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Morgan Ortagus said in a statement. For a year, the US has sought to block a Chinese takeover of the jet engine maker. After US investors failed to materialize, Kharkiv business man Alexander Yaroslavky filed an application in early August to buy the engine building company in partnership with Beijing Skyrizon.
President Zelenskiy signed the gambling law on August 12,​ ending Ukraine’s decade-long ban on casinos and slot machines. The law restricts casinos to five-star hotels in Kyiv, and to four- and five-star hotels outside of Kyiv. Slot machines will be allowed in three-, four-, and five-star hotels. Billboard advertising is banned. Only people aged 21 or over are allowed to gamble. A portion of house winnings from gambling operations go to a new health, sports and culture fund.
The High Council of Justice unanimously voted to reject the prosecutor general’s request to place on temporarily leave Pavlo Vovk, ​the scandalous head of Kyiv District Administrative Court, as well as five judges of this court, the council reported on Sept. 1. The council concluded that the request to dismiss Vovk “does not contain sufficient evidence” that Vovk has been declared a suspect in a criminal case. Vovk and his colleagues are suspected by the National Anticorruption Bureau (NABU) in attempts to seize power in Ukraine. Among others, Vovk is suspected of taking control over the High Council of Justice.
Ukraine, Europe’s largest food exporter, is a major importer of ammonium nitrate​, a key component of fertilizers. Last year, Ukraine imported 716,000 tons, at least seven times the volume of 2016, according to the State Statistics Service. Coming from Georgia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Romania, the chemical compound enters through a dozen ports - from Izmail to Mariupol. Inside the country, there are more than 600 warehouses for ammonium nitrate, Andriy Miselyuk, director of Dialogue Institute for Socio-Political Design, writes on his Facebook page.
In the government’s latest musical chairs, Andriy Pavlovsky is the new acting head of Customs​ – the third to hold the post in a year. The outgoing head of Customs, Igor Muratov, was fired for the same reason his predecessor lost the post in April – failure to bring in desired tax revenue for the government. With imports down by 20%, Customs is $1.3bn below target.
A Tesla model S car belonging to the former head of President Zelenskiy’s office, Andriy Bogdan, was set on fire and destroyed ​in the small hours of August 11. Law enforcement officers are treating the burning as arson. Ukraine has been plagued by a string of arson attacks against high profile officials, businessmen and journalists. The former NBU governor Valeriya​ ​Gontareva’s house was burnt down in an arson attack on September 16​, who ordered the nationalization of PrivatBank, oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. Gontareva’s daughter in law also had her BMW set alight in the middle of the night by unidentified assailants who doused the car in petrol and set it alight. More recently anti-corruption activist​ ​Vitally Shabunin also had his house burnt down​ in at the end of July. Police are left stumped and no one has been charged in any of these incidents. Before joining the Presidential Office, Bohdan was Kolomoisky personal lawyer who backed Zelenskiy’s presidential campaign. ‘This event is not important only in terms of who ordered the destruction of Bogdan’s car, but also that the dark underside of Ukrainian politics, which also features examples such as the threats, attacks, and arson
10​ UKRAINE Country Report​ September 2020 ​ ​www.intellinews.com