Court reinstates Rotterdam Plus investigation

Ukraine’s High Anti-Corruption Court ruled on Oct. 27
to overturn the decision of an anti-corruption prosecutor to close an
investigation into the Rotterdam Plus case, the court’s press service stated
the same day. The ruling is not subject to appeal, the court said. Recall,
prosecutors decided to close the Rotterdam
Plus investigation on Aug. 27, referring to a
lack of evidence of a crime. On Sept. 24, the same court upheld the
prosecutor’s decision to close the
investigation. 

Rotterdam Plus refers to an approach of calculating
the forecasted price of electricity produced by Ukraine’s coal-fired thermal
power plants. Introduced in March 2016 by the state regulator, this approach
determined power plants’ coal costs based on the assumption that coal is
imported from the hub of Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp (including delivery
costs). In August 2019, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau alleged that the
regulation had inflicted UAH 18.9 bln in losses to Ukrainian electricity
consumers in 2016-2017, of which UAH 14.3 bln benefitted private holding DTEK
Energy (DTEKUA). NABU named eight suspects (including power regulator officials
and DTEK employees) in a criminal conspiracy that led to the introduction of
this approach.

Alexander
Paraschiy: We continue to believe that
the Rotterdam Plus case has little prospects to end with real punishment of the
declared suspects, who are likely to have only coordinated the implementation
of an agreement that was instead reached at the highest levels in Ukraine in
2015-2016. Neither do we expect the case will have any economic consequences
for DTEK Energy.