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HOT ANTICORRUPTION NEWS / Issue #77
October 26, 2018
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Today's issue:
 
- Supreme Court stepped away from de-classification of declarations of SBU officials; 
- DeJure Foundation: HQCJ restricts access to information on the assessment of judges; 
- Naftogaz singed an agreement for gas supply with new managing company of two arrested thermal power plants in Lviv region;
- what NGOs can do to reduce opportunities for kleptocrats to launder proceeds of corruption: case study from Ukraine;
- Ukrainians consider corruption as key obstacle to country's development: public opinion poll;
- update on the case against Shabunin: the court didn’t approve house arrest for Vitaliy and questioned his colleague;
- recommended reading
 
Supreme Court stepped back from
de-classification of declarations of SBU officials

The Supreme Court forwarded the case regarding classification of declarations of the Security Service officials for the new round of consideration. 

The Supreme Court stated that previous court instances wrongfully found legal recognition of SBU leadership declarations as state secret and submitting declarations to closed system of unknown origin instead of e-declarations registry. However, instead of forcing the SBU to act in accordance with the law, the court forwarded the case regarding this issue for the new round of consideration.

The SBU illegally classified even public information about their leadership and officials. Their names and positions are well known and mentioned in official documents, for example, in the Presidential Decrees. Currently, officials like former head of the SBU economic counterintelligence unit Serhii Semochko and first deputy head of the SBU Pavlo Demchyna are released from submitting open declarations. More details. 
DeJure Foundation: HQCJ restricts access to information on the assessment of judges


The High Qualification Commission of Judges of Ukraine has ceased providing public information on judges and the HQCJ decisions in response to public requests. This was reported by Roman Maselko, DeJure Foundation expert. 

In particular, the HQCJ refuses to provide complete information on the dossiers of judges whose integrity is questioned by the public, but who has successfully passed the interview in the course of qualifications assessment. Maselko requested to get the explanations these judges gave to the HQCJ and received a meaningless answer: indeed the dossiers were not updated with the explanations on HQCJ website, but since the law defines an explanation to be a part of a dossier, they could be viewed only on the website. Full text. 
Naftogaz singed an agreement for gas supply with new managing company of two arrested thermal power plants in Lviv region
Officials of three companies, which were running two thermal power plants in Lviv region, are suspected by NABU in misappropriation of 300 million cubic meters of natural gas. This caused state losses exceeding 1,4 billion UAH. Beneficial owners of these companies are MPs Yaroslav and Bogdan Dubnevych from Poroshenko's block. 
The companies were misappropriating gas supplied by "Naftogaz" at discounted prices for the needs of households. Instead, companies were using underpriced gas for their own commercial purposes.

In order to stop further theft, upon NABU appeal, the court arrested both plants and transferred them to the Asset Recovery and Management Agency for management.
 
On October 23, “Naftogaz” signed an agreement for natural gas supply with new managing company, selected by ARMA to run both thermal power plants. This is a result achieved due to consolidated efforts of NABU, ARMA and “Naftogaz.” More details. 
What NGOs can do to reduce opportunities for kleptocrats to launder proceeds of corruption:
case study from Ukraine

AntAC runs domestic and international advocacy campaigns calling for Western financial institutions to block suspicious assets of corrupt officials. 

With this purpose AntAC gathers already reported in Ukraine facts about ill-gotten funds and alleged criminal corrupt activities, structures these facts in English and emphasizes the role of Western enablers – banks, company service providers, lawyers, accountants, nominal directors – in laundering dirty funds of Ukrainian kleptocrats. These data are collected on a website: pep.org.ua. Learn more about Ukrainian case study in our brief.

The case study was presented by Daria Kaleniuk at the International Anticorruption Conference on October 24, at the panel "Using Data to Counter Corruption and Money Laundering". More details. 

In the meantime, former MP Mykola Martynenko, indicted by NABU in misappropriation of 6,4 million EUR from state enterprise 'Energoatom' and 17,28 million USD from state enterprise 'Eastern Mining and Processing Plant', filed a lawsuit against AntAC. He demands removal of public references regarding his corruption cases from the PEP database. The case will be considered by Pechersk court of Kyiv, the first hearing will be held on October 29 at 2:00 p.m. More details. 
Ukrainians consider corruption as key obstacle to country's development: public opinion poll
October, 24, 2018. Source: Democratic Initiatives Foundaiton.
Update on the case against Shabunin:
the court didn’t approve house arrest for Vitaliy and questioned his colleague

On October 26, Dniprovskyi District Court of Kyiv held regular hearing regarding the case against AntAC head Vitaliy Shabunin. The provocateur Filimonenko wore the mask with the face of the President Poroshenko.

At the beginning of the hearing the prosecutor unexpectedly and groundlessly started to demand house arrest for Shabunin, but the judge rejected.

Former AntAC deputy executive director Tetyana Peklun was questioned. More details. 

Recommended Reading
 
 
Copyright © *2018* Anti-corruption Action Centre*, All rights reserved.

Should you have any questions or comments please contact Olena Halushka at: ohalushka@antac.org.ua

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