Court arrests co-owner of Czech firm in case of ex-head of state property fund and OPP

The High Anti-Corruption Court has taken into custody in absentia the co-owner of the Czech company Belanto trade s.r.o. Vladislav Klishchar and allowed him to be investigated in absentia in the case of former head of the State Property Fund Dmytro Sennichenko.

These decisions were made by the HACC on July 2, according to Slovo i Dilo.

"To choose a preventive measure against the suspect in the form of detention... To grant permission to conduct a special pre-trial investigation in criminal proceedings against a suspect suspected of committing criminal offenses," the decisions read.

In December 20224, Austrian and French law enforcement officers found and seized assets of suspects in a criminal organization headed by former head of the State Property Fund of Ukraine Dmytro Sennychenko in the case of embezzlement of funds from the Odesa Port Plant.

Earlier, within the framework of the same joint investigation team, French law enforcement officers seized the suspects' real estate worth almost EUR 6.5 million. Measures are currently being taken to identify other property of the members of the criminal organization, as well as to find and extradite them.

The group, according to the investigation, seized more than UAH 500 million of funds of state-owned enterprises, including the largest chemical enterprise in Ukraine, Odesa Port Plant JSC, and one of the world's largest producers of titanium raw materials, United Mining and Chemical Company JSC, during 2019-2021, and legalized proceeds of crime in the amount of more than UAH 10 billion.

In May 2024, the High Anti-Corruption Court arrested the former head of the State Property Fund in absentia.

In December 2023, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau suspended the investigation into the criminal organization of the former head of the State Property Fund , Dmytro Sennychenko, due to the search for suspects and a request to the United States of America.

The former head of the SPFU, Dmytro Sennychenko, who fled abroad, and six other suspects in these cases are wanted.

As of today, there are 11 suspects in the case:

• Dmytro Sennychenko, the head of the State Property Fund, whom the investigation considers to be the organizer of the crime and the head of the criminal organization;
• a co-organizer of the crime - a person close to the head of the SPFU;
• First Deputy Head of the SPFU;
• Advisor to the Head of the SPFU;
• two persons who at different times acted as directors of Odesa Port Plant JSC;
• the acting head of JSC United Mining and Chemical Company;
• two owners of the LLC that won the auction for the OPP;
• two persons - accomplices in the crime (the positions of the persons are indicated at the time of the crime).

On March 22, 2023, the NABU and the SAPO exposed two episodes of the criminal organization's activities. The first one was about corruption at the Odesa Port Plant (99.56% of shares are owned by the state). According to the investigation, in early 2020, the Head of the SPFU managed to elect "loyal" members of the OPP Supervisory Board, who subsequently agreed to appoint a member of the criminal organization as the plant's director.

Кирило Бойко