OMV’s Board of Supervisors will not approve the 2021 actions of former CEO Rainer Seele and will launch a thorough investigation into his managerial decisions, Board Chairman Mark Garrett told the Annual General Meeting of Shareholders, according to Reuters.

Under the leadership of Seele, who was appointed to lead OMV in 2015, the Austrian group has focused on investing in Russian oil and gas fields to improve its financial performance.

Investments in Russia after 2015 “were, ex post, a mistake,” Mark Garrett said, according to Agerpres.

“If we now have to resort to depreciation of assets by two billion euros in the first quarter of 2022, everyone must stop defending those decisions,” added the chairman of the Supervisory Board of OMV.

“Looking back, we can say that the investments made in Russia after 2015 were based on a much too much confidence in this country and in its role in the international community,” concluded Mark Garrett.

In March this year, OMV Petrom’s majority shareholder announced that Russia would no longer be one of its key regions, joining other major Western energy companies that had decided to withdraw from the Russian market. OMV then said it had to adjust its asset value by one billion euros in connection with the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, which was stopped by the Berlin authorities. In addition, adjustments have been made to the value of two Russian entities through which OMV holds a 24.99% stake in the Yuzhno Russkoye gas field in Russia, which means an additional hit of one billion euros.

OMV, the largest listed industrial company in Austria, holds 51.01% of the shares of OMV Petrom, the Romanian state, through the Ministry of Energy, holds 20.64%, Fondul Proprietatea – 18.99%, and 9.36% are freely traded at the Bucharest Stock Exchange.