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Eastern Europe
April 13, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 19
coming fully into force," the report reads.
However, the continuing conflict in the country’s east, political tensions in the parliament, oligar- chic influence on politics, a decrease in popular support for the ruling coalition, and the complex- ity of the reform tasks ahead have slowed the overhaul of Ukraine’s national governance.
Freedom House also points out the increased political pressure on non-governmental organisa- tions in Ukraine. "Ukrainian media outlets contin- ued to be largely dependent on oligarchs during the year, and freedom of speech was restricted by government measures taken to combat Russian propaganda. Under the guise of fighting Russian influence and aggression, Ukraine continued to place restrictions on media outlets and the inter- net in 2017," the watchdog added.
Toxic bank assets and sanctions could mix in Rusal's rescue
bne IntelliNews
Russian government will support the sanction-hit aluminium major Rusal and provide the company with short-term liquidity, the Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said on April 11 as cited by Vedomosti daily.
One of the world's largest aluminium producers Rusal, along with other businesses of tycoon Oleg Deripaska, was hit the hardest by the latest round of US sanctions and faces a rapid global shutdown of its financial operations and commodity flows.
The contagion from Rusal could now spread to the Russian banking system, struggling with more than RUB1 trillion ($16bn) of bad loans after the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) bailed some of country's largest banks in 2017, as one of these
According to the report, the recently established National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) actively investigated high-level corruption, but poor case management and court procedures undermined the effectiveness of its work.
By the end of 2017, the agency had 410 cases un- der investigation, 141 people accused of corrup- tion offenses, and 92 cases proceeding through the courts. Despite investigations revealing that more than UAH87bn ($3.27bn) was implicated in fraud, the head of NABU reported delays for ap- proximately a third of the cases at trial.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's civil society, anticorruption investigation agencies, and international donors demanded the creation of a specialised anti- corruption court.
banks, Promsvyazbank (PSB), could be enlisted in supporting Rusal.
"We have banking institutions, we have PSB, which will start working under the government," Siluanov said when addressing the need to sup- port Rusal's liquidity amid limited access to financial markets.
PSB was previously slated to become a state- controlled "defence bank" servicing the domestic military and industrial complex to shield other major Russian banks from possible sanctions.
Unnamed sources in the federal government con- firmed to Vedomosti that throwing PSB to the rescue