there, however, not under our brand. They rent the gas station, and the money they earn, they use to feed their families. They are our Ukrainians,' the owner of the concern told reporters.

profiles

• After the troops of the Russian Federation occupied Crimea in 2014, Crimean OKKO filling stations owned by OJSC Concern Galnaftogaz are leased by former employees of the company.
• In December 2017, OKKO gas station in Lviv filled cars with water instead of petrol. At least eight people have complained to the company about that issue. The company explained that water accidentally got into the tank with Pulls A-95 fuel at the station. All the customers who fueled their cars there on December 14, 2017 were promised to compensate for the losses.
• In the summer 2018, the SSU searches the Galnaftogaz offices in Lviv and Kyiv. The company was suspected of financing terrorism due to its continuing control over the gas stations in the occupied Crimea and Donetsk region.

The owners of OKKO allegedly transferred their gas stations through subsidiaries to management of the so-called "LDNR" and "Republic of Crimea of the Russian Federation." And thus, Galnaftogaz representatives allegedly continued to manage the companies in the occupied territories.

During the search, the Security Service found documents that showed that 12 OKKO gas stations in Crimea were transferred to the management of Optimus Holdings (registered in Moscow, Russia) and Tavrida Petroleum in Simferopol. They are affiliated with GNG International Limited, a Cyprus offshore company, a part of Galnaftogaz group.

In October 2018, the Prosecutor General's Office closed the case due to the lack of a criminal offense. The SSU was obliged to return all confiscated documents, including the agreement on opening accounts in Russian banks, to the owners.

• On November 1, 2018, there were imposed Russian sanctions against 322 citizens of Ukraine, including Vitaliy Antonov.
• In May 2019, a resident of Zaporizhia fueled her KIA Sportage with diesel at an OKKO station. After two kilometres, the car stalled. It turned out that instead of 30 liters of diesel fuel, they poured 95th gasoline into the gas tank. It was also indicated in the check that the woman received at the gas station. As the result, the car broke down, however, OKKO called the accusations for damages evidence-free.

At the end of the last year, Svitlana L. won a lawsuit against the company. The company was obliged to reimburse the cost of fuel (UAH 940), tow truck services (UAH 600), car repair (UAH 3,500), money spent on a lawyer (UAH 5,000), and non-pecuniary damages (UAH 2,000).

• In August 2019, the Antimonopoly Committee announced that the Cassation Economic Court (as part of the Supreme Court of Ukraine) took the side of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine. In 2017, 16 business entities unreasonably raised retail prices for liquefied natural gas, and therefore, were fined. The investigation involved four companies belonged to the OKKO group. The fine was over UAH 6 million.
• In December 2019, OKKO filling stations employees in Mykolaiv mixed up tanks with gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, cars of the National Police and the patrol police were damaged. The damaged cars were Toyota Prius, Mitsubishi Outlander, and Skoda Rapid. Some of the police cars became not repairable.

• Since 2008, the company started to implement the barrier-free accessibility principles of all the new and reconstructed gas stations in the network.
• The OKKO filling stations in Chop was registered in the Book of Records of Ukraine as the largest filling stations in Ukraine by territory and by the number of services.