The Higher Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) rejected the prosecutorʼs request to detain Andriy Kobolev — the ex-head of Naftogaz remains at large.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) suspects Kobolev of illegally receiving a bonus of over 260 million hryvnias.
Kobolevʼs lawyer Oleksiy Nosov argued why HACC made such a decision:
- firstly, Kobolev did not make the decision to pay the bonus to himself: it was done by the supervisory board of Naftogaz of Ukraine. In confirmation of this, he published the relevant submission of Kobolev, where he did not even indicate the amount of the bonus.
- secondly, the supervisory board had the right to decide on the payment of premiums in exactly this amount. The changes that added the words "supervisory board" to CMU Resolution 859 took place on February 5, 2020;
- thirdly, there is an open and public position of the chairman and members of the supervisory board that they were well aware of their decision, support it and take full responsibility for this decision.
According to Nosov, Kobolev himself, as the head of Naftogaz, was not responsible for the decision of the supervisory board. Kobolevʼs actions are not a crime, and the risks of hiding him from the investigation and obstructing the collection of evidence during the pre-trial investigation are unfounded.
"We see a procedural violation in the fact that the prosecution, referring to assumptions and incorrect interpretation of legal norms, demands the most severe preventive measure — deprivation of liberty — for the duration of the pre-trial investigation. The detention of Kobolev will have a public resonance not only in Ukraine, but also among our foreign partners, and will also affect other anti-corruption processes. Payment of premiums is not a violation," the lawyer stated.
- The investigation established that in May 2018, Kobolev, contrary to the law, issued an order to reward the companyʼs employees, on the basis of which he was paid almost 261 million hryvnias for extraordinary achievements. It is about the positive decision of the Stockholm Arbitration in the gas case of Ukraine against Russia.