Law enforcement officers reported suspicions to the current judge of the Kyiv Commercial Court for working in favor of Russia.
This was reported by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI).
SBI does not name the suspect, but Babel sources say it is Anatoliy Ivchenko. The scheme also involved then-President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.
It was established that back in 2011, the Russian Defense Minister addressed the then Ukrainian leadership with a letter asking for assistance in repaying the debt of one of the enterprises in the amount of $405.5 million for natural gas supplied in 1996-1997.
Ukraine had nothing to do with the debt of a commercial enterprise and could not be held responsible for it. However, in 2011, the then leadership of the country began to emphasize in the media that Ukraine should repay the specified amount to the Russian Ministry of Defense. In addition, a letter was prepared to SBU with a request to bring the head of the enterprise to criminal liability for allegedly transferring this debt to the state.
In August 2012, the Russian Ministry of Defense filed a lawsuit against the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine with the Commercial Court of Kyiv to recover over 3 billion hryvnias from the state budget.
The Russian Ministry of Defense did not attach any evidence to the lawsuit to prove why Ukraine should pay this debt. However, the judge of the Commercial Court issued an illegal ruling and transferred the responsibility for collecting and providing evidence in the case to the defendant.
The Cabinet of Ministers provided copies of correspondence between the heads of the governments of Ukraine and the Russian Federation in 1996. They were dated before the enterprise concluded the agreement under which the debt arose, so these letters could not be evidence of either the existence of the debt or its transfer to Ukraine. In addition, the originals of these letters never existed, but this fact was ignored by the court.
The statute of limitations has already passed, there were no state guarantees for the companyʼs debts, as well as evidence of the very fact of the existence in 2012 of the companyʼs debt under contracts from 1996-1997, but the judge satisfied the claim of the Russian Ministry of Defense and ruled to recover over 3.1 billion hryvnias from any account of the state budget of Ukraine in favour of the Russian Federation.
Part of the funds were collected, but after the start of the Russian aggression and the change of the state leadership, another judge of the Economic Court overturned this decision in 2014. At the same time, it was never possible to return the money unjustly collected in the interests of Russia. According to the investigation, these funds went to finance the aggression in 2022.
The suspectsʼ actions were classified as high treason committed by a group of people in a prior conspiracy. The maximum penalty is 15 years in prison.
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