Six accomplices of Poroshenko whistleblower were sentenced
Ukrainian courts have proven the existence of a corruption scheme, the creator of which, according to Ukrainian law enforcement officers, was the whistleblower of corruption schemes of the current President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko, former People's Deputy of Ukraine Alexander Onishchenko. Of the twenty people detained in this case, five sentences have been handed down to six defendants to date.
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The scheme itself is very indicative for Ukraine. As a people's deputy and deputy head of the parliamentary commission on energy, Alexander Onishchenko learned that the cost of gas produced in Ukraine is four times lower than its market price. He decided to take advantage of this difference for his own enrichment and for this purpose organized a criminal group from his relatives and acquaintances. Even before becoming a deputy, he had gas trading enterprises, and now it was necessary to create a whole network of fictitious enterprises, which, through fictitious trading on commodity exchanges, would allow them to receive excess profits.
Using the status of a people's deputy, Onishchenko disguised the offices of his companies as a public reception room for a people's deputy of Ukraine. Thus, neither the tax service nor law enforcement agencies could have access to financial records.
From the end of 2013 to mid-2016, the criminal group enriched itself at the expense of Ukraine by more than one billion six hundred million hryvnia.
The cogs of the corruption scheme were the enterprises of LLC "Nadra Geocenter", LLC "Karpatnadrainvest", LLC "Firm Khas", LLC "Gaztransproekt", LLC "Naftogaz Trade", LLC "Kievpromzbut", LLC "TD "Kievgazenergo", LLC "Excelent LTD" , TOV "Morisel Group", TOV "Lenstercompany", TOV "Gas Trans Group", commodity exchange "Center" and commodity exchange "Lviv Universal" and others.
Director of the Commodity Exchange "Center" sentenced to a fine of ten thousand eight hundred hryvnia with deprivation of the right to engage in economic activity for one year and one month. The five-year prison sentence was replaced by three years of probation, and he was released from custody in the courtroom.
Directors of the Lviv Universal sentenced to a fine of ten thousand eight hundred hryvnia with deprivation of the right to engage in economic activity for one year. The two-year imprisonment was replaced by a year of probation, and he was released from custody in the courtroom.
The broker who represented Onishchenko's company at the fictitious auction, sentenced to a fine of one thousand eight hundred hryvnia and given a year of probation.
Directors of fictitious enterprises “Don-Dner-Trust” in Dnepropetrovsk, “Excelent LTD” in Kyiv, which “won” at fictitious auctions and through which money was cashed out, sentenced to a fine of eighty-five thousand hryvnia, and imprisonment for five years was replaced by three years of probation with deprivation of the right to engage in economic and administrative activities for two years.
Two accountants who provided the purchase, documentation and financial statements of fictitious enterprises, sentenced to a fine of sixty-eight thousand hryvnia and a one-year probationary period.
Thanks to the use of plea agreements between defendants and prosecutors, people responsible for stealing billions of hryvnia from Ukraine are going free and are being punished with ridiculous fines compared to the amounts they received for participating in the corruption scheme.
Only one question remains behind the scenes: will Ukrainian law enforcement agencies be as effective in investigations if it turns out that the incriminating evidence on Petro Poroshenko published by Onishchenko is true.
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