Cash paid to Russian energy company
HALTON Borough Council has paid around £200,000 in energy payments to the Russian energy giant Gazprom over the last seven years.
Under transparency rules, councils are required to publish details of all payments they make over £500.
The Weekly News has delved into the last seven years of quarterly reports and the amounts paid to Gazprom.
Single payments in the spreadsheets range from around £700 to more than £8,000.
The largest quarterly sum was £32,929 in the fourth quarter of 2019-20, with the lowest standing at £0 in quarter three of 2020-21, and then £1,586.87 in quarter three of 2016-17.
Halton Council’s largest annual sum paid to Gazprom was £52,626.81 in 2019-20.
According to the spreadsheets, energy payments were on behalf of services including a complex care pool and housing solutions.
Gazprom is majorityowned by the Russian state.
The local authority has blamed site acquisitions for the energy purchases as a council spokesman said the payments related to “inherited” sites.
He said: “Halton Borough Council does not have any current formal contracts in place with Gazprom.
“However, the council has inherited Gazprom as an energy provider on a small number of sites acquired over recent years - in most cases these supplies have already been transferred to our current provider Total Gas & Power.
“There are two properties remaining where Gazprom supply gas, and in both these cases we have requested that the supply be transferred.”
On March 10, the UK Government announced it was sanctioning Gazprom’s chief executive Alexei Miller, who worked under Russian President Vladimir Putin in the 1990s when Putin was deputy mayor in St Petersburg.
Gazprom is still supplying gas to Europe according to Russian business news agency Prime.