Page 51 - bne_newspaper_February_02_2018

bne February 2018 Eastern Europe I 51
Now Sistema, Bashneft's former owner, is the victim of another controversial legal assault of Rosneft. Sistema is facing over $5bn in damages claims but since has done a deal to settle with Rosneft for
Mir sabotaged by a hasty court ruling initiated by Rosneft.
Sechin is also widely believed to be personally involved in controversial
was nationalised after Khodorkovsky's arrest in 2003.
Last month Sberbank pulled a controver- sial and highly critical report on the head of Rosneft and Rosneftegaz written by its top oil analyst after the state-owned oil company objected to the critical analysis and pressured the bank to remove it.
The investment case of Russia's largest oil company Rosneft was questioned by Sberbank CIB analyst Alex Fak because of its aggressive expansionary strategy, in a note that featured a chapter entitled "Rosneft: We Need to Talk About Igor".
“The defence argued that Ulyukayev was set up by Sechin and Rosneft's security services”
$1.7bn. (Rosneft incidentally paid $5bn to acquire Bashneft), is cut off from the shares and dividends of all major assets, and has had its SPO of subsidiary Detsky
cases such as the jailing of the head of Russian oil company Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Rosneft’s main assets are based on those of Yukos, which
Civil society slates Ukrainian President Poroshenko's draft law on anti-corruption court
bne IntelliNews
Ukraine’s civil society slated a draft law to establish an inde- pendent anti-corruption law submitted to parliament by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko that could result in international donors cutting off their aid to the embattled country if passed into law.
The president sent the draft bill to the Rada on December 22, but the details have just been released and the draft ignores key recommendations by the EU’s Venice Commission that donors insist be adopted.
“Should the draft law be adopted in
the form, submitted by the President, it will not solve existing problem of courts delaying consideration of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) cases. Instead of setting up a really independent anticorruption court, a fake institution vulnerable to external pressure will be established,” the civil society Anticorruption Action Centre (Antac) said in a note on its site.
Setting up of a fully independent anti- corruption court has become the central demand of Ukraine’s international donors and increasingly any further aid the country is going to received is being tied to the establishment of a court to hear corruption cases that is entirely independent from government pressure.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) delayed its last tranche of $1.5bn from December to the first quarter of 2018, due to lack of progress in establishing the court. Likewise, the European Union (EU) cancelled the transfer of 600mn of aid money explicitly citing the lack of progress in establishing the court.
The donors have demanded not only that the court be set up, but that the recom- mendations on how the law is framed, drawn up in detail by the so-called Vienna Commission, be adopted.
The court is the third pillar in a donor- backed anti-corruption triumvirate to stamp out endemic corruption in the
Ukrainian government. An independent investigative agency, the National Anti- Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) that can bring charges, has already been established, as well as the Special Anti- Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) that can prosecute corruption cases, but the problem is there is no court in which to hear these cases. The existing court system remains very corrupt, despite some judicial reforms pushed through in December. The country’s top policeman general prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko remains a close Poroshenko ally and has openly attacked NABU’s work.
Poroshenko’s version of the law to establish the new court fails to meet the donor’s demands on several counts. Antac released a note detailing the shortcom- ings and listing the key recommendations of the Venice Commission that are fully neglected by the draft law No7440:
• nominees of international donors are given an advisory role, instead of a crucial one, in the selection of judges;
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