Firebase rules: permission denied - swift

Question

I'm trying to restrict user access to some high-level node but want to give some users ability to read some of the subnodes.
My data structure is like that:
{
"COMPANIES" : {
"COMPANY1" : {
"id" : "COMPANY1",
"name" : "COMPANY1 COMPANY"
},
"COMPANY2" : {
"id" : "COMPANY2",
"name" : "COMPANY2 COMPANY"
}
},
"USERS" : {
"xZgFtwVyQFsPK3428YCa3NekOEF3" : {
"company" : {
"COMPANY1" : true,
"COMPANY2" : true
},
"email" : "ss#sss.com",
"uid" : "xZgFtwVyQFsPK3428YCa3NekOEF3",
"username" : ""
}
}
}
and so on.
And my rules for this:
{
"rules": {
"USERS": {
"$uid": {
".read": "auth != null && auth.uid == $uid",
".write": "auth != null && auth.uid == $uid"
}
},
"COMPANIES": {
"COMPANY1": {
".read": "root.child('USERS').child(auth.id).child('company').child('COMPANY1').val() == true",
".write": false
}
}
}
}
The code I'm using to access this data looks like that (in Swift):
refFire.child("COMPANIES").child("COMPANY1").observe(DataEventType.value, with: { (dsnap) in
Also, I tried this one:
refFire.child("COMPANIES").queryOrdered(byChild: "COMPANY1").queryEqual(toValue: "COMPANY1").observe(DataEventType.value, with: { (dsnap) in
And this one (unfortunately, I don't really understand the idea behind queryEqual, so I've tried different approaches):
refFire.child("COMPANIES").child("COMPANY1").queryOrdered(byChild: "COMPANY1").queryEqual(toValue: "COMPANY1").observe(DataEventType.value, with: { (dsnap) in
So I want to give access to COMPANY1 to users with COMPANY1 = true in their profile (and deny everyone else). Rules seemed to be relatively straightforward but obviously I'm doing something wrong here because even users with COMPANY1 = true can't read company information, the permission is denied.