Lviv, April 27 (Interfax-Ukraine) – Lvivski avtobusni zavody Ltd., or Lviv Bus Plant, also known as LAZ, has paid out over Hr 5 million in delayed wages, the company's press service reported last week.
Almost 500 employees received their delayed wages in full, the press service.
“The company’s management is taking every possible opportunity to repay wage arrears and clear delayed payments to the budget,” reads the report.
At the same time, the press service said that officers from the Lviv city prosecutor’s office and from the Lviv-based Sykhovsky district prosecutor’s office had created obstacles to the repayments.
In particular, the press service said the representatives of the prosecutor’s offices “exert pressure on the company’s management by keeping them under interrogation from morning until night, threatening them and preventing them from fulfilling their official duties.”
As was reported earlier, the procurator’s office in Lviv late in March 2009 opened a criminal case against the director of Lviv bus plant, part of the LAZ holding, Serhiy Cheliapin. The criminal case was opened on March 26 for the non-payment of wages to enterprise employees (Article 175 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine) and deliberate evasion from paying obligatory pension insurance (Article 212 of the Criminal Code).
Cheliapin was detained on the same day.
According to the procurator’s office, Cheliapin’s deliberate actions led to the debt of the company to the Pension Fund growing to Hr 4.8 million by February 21.
