Investigation into Property Redistribution Continues

“Do the prosecutors have sufficient grounds to detain the chief executive of a Kyiv district?”

“As of today, we have done all the main investigative procedures that confirm her implication in this crime. I am not going to name all the specific actions committed, as we believe, by this individual. Her actions resulted in the sale of Rosava’s 49% stake to two offshore companies at a price 25 times lower than the nominal value. We are checking now if these companies are implicated in the crime. I want to remind you that as long ago as last June, following a pre-investigation examination, the Prosecutor General’s Office instituted criminal proceedings against some Ministry of Justice and State Execution Authority officials for the abuse of power they committed while executing the Kyiv Arbitration Court order to attach Rosava’s property in favor of eight creditors. It presented no difficulty for us to find out those implicated, for we first of all thoroughly examined the execution procedure. Incidentally, we established exactly that the court order’s execution was unlawfully entrusted to one of Kyiv’s districts. But we will say more on this later because the investigation is still in progress.”

“You have detained a perpetrator. Do you have any information about the true authors of the illegal plant privatization?”

“We do. But, to say anything concrete, we must wait until the queries we have sent to certain foreign states have been answered. The answers will shed further light on who stands behind this illegal sale of stock.”

“How did the execution authority chief react to being detained?”

“When being detained, this individual would repeatedly call the ambulance to bring the investigation to a halt. But she failed in this. Over $30,000 in cash were seized in her presence. She claims to have highly placed protectors and hopes that the latter will pressure the court into exonerating her of criminal responsibility. But we are continuing the investigation, and I think we will bring to the logical end.”

“And are you afraid in purely human terms of such high-placed protectors?”

“I don’t think any pressure will be put on the prosecutors, but I fear the court could bow to certain pressure.”

“Do you think the investigation of this case has been dragging on too long?”

“The investigation into the illegal sale of Rosava’s 49% stake is really dragging on. Yet, this is caused by the necessity of carrying out some very complex expert examinations of documents. Besides, we still await the results of a large number of handwriting examinations.”

“Have those highly placed protectors been exerting pressure on the investigation itself?”

“Inquiring into this case, the investigators ran into many obstacles. I don’t want so far to speak about this, so that I’m not accused of divulging the facts of a preliminary examination. But there is not a shadow of a doubt that this is a fact. And I as supervising prosecutor am fully aware of this.”

“Are we in for some news about the investigation into other shadow privatization cases? For Prosecutor General Mykhailo Potebenko publicly promised to supply concrete results in the immediate future.”

“Apart from Rosava, we have gathered enough information connected, in our opinion, to the illegal privatization of some other companies. I mean above all the sale of three Donbasenerho power plants and the privatization of Luhanskoblenerho. The Donbasenerho case is being investigated by the Prosecutor General’s Office assisted by Donetsk oblast investigators. The whole problem is that Donetsk oblast courts, whether of common pleas or of industrial relations, have handed down rulings that legitimize the actions of the State Execution Authority and Ukrspetsiust. Therefore, the prosecution office, while carrying out the necessary investigative procedures, is now forced to wait for appellate courts to quash these court rulings. Only after this will the investigators be able to make the final decision on this matter. We do know who stands behind all this.

“The investigation of Luhanskoblenerho privatization was stalled by the Kyiv Pechersk district court judge who ruled following a shareholder’s complaint to ban the State Property Fund from valuing the company’s property. The fund, in its turn, wanted to conduct this evaluation on the basis of a Luhansk oblast prosecutors’ decision. The evaluation was necessary to ascertain the true price of the property sold. According to Luhansk prosecutors, this property was sold at a price half its market value. No examination has yet begun.”

“Was the investigation clocked by the courts or by those who managed to buy the courts?”

“Some courts indeed try to block the investigation of criminal cases, especially those related to the privatization of property.”