Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court has unfrozen the assets of the former environmental minister under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
The
Dec. 25 ruling appeared in the court registry last week and says that Mykola
Zlochevsky legally obtained corporate rights and other wealth in December 2013-January
2014 while serving as deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council.
Justice Vitaliy Pysanets also ruled that authorities didn’t lawfully issue
Zlochevsky a notice of suspicion, judging that handing his lawyer the notice
didn’t procedurally qualify.
The
judgment also stated that prosecutors failed to appear in court to defend the
state’s interests. Zlochevsky, who is a majority shareholder in Burisma
Holdings, a gas producer that accounted for 30 percent of total private
production volume in Ukraine last year, is accused of illicit enrichment and
abuse of office and is wanted by Ukrainian authorities. He has denied the
accusations in the past and his whereabouts are unknown
Thus,
asset freezes on two garden houses, two land plots, 922- and 300 square-meter
homes, and a Rolls-Royce Phantom were lifted. Burisma Chief Financial Officer
Alexander Gorbunenko couldn’t be reached for comment.
Zlochevsky
also got the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to unblock $23 million
on accounts in January 2015 after Ukrainian authorities didn’t cooperate with
U.K. investigators. In April 2014, the same month that U.S. Vice President
Joseph Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, joined Burisma’s board of directors, British
officials froze the former Ukrainian official’s accounts.
U.S.
Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt attacked Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s
Office for not cooperating with the U.K. Serious Fraud Office in a speech he
gave in September.
He
said that instead of helping their British counterparts, Ukrainian prosecutors
sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys “attesting that there was no case
against him,” the New York Times reported.
In
a separate report, the U.S.-government funded Radio Liberty discovered in July
that Zlochevsky and his father were no longer the owners of two luxurious
properties and a land plot, including a 4.5-hectare sprawling estate near Kyiv.
Ultimate ownership changed to a Cyprus-registered company. The firm in turn lent
$1 million to its subsidiary that directly owns the assets, which used them for
collateral on the loan. In effect, the company lent money to itself.
The
Radio Liberty report posited the arrangement was meant to shelter Zlochevsky
from having his properties confiscated by authorities, citing lawyer Bohdan
Borovyk of Borovyk &Partners.
Forbes
has estimated that Zlochevsky’s overall fortune is currently worth $178 million.
Source: Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty
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