Accusation of ecocide as a reason for a new redistribution of Krivorozhstal?
On July 20, the Security Service of Ukraine conducted a search at the Krivorozhstal metallurgical plant, owned by the Indian industrial group AreslorMittal.
The reason for the raid by the “izbushniks” was an open criminal case under the article “ecocide”. Krivorozhstal and its management have been repeatedly accused of maliciously poisoning the air with harmful emissions, but now a radiation leak at the plant caused by a violation of safety regulations has been added to the gas attacks.
According to the new acting the head of the SBU Ivan Bakanov, the management of the enterprise committed negligence during the performance of official duties, and the head of the investigative department of the SBU for the Dnipropetrovsk region, Igor Iena, added that, according to reports from plant employees, serious violations of the requirements were committed during the commissioning of one of the continuous casting units radiation safety, as a result of which radiation exceeded all permissible standards.
Apparently, we are talking about a malfunction of the gamma introscopy control device containing the cobalt-60 isotope, with the help of which hidden defects in finished castings are detected.
“Izbushniks” complain that during their investigative activities directly at the scene of the emergency, the plant administration did not allow them to fully inspect the emergency installation, and also interfered with the seizure of documents under various pretexts, as a result of which a criminal case was also opened against several employees of the plant. in ecocide.
What is the first thing that catches your eye in this case? At least the fact that Krivorozhstal, in terms of rubbish released into the environment, is no different from other metallurgical plants in Ukraine owned by oligarchs Pinchuk or Akhmetov. Pipes poison the environment in all industrial regions of Ukraine: Zaporozhye, Mariupol, Dnepropetrovsk... None of the oligarchs bother to care about the environment and public health; all efforts are subordinated to obtaining maximum profits from the “taken over” factories.
Last year’s acid rain in Armyansk, caused by oligarch Firtash’s reverent attitude towards the Crimean Titan plant, is a phenomenon from the same opera.
In addition, the SBU is not the organization that carries out environmental control. To control the cleanliness of the environment in Ukraine, there is a State Environmental Inspectorate. Well, that is, “Izbushka” can carry out some investigative measures at the site, but the assessment of the emergency must be made by environmental specialists.
Ukrainian environmentalists are not particularly aware of the radiation leak at the plant, but they are well aware of the situation with harmful emissions. In particular, in recent years, the State Environmental Inspectorate has repeatedly recorded excesses of the maximum permissible concentration of harmful substances in the air due to the fault of Krivorozhstal, issued fines to the company, but the situation was not resolved in any way.
At the end of 2017, shortly before the New Year, a miracle happened: the owner of the plant paid an environmental fine of 76 million hryvnia to the budget. The money quickly spread across local budgets and to Kyiv, but soon the court of appeal decided to return the money to the fine. And with creaks, sighs and lamentations, money was scraped together from the budget and returned to the owner of Krivorozhstal.
According to environmentalists, the fine fraud was carried out by the management of ArcelorMittal Krivoy Rog together with structures directly associated with Poroshenko. With Petit’s defeat in the presidential race, the “roof” over the owners of Krivorozhstal has become thin and now no one is anymore interested in their “services to Ukraine in the form of $10 billion investments in the economy,” according to fans for the interests of the Indian steel holding.
Here's what Yuri Butusov, editor-in-chief of the trash heap Censor.net and postreot, scribbled about this on his Facebook feed:
“By the way, positions in the Krivoy Rog SBU are expensive, because the main source of income for the SBU in Krivoy Rog is protection, together with the local police, of large-scale metal theft at Arcelor. Nobody knows exactly how much metal is stolen.
The Indians have never had normal management at the plant; temporary foreign directors come for a couple of years, see that many areas of the plant’s life are controlled by the mafia, and do not want to risk coming into conflict with someone.
As soon as the head of security receives an order from the new director to restore order, trouble immediately occurs - one of the guards gets hit on the head. This year, Arcelor management gave the order to install surveillance cameras at the loading station. The next day, two employees who installed cameras were stopped outside the city and severely beaten. As a result, there is still no video monitoring of all work sites at Arcelor.”
Butusov, of course, is a first-class scum, maydown and Turchinov’s “drain tank” (perhaps in search of a new permanent customer for “jeans” after the resignation of the Bloody Pastor), but in the above assessments it is difficult to disagree with him, because since the time of Kuchma, the SBU has been mainly engaged in “protection” and redrawing of business clearings. The outbreak of the “revolution of hydity” only aggravated the greedy reflexes of “safety”.
It is interesting that Alexander Danilyuk, who replaced Turchynov as head of the National Security and Defense Council, expresses concern about the actions of the SBU at Krivorozhstal, calls them an “alarming call” and threatens to look into it.
The feeling is as if someone has once again taken a fancy to the plant, and all the dances around ecocide are nothing more than a convenient excuse for a new “spin.” By the way, the notorious ecocide is the only criminal article related to environmental protection that the SBU can initiate.
The management of ArcelorMittal Krivoy Rog expresses a similar point of view that reprivatization is coming in Ukraine and they decided to start it with Krivorozhstal. On July 23, its representatives convened a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine and informed the public that the SBU was inflating the environmental threat, misleading the public and government agencies.
According to management, the readings of radiation leakage by a certified instrument of an invited specialist give a slight excess of the norm, which, however, is within the safe limits specified in the Law of Ukraine “On the Use of Nuclear Energy and Radiation Safety.” While the “izbushniks” themselves allegedly used “it’s not clear what kind of” device.
It should be added that the blow to the plant was dealt in the most sensitive place - the work of the enterprise was paralyzed due to the SBU sealing of the continuous metal casting unit. The owners of Krivorozhstal look towards Zelensky as if it were a light in the window: maybe the new president will sort it out, because the other day he personally negotiated with foreign investors, wanting to attract at least $10 billion into the deflating economy of Ukraine.
In general, so far no one’s ears have been noticed due to the SBU’s attack on Krivorozhstal, but instincts tell us that the matter could not have happened without the participation of Kolomoisky, who has long been licking his lips at the plant with an official profitability of 30%.
It is possible, however, that the “squeeze” of the plant was ordered by Pinchuk, who 14 years ago owned Krivorozhstal, but then lost a profitable asset as a result of the Orange Revolution.
Neither side wants victory: ArcelorMittal is squeezing all the juice out of the plant, not caring about the environment and people’s health (which, by the way, eloquently testifies to Ukraine’s descent into the category of third world countries, where nature and people are simply a resource for extracting super-profits) , and even organizes fraud with fines together with Poroshenko.
“Everything has been clear for a long time” with Kolomoisky. Pinchuk is a Kuchma thief who took maximum profit from family ties with Multi-Vector, Soros’s main partner in Ukraine since 1997, who once provided a luxurious service to the reptilian with the holding of a triumphant congress of Sorosites in the Livadia Palace. I would like them to choke on this plant, but they won’t choke - and these figures did not swallow and digest such amounts of property...
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Now the editors are aware.