Mark Rachkevych
Kyiv’s Pechersk District Court has unfrozen the assets
of the former environmental minister under ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
The Dec. 25 ruling appeared in the court registry last
week and says that Mykola Zlochevsky legally obtained corporate rights and
other wealth in December 2013-January 2014 while serving as deputy head of the
National Security and Defense Council. Justice Vitaliy Pysanets also ruled that
authorities didn’t lawfully issue Zlochevsky a notice of suspicion, judging
that handing his lawyer the notice didn’t procedurally qualify.
The judgment also stated that prosecutors failed to appear in court to
defend the state’s interests. Zlochevsky, who is a majority shareholder in
Burisma Holdings, a gas producer that accounted for 30 percent of total private
production volume in Ukraine last year, is accused of illicit enrichment and
abuse of office and is wanted by Ukrainian authorities. He has denied the
accusations in the past and his whereabouts are unknown.
Thus, asset freezes on two garden houses, two land plots, 922- and 300
square-meter homes, and a Rolls-Royce Phantom were lifted. Burisma Chief
Financial Officer Alexander Gorbunenko couldn’t be reached for comment.
Zlochevsky also got the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales to
unblock $23 million on accounts in January 2015 after Ukrainian authorities
didn’t cooperate with U.K. investigators. In April 2014, the same month that
U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, joined Burisma’s board of
directors, British officials froze the former Ukrainian official’s accounts.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt attacked Ukraine’s Prosecutor
General’s Office for not cooperating with the U.K. Serious Fraud Office in a
speech he gave in September.
He said that instead of helping their British counterparts, Ukrainian
prosecutors sent letters to Zlochevsky’s attorneys “attesting that there was no
case against him,” the New York Times reported.
In a separate report, the U.S.-government funded Radio Liberty discovered
in July that Zlochevsky and his father were no longer the owners of two
luxurious properties and a land plot, including a 4.5-hectare sprawling estate
near Kyiv. Ultimate ownership changed to a Cyprus-registered company. The firm
in turn lent $1 million to its subsidiary that directly owns the assets, which
used them for collateral on the loan. In effect, the company lent money to
itself.
The Radio Liberty report posited the arrangement was meant to shelter
Zlochevsky from having his properties confiscated by authorities, citing lawyer
Bohdan Borovyk of Borovyk &Partners.
Forbes has estimated that Zlochevsky’s overall fortune is currently worth
$178 million.
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