The Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland has rejected an appeal by former Ukrainian lawmaker Mykola Martynenko and ruled that information about the Swiss bank accounts of his Panamanian companies can be given to detectives from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU.
While the ruling was made on June 28, it was first reported only on Aug. 4, after German news agency Deutsche Welle obtained a copy of the ruling.
Earlier, the NABU requested that the Swiss government provide documents confirming that one of Martynenko’s Panamanian companies had received 6.4 million euros for supplying equipment to Ukrainian nuclear power plants. NABU investigators suspect that the money was a bribe, though Martynenko denies this.
Martynenko is under investigation in both Ukraine and Switzerland.
In Ukraine, he is charged with being involved in organized crime and embezzling $17 million in money paid for uranium ore sales to the state-owned Eastern Ore Dressing Plant. He was arrested and released without bail on April 22.
Martynenko has also been under investigation in Switzerland since 2013 on suspicion of bribery and money laundering. However, according to various reports by Swiss media, the investigation was stalled for three years until the NABU took over the case in 2016.
When the Swiss case was discovered by Ukrainian media in 2015, Martynenko resigned from the parliament, claiming at the same time that there was a paid-for campaign against him in the press.
Swiss prosecutors were to have passed the data about Martynenko’s companies to the NABU in October 2016, but Martynenko filed a suit in the Swiss Federal Criminal Court in Bellinzona to prevent it. In spring, the court ruled that prosecutors could hand over the information to the NABU, but Martynenko filed an appeal to the Swiss Federal Supreme Court.
Deutsche Welle also reported that Martynenko has since 2014 been attempting to unfreeze his accounts in Swiss banks via suits lodged by offshore firms.
In July 2016, a Swiss court satisfied a request by Martynenko to the Swiss Federal Prosecutor’s Office that he be provided with information about journalists who inquired at the office about the criminal case against him.
