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Posted On

28
March
2023

High Anti-Corruption Court finds ex-manager of Burisma Group guilty of complicity in attempting to bribe leadership of anti-corruption agencies

KYIV. March 28 (Interfax-Ukraine) – A panel of judges of the High Anti-Corruption Court on Tuesday approved a plea agreement concluded between the prosecutor of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and one of the former heads of the Burisma Group, affiliated with the former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources under President Viktor Yanukovych, Mykola Zlochevsky.

According to the SAPO press service, in accordance with the agreement, the court found the former manager guilty of complicity in providing an unlawful benefit to a person in a particularly responsible position for performing actions in the interests of a third party using the power granted to him, by prior conspiracy by a group of persons, that is, committing a criminal offense under Part 5 of Article 27 and Part 4 of Article 369 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.

“According to the verdict of the court, he (Zlochevsky) was sentenced to five years in prison. On the basis of Article 75 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, the court released the person from serving the sentence with a trial, with a probationary period of one year,” the report says.

It is noted that, according to the terms of the agreement, the person is obliged to cooperate with the prosecution, and within five days after the approval of the plea agreement, transfer UAH 100 million to a special account in the UNITED24 fund for the Army of Drones joint project of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the State Service of Special Communications and Information, and the Ministry of Digital Transformation.

As reported, in June 2020, the NABU and the SAPO caught three people red-handed immediately after providing them with more than $5 million in unlawful benefits for further transfer to the head of the SAPO, so that he closes the criminal proceedings on suspicion of the ex-minister, transferred in the fall of 2019 by the Prosecutor General’s Office to the NABU in accordance with the jurisdiction, in part concerning ex-Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Zlochevsky.