Gazprom chooses an auditor

On Monday, the Board of Directors of Gazprom should be held, at which it is planned to announce the candidacy of the applicant for the audit of financial activities of the largest Russian company in 2002.

In the tender, the auditor won PriceWateruss Coopers, whose services Gazprom has been using for more than one year. However, small shareholders are not satisfied with a similar choice, since they consider the PWC reports compiled for the sake of the former leadership of the monopolist. So, on April 15, the minority shareholders, in the person of the Hermitage investment company , appealed to the Moscow Arbitration Court with a request to cancel the results of the Gazprom audit for the past year. At the same time, they also turned to the Ministry of Finance with a proposal to deprive one of the leaders of the world audit of the license.

"Izvestia" with reference to a source close to the government indicates that representatives of the state in the Council of Directors are determined to agree with the minority and recommend the meeting to approve one of the main competitors of the PWC - Deloitte Touchmatsu as an auditor. The newspaper explains this by the fact that the new Gazprom management is not interested in cooperating with the previous auditor, as Gazprom is trying to completely release from any associations with the management team Ram Vyakhirev, who is currently heading the board of directors of the company, but will almost certainly leave this post after the annual meeting of Gazprom's shareholders.

The auditor will finally be approved at the annual meeting of shareholders of the company, which is scheduled for June 28.