Former Minister of Infrastructure Andrii Pivovarskyi and his first deputy are suspected of abuses, due to which the state suffered losses of more than $30 million.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau announced this on February 22.
Thus, in July 2015, Pivovarskyi together with his deputy (at that time also the head of the Tariff Council of the Ministry of Infrastructure) contributed to the adoption of an order, according to which private companies began to charge shipping fees from ships in the Pivdenny seaport. However, according to the law, such fees should be collected by the Seaports Administration.
The order was adopted without proper economic reasoning and contrary to the comments of the Department of Economy and Finance of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Administration of Sea Ports.
Andriy Pyvovarskyi, Minister of Infrastructure from 2014 to 2016.
Андрій Пивоварський / Facebook
Investigations into abuses at the Ministry of Infrastructure began in the fall of 2019, for which materials were requested from the Security Service of Ukraine and the National Police when they tried to close the case. Since then, NABU has asked the government and the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Ministry of Justice to stop this scheme. However, they did not do this and did not file a lawsuit for the private companies to return the unreasonably received sums of shipping fees. The examination showed that from 2017 to 2021, due to this order, the state did not receive more than $30 million.