KIEV, May 16 - The first stage of an inquiry into the companies owned by Serhiy Kurchenko is complete, said Ukraine's Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.

"I told them (local residents in the town of Svatove in the Luhansk region) about Kurchenko's fraud scheme involving petroleum products, which cost the country UAH 26 billion in the last year alone, with false re-export; false way-bills; sea tankers carrying air; and powerful protectors," the minister wrote on his Facebook page.