DUSHANBE, March 14, 2014, Asia-Plus -- Ukrainian energy magnate Dmitry Firtash, who owns controlling stock in Tajik fertilizer plant, TojikAzot, has always fulfilled his financial obligations, TojikAzot director Toirkhon Ghoziyev told Asia-Plus in an interview.

According to him, Dmitry Firtash invested 24 million somoni in the plant in 2002.  “Besides, he provided a 20 million somoni in addition,” said Ghoziyev.  “He has always fulfilled his financial obligations and I believe he will fulfill them in the future as well.”

The debt-ridden and loss-making fertilizer plant has not been in operation since 2008 due to lack of natural gas supplies.

TajikAzot is partly state owned, with the government controlling a 20 percent stake in the troubled enterprise.  Cypriot-registered Highrock Holdings Ltd, owned by Ukrainian oligarch Dmitry Firtash, controls the remaining 80 percent of the enterprise.

Toirkhon Ghoziyev has refrained from commenting on the arrest of gas billionaire Dmitry Firtash in Austria.

Over the last 15 years Firtash has become one of the leading investors in the power sector and chemical industry in Central and Eastern Europe.  His plants and companies are present in Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Cyprus, Tajikistan, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria and Estonia. The international group of companies Group DF (‘The Firtash group of companies’) founded by Firtash in 2007 consolidates assets in the chemical industry, power sector and real estate.

Mr. Firtash, 48, one of Ukraine’s richest men with assets in media, banking, energy and agriculture, was arrested by the organized crime unit of the Austrian police in Vienna on March 12 after a US federal court issued an arrest warrant following an eight-year investigation by the FBI.

The Financial Times notes that Firtash is regarded as having close links with Russia and is a key player in the Russian-Ukrainian gas trade.

Group DF, Mr. Firtash’s holding company, described his arrest as a “misunderstanding” that should be “resolved in the very near term.”

The group claimed that Mr. Firtash’s arrest “was not connected with the situation in Ukraine, or the group’s activity in Europe and America, but involved an investment project from 2006.”