Media publish secret court ruling to confiscate “Yanukovych assets”

A ruling of local Ukrainian court to confiscate assets
allegedly stolen by the “criminal group” of former president Viktor Yanukovych
was published on the Al Jazeera website on Jan. 10. The Mar. 28, 2017 ruling
was made secret in Ukraine. Based on the published document, the court
recognized Arkadiy Kashkin guilty of participating in a “criminal group” which
misappropriated UAH 13.2 bln (about USD 1.66 bln) during March 2010 – February
2014. Kashkin was a nominal director of one of 400 companies in the group, and
later signed a deal with prosecutors and managed to avoid a prison sentence.
Based on the sentence, the court applied a special confiscation of cash and
securities owned by group companies that were deposited in Ukraine’s Oschadbank
and Privatbank. According to the ruling, the court confiscated USD 1.12 bln in
cash owned by the companies, as well as Ukrainian local government bonds with a
USD 1.08 bln total face value. The court ruling contains no details on how the
“criminal group” was misappropriating money, while mostly focusing on
description of where the allegedly stolen funds were allocated.

The National Security and Defense Council reported in
April 2017 that it managed to confiscate USD 1.5 bln
assets from Yanukovych, and USD 1.1 bln of confiscated cash officially came to the state budget the same month.
The rest of the confiscated assets were allegedly state bonds.

Alexander Paraschiy: The ruling
to confiscate a record amount of money in Ukraine’s history, made by a small
regional court based in Donetsk Oblast, raised a lot of questions in 2017. Now
that the ruling has been made public, it indicates just how poor the court’s
reasoning for making the confiscation was. Most likely, the poor grounding was
the main reason for making it secret. This increases the risk that companies
whose assets have been confiscated will successfully sue the state. We see the
risk for Ukraine to be obliged to return these money in the mid-term as
insignificant. But publication of the ruling itself comes at a time when
Ukraine’s law enforcement and judiciary system is already in the international
limelight for its poor performance and corruption, and the self-inflicted
damage only continues. We do not see the situation improving dramatically in
the near future, but the point at which implemented reform of the judiciary may
come due in part to the weight of international exposure.