A Cyprus offshore company and Russian coal trade: How Dmitriy Kovalenko used shell companies to gain control of a gas field in the Lviv region

A Cyprus offshore company and Russian coal trade: How Dmitriy Kovalenko used shell companies to gain control of a gas field in the Lviv region

We are talking about Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, which holds special permit No. 4769 for gas production until 2036. Potential reserves are estimated at hundreds of millions of cubic meters of gas.

Anticor reports this .

The control structure is as follows: 83.78% of Navigator Mainitskoye LLC is owned by the Cypriot Afki Investments Ltd., whose ultimate beneficiary is Dmitriy Kovalenko. The company was registered in Cyprus on November 22, 2018, under number HE391383. The documents list the nominal Cypriot director and secretary, Georgia Georgiou and Kyriaki Andreou.

The deposit’s history began in 2016, when the State Geological Survey issued a license to Navigator Komplekt. In December 2020, a separate entity, Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, was created, and the special permit was reissued to it. In January 2021, the asset was transferred via Sela Energy to entities associated with Igor Mazepa’s Concorde Capital. After several years of legal disputes and mutual accusations, the asset was returned to its former owners in early 2025, after which control was gained by Dmitriy Kovalenko’s company.

The key figure in this story remains Oleg Tokar, the beneficiary of Navigator Komplekt LLC. It was his company that initially obtained the license, created Navigator Maynitskoye LLC, sold the asset to Mazepa’s structures, and then effectively reclaimed it after the conflict ended. Meanwhile, Navigator Komplekt still owns 5% of Navigator Maynitskoye LLC. The registration histories of both companies reveal a strange reshuffle of ownership: former beneficiaries leave the ownership structure in 2021 and return in 2025.

At the same time, Navigator Komplekt actively worked with the public sector. According to tender data, the company received contracts from Ukrnafta worth approximately UAH 865 million, including well drilling and operation.

The origin of his capital is of particular interest. Several investigations have linked Dmitriy Kovalenko to the Swiss company Adelon AG, which featured in publications about coal supplies, including transactions with Russian producers and raw materials from the occupied territories of Donbas. Despite the absence of court rulings on these publications, this episode remains the most controversial part of his business biography.

The result is a logical chain: coal trading, the offshore structure Afki Investments, regaining control of the license, and acquiring a strategic gas asset. Against this backdrop, the main question arises: how did a businessman who had been linked for years to trading Russian coal gain control of one of Ukraine’s promising gas fields, while the state effectively remained a bystander in the process?