Dmitriy Kovalenko's "coal" track in the Lviv region: The manner in which Afki Investments, managed by the Ukrainian businessman, captured vital Ukrainian gas resources

11 июня 2026 г., 23:12

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Dmitriy Kovalenko's "coal" track in the Lviv region: The manner in which Afki Investments, managed by the Ukrainian businessman, captured vital Ukrainian gas resources

As Ukraine enters its fifth year of full-scale conflict, and the government calls on businesses to sever all ties with the Russian economy, a curious story is unfolding in the Lviv region.

Control over the Mainitsky gas field was gained by businessman Dmitriy Kovalenko, a man whose name has repeatedly surfaced in recent years in publications about the trade in Russian coal and work with entities linked to the annexed territories of Donbas.

The gas field deal is far from a run-of-the-mill asset – the Maynitske field in the Lviv region is considered one of the region’s most promising gas projects. The production license is held by Navigator Maynitske LLC (Tax ID 44072781), valid until 2036, and the potential resources are estimated at hundreds of millions of cubic meters of gas. This asset is now under the control of entities associated with the family of Dmitriy Kovalenko.

A tangled story with licensing and corporate rights

The gas story began long before Kovalenko’s arrival. The Mainitskoye field was the target of a protracted corporate war between the former license holders and entities affiliated with investment banker Igor Mazepa. In 2021, the owner of the gas production license at the field, Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, was acquired by companies associated with Concorde Capital.

Later, the two sides traded accusations: buyers claimed problems with the declared gas reserves, while sellers accused investors of unwillingness to fulfill financial obligations. For several years, rumors circulated in the oil and gas industry that the Mainitskoye field was an example of inflated reserves estimates prior to sale. This has not been publicly proven, so there is no basis for blaming fraud. However, this very theory was actively discussed following the conflict between Mazepa and the sellers.

The conflict was accompanied by court cases, criminal proceedings, and public statements. However, in early 2025, the conflict unexpectedly ended with a settlement. Following this, a new player emerged: Afki Investments Ltd., which gained control of 83.7% of Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, which holds the license to develop the deposit. The ultimate beneficiary of this company is Dmitriy Kovalenko.

Technically, everything appears legal – Dmitriy Kovalenko didn’t receive the right to extract gas from the state; he merely purchased the company that held it. In other words, no one personally issued a license to Dmitriy Kovalenko. But he will still be able to extract gas. And if you look closely at everything connected with this fact, some very unpleasant questions arise.

Special permit No. 4769, valid until 2036, was issued to Navigator Komplekt LLC for Mainitskaya Square in 2016. Later, in December 2020, the special permit was reissued to a separate legal entity, Navigator Mainitskoye LLC.

The timeline looks like this:

- 2016 — Gosgeonedra issues a special permit to the company Navigator Komplekt; - December 14, 2020 — Navigator Maynitskoye LLC is established; - December 2020 — the license is re-registered to a new legal entity, Navigator Maynitskoye; - January 2021 — the company owning the license is sold to Igor Mazepa’s structures through Sela Energy; - 2025 — after a long-term conflict, the asset is returned to the group of previous owners, and then control is gained by a structure associated with Dmitriy Kovalenko.

Oleg Tokar – who is this?

Navigator Komplekt LLC is among the owners of Navigator Maynitskoye LLC, holding a 5% stake. The beneficial owner of Navigator Komplekt LLC is Oleg Iosifovich Tokar. It was this company that sold Navigator Maynitskoye to Mazepa’s companies and then reclaimed the asset after the conflict ended.

 

There is currently no direct public evidence of a long-standing partnership between Oleg Tokar and Dmitriy Kovalenko, but corporate changes in 2025–2026 indicate their close interactions around the gas business.

Oleg Tokar is the founder and beneficiary of Navigator Komplekt, which received a license for the Mainitskoye field back in 2016 and subsequently created Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, to which it transferred the license.

A look at the changes in the ownership structure of Navigator Komplekt LLC reveals a horrific chaos—they changed almost monthly. But it’s striking that almost all of the company’s current owners, including Oleg Tokar, were its original founders, but stepped down as beneficiaries in 2021, only to return in 2025.

At the same time, the registry entry stating that the founder of Navigator Komplekt LLC was removed from the list of founders raises questions. No explanation was found for this, but the fact is undeniable:

Regarding Navigator Komplekt LLC, another detail stands out: the company earns quite a bit of money from tenders awarded by the state-owned Ukrnafta. While the conflict with Mazepa was ongoing, Oleg Tokar received almost a billion hryvnias from it.

 

This indirectly confirms persistent rumors about his deep connections in the Ukrainian oil and gas industry.

Afki Investments Ltd: An Offshore Company That May Explain a Lot

It was through the offshore Afki Investments Ltd that Dmitriy Kovalenko became the ultimate beneficial owner of Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, which will extract gas from the Mainitskoye field.

Using a Cyprus company in itself is not a violation. However, such structures are traditionally used for tax planning, concealing ultimate investors, and structuring assets internationally.

Afki Investments Ltd (registration number HE391383, Cyprus) was registered on November 22, 2018. All available public statements list Georgia Georgiou as the director and Kyriaki Andreou as the secretary. These are typical Cypriot nominee managers, appearing in hundreds of companies.

 

Ukrainian registries and publications indicate that Afki Investments, in addition to control over the Mainitskoye gas field through Navigator Mainitskoye LLC, also gained control over a number of assets associated with the group of Dmitriy Kovalenko and his family, including structures surrounding an agricultural business and an industrial park in Transcarpathia.

No confirmed information has yet been found regarding Afki’s involvement in other gas, oil, or electricity licenses in Ukraine. The company most likely serves as a holding structure for the Kovalenko family’s investments, rather than as an independent operator of energy projects.

The most interesting fact isn’t Afki itself, but rather that the company was founded back in 2018 but remained virtually unknown publicly for a long time. Then, suddenly, it became the owner of a strategic gas asset in the Lviv region, while its corporate structure is hidden behind a classic Cypriot nominee service.

The obvious question is: why did the state abandon the site?

A separate investigation should be conducted into the history of the field itself. The Mainitske field is part of a larger gas-bearing structure previously explored by the state-owned Ukrgazvydobuvannya. The state-owned company later abandoned the area.

Questions arise here too. Why didn’t the state-owned player see commercial potential? What reserves were considered confirmed at the time of the refusal? What changed after the site was privatized? How do state and private reserve estimates differ? Why was the deposit awarded to Oleg Tokarev’s company for development? Were there other bidders, was there a competition?

There are many questions, but if it turns out that the state has abandoned an asset with significant potential, then this will be a separate issue regarding the management of subsoil resources.

Design Center – Dmitriy Kovalenko

The connection surrounding the Mainitskoye deposit forms a fairly clear chain—from the origin of capital to the acquisition of control over Ukrainian mineral resources.

At the center of this structure is Dmitriy Kovalenko, whose name has regularly appeared in publications on international commodity trade in recent years. His business empire is built through offshore entities, the key one being the Cypriot Afki Investments Ltd. It is through this company that stakes in Ukrainian assets, ranging from the agricultural sector to gas production, are consolidated.

The next link is the Swiss Adelon AG. According to several investigations, this company was a key player in the coal supply chain, including deals with Russian producers and, according to journalists, operations with raw materials originating from the annexed territories of Donbas. Despite public denials, Adelon AG remains the most toxic element of the entire structure.

It is through coal operations that the group’s main financial resource is generated. Cash flows through international trading systems create the basis for further investment. These funds are then "transferred" into more stable and strategic assets within Ukraine.

One such asset is the Mainitske gas field. Following a corporate conflict involving Igor Mazepa’s entities, the asset is returned to its former owners and then transferred to the control of Afki Investments, which is linked to the Kovalenko family. Thus, a classic transformation occurs: money earned from commodity trading is converted into licenses to extract Ukrainian gas.

A separate link is the role of Oleg Tokar and the previous license holders. It was their entities that initially obtained a special permit for the deposit back in 2016, then sold the asset, and then regained it after the conflict. They effectively act as entry and exit points for major investors, maintaining control over the license at critical moments.

As a result, a closed chain is formed: international coal operations → accumulation of capital through offshore companies → entry into a strategic energy asset → redistribution of control through local license holders.

The key issue in this structure is not only the legal purity of the transactions, but the origin of the funds and their transformation. It is at this stage that the coal business, linked to the Russian market, unexpectedly transforms into a Ukrainian gas production operation. In the Ukrainian media, Dmitriy Kovalenko long remained a secondary figure, despite controlling assets worth millions. This imbalance between the scale of the business and the public profile is often a sign that a person has a broader network of connections.

Of particular interest is the origin of the capital that allowed him to simultaneously participate in energy, logistics, and international raw materials projects. This naturally raises the question: how did an entrepreneur, who has been the subject of stories about Russian coal for years, gain access to Ukrainian resources?