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conditions of illegal enrichment and the confiscation of assets gained by such corruption, and (3) establishing the authority of the National Agency on Corruption Prevention to review and monitor lifestyles, among other items. The court itself only reported that it has adopted a ruling on the case, which will be published later. Its judges received the draft of the complaint only on the morning of the ruling,”, which didn’t even happen under Yanukovych,” reported journalist and blogger Serhiy Leshchenko. It was initiated in August by 47 MPs, representing the Opposition Platform For Life party, loyal to Russian President Putin, and the For the Future group of MPs, loyal to billionaire Ihor Kolomoisky. In response to the ruling, President Zelenskiy said he will use his right to submit legislation to parliament to renew the “stable and maximally effective” work of the system of e-declarations and the “irreversibility of responsibility” for the deliberate violation of these rules. “Ukrainian officials and MPs will continue to declare their assets and revenues, while anti-corruption bodies will have the necessary authority for their review and prosecuting violators,” he said, according to his press service. The president’s representative to the court, Fedir Venyslavskiy, said the ruling was adopted with procedural violations, stressing that the judges should have received the draft of the complaint three days in advance. He also said there may have been conflicts of interest. Indeed, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention questioned the objectivity of the ruling, as at least two judges of the court – Serhiy Holovatiy and Iryna Zavhorodnia – were found to have filed inaccurate electronic declarations and therefore would have a conflict of interest in deciding on the law’s validity. At the same time, it’s not yet confirmed whether they participated in the ruling, though Leshchenko reported that Zavhorodnia did, while Holovatiy didn't. “The review of the case by these judges would cast doubt on the objectivity of the Constitutional Court’s decision. And that’s at a time when the issue is a case, upon, which depends Ukraine’s future, its perception on the international level and the access of Ukrainians to the truth about the lives of officials,” said Oleksandr Novikov, the head of the agency, as reported by its press service.
Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled on October 27 to overturn the decision of an anti-corruption prosecutor to close an investigation into the Rotterdam Plus case​, the court’s press service stated the same day. The ruling is not subject to appeal, the court said. Recall, prosecutors decided to close the Rotterdam Plus investigation on August 27, referring to a lack of evidence of a crime. On September 24, the same court upheld the prosecutor’s decision to close the investigation. Rotterdam Plus refers to an approach of calculating the forecasted price of electricity produced by Ukraine's coal-fired thermal power plants. Introduced in March 2016 by the state regulator, this approach determined power plants’ coal costs based on the assumption that coal is imported from the hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (including delivery costs). In August 2019, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau alleged that the regulation had inflicted UAH18.9bn in losses to Ukrainian electricity consumers in 2016-2017, of, which UAH14.3bn benefitted private holding DTEK Energy. NABU named eight suspects (including power regulator officials and DTEK employees) in a criminal conspiracy that led to the introduction of this approach.
The scandalous Kyiv District Administrative Court ordered on October 26 the Single Information Registry to remove the record of Artem Sytnyk as director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), ​the pravda.com.ua news site reported that day, citing an anonymous source, who said NABU hasn’t received a copy of the ruling. It was the very same NABU
11​ UKRAINE Country Report​ November 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com