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May 25 by the Kyiv School of Economics based on state tax statistics.
Local budgets lost UAH9.2bn in revenue owing to tax breaks, compared to UAH6.2bn in 2017, the study said. “Freeing from taxation certain payers, the state either has to reduce the volume of spending in the very same amount or collect the lacking costs from other taxpayers,” the study said.
2.7 ​Politics - misc
Valeriy Davydenko, a 47-year-old MP and former deputy agrarian minister, was found dead in his office on May 23 with a gunshot wound to his head​, local media reported, citing sources in law enforcement. His close associates, including members of his fellow Trust group of MPs, insisted that he was murdered. Civil Monitoring (Suspilniy Kontrol), a Telegram channel, said the photograph of the MP indicated the killer wanted to make the death look like a suicide, but the position of his arm – between his legs – and the Glock gun – underneath his seated body – indicated otherwise. Davydenko was elected to parliament to represent a single-mandate district of his native Chernihiv region. In December, he joined the Trust group of MPs that was reported by the ukr.lb.ua news site to be loyal to billionaire Rinat Akhmetov and mega-millionaire Andrii Verevskyi, the board chairman of Kernel Holding. In the prior parliamentary convocation, Davydenko represented the same district and belonged to the Poroshenko Bloc faction. He served as deputy agrarian minister between May 2013 and March 2014. The assumed motive is to clear the way for Radical Party Head Oleh Liashko to return to parliament in the next elections. Analysts are doubtful anyone will be prosecuted for Davydenko’s alleged murder.
Braving bomb threats, razor wire, brick walls, and strange court rulings, State Property Fund officials, backed by busloads of special police forces, entered the improvised headquarters of Centrenergo ​on May 28 and installed the new, government-appointed leadership. Producing about 15% of Ukraine’s electricity and thermal power, Centrenergo may have cost the treasury $3.7bn since 2004, partly by selling electricity at below market prices to Ihor Kolomoisky’s energy intensive ferro alloy plants, reports the Kyiv Post. The state company did not come out with 2019 financial results and executives hid the books, says Dmitry Sennychenko, head of the State Property Fund.Centrenergo is to be privatized in Q2 of next year, Sennychenko tells Reuters. “We have created a commission, now we will choose a privatization adviser,” Sennychenko said after the raid on the improvised company headquarters, a sanatorium in Kyiv’s southern Koncha-Zaspa neighborhood. “This will be a consortium or investment bank, which will subsequently carry out all the necessary procedures for preparing the enterprise for privatization.”
The appellate chamber of the High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine ruled on May 28 to arrest in absentia the individual who controlled VAB Bank in October 2014, the court’s website reported the same day. Media identified the individual as Oleg Bakhmatyuk​, the bank's former owner, the current owner of Ukrlandfarming (ULRLAN) and the majority shareholder of Avangardco (AVINPU, AVGR LI). The ruling allows for INTERPOL to begin an international search for Bakhmatyuk, the Anti-Corruption Centre said the same day.
15​ UKRAINE Country Report​ June 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com