Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky invited Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammad Shia Sabbar al-Sudani to visit Ukraine to discuss areas of cooperation.
“During a meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Muhammad Shia Sabbar As-Sudani thanked for Iraq’s solidarity with Ukraine and the Ukrainian people, a tough stance in support of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of our state, the principle of inviolability of borders and compliance with international norms,” Zelensky wrote in his Telegram channel.
He met with Iraq’s prime minister Friday while in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
“We discussed possible ways for Iraq to participate in the implementation of the Ukrainian peace formula, which is a reliable tool to stop the war, as well as interaction in the humanitarian sphere. We are grateful to Iraq for the support of Ukraine within the framework of international organizations, in particular the resolutions of the UN General Assembly. Invited the Prime Minister of Iraq to visit Ukraine to discuss important areas of interstate cooperation”, – also wrote Zelenskyy.
A heated debate has erupted in Ukraine over claims that the fight against corruption is used to compromise influential business people who support government reforms, The Guardian has reported.
According to the authors of the article, the recent high-profile corruption investigations into the activities of the former head of Naftogaz Andriy Kobolev, ex-general director of Boryspil airport Yevhen Dykhne and former infrastructure minister Andriy Pyvovarsky may raise broader doubts about Ukraine’s domestic political situation and its ability to effectively use billions of European funds to recover from the war.
These concerns have been expressed to the U.S. State Department and the British Foreign Office, and are shared in part by Ukrainian anti-corruption campaigns.
At the same time, the article notes that the issue of corruption in Ukraine is diplomatically sensitive, as the situation could be exploited by Russian propaganda in its own interests. In particular, this could involve such Russian narratives as the hyperbole of corruption in Ukraine or the promotion of theses that anti-corruption institutions, in the creation of which Western allies and Ukrainian civil society played a major role, are “off the rails.”
“Corruption has long been Ukraine’s Achilles heel, with the country making little progress, rising slowly on Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index from 142nd in the world in 2014 to 122nd in 2021. Despite this, critics argue that some investigations have not focused on genuinely corrupt people, but instead have focused on businessmen who came into government to help revive Ukraine’s economy after the 2014 revolution. The question at stake is what kind of economy Ukraine will become after the war – and whether talented people will risk working for the state again,” the article stresses.
The Guardian cites the opinion of Transparency International Ukraine representative Kateryna Ryzhenko, who called, in particular, for reviewing the work of the Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine.
“This is a good sign that, despite the war, the anti-corruption ecosystem is not afraid to pursue ‘big names’ and to achieve a transparent review of these cases by independent judges. However, these cases have highlighted serious problems in the work of Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies,” The Guardian quoted Ryzhenko as saying.
Also referring to an unnamed Ukrainian ex-official who “participated in the campaign to create anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine,” the authors of the article write that the officers of these bodies seem to prosecute people for violations of corporate governance rather than outright corruption.
The article also discusses various factors which, according to the authors, may cause ambiguity in the anti-corruption segment. In particular, it notes that some critics accuse Ukraine of being overzealous, driven by a desire to show the EU a positive outcome before the possible accession negotiations next year. Others accuse Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies of ineptitude or a punitive mentality that is “still shaped by Soviet mistrust of profit.
The article quotes Andriy Kobolev as saying that “there is an attempt by some to discredit Ukrainian reformers – and, by extension, the anti-corruption bodies themselves.”
The article also discusses details of the trial of Kobolev, who, according to the authors, “faces 12 years in prison if found guilty of allegedly misleading Naftogaz board members by forcing them to pay him a huge bonus in 2018.”
This cites both the position of the prosecutor’s office, which argues that the payment violated a decree limiting the bonuses of state-owned enterprise managers and accuses Kobolev of misleading the Naftogaz board, and Kobolev himself, who denies any wrongdoing, stating that he warned the board about the decree, but an independent legal adviser said that the board had the exclusive right to decide on bonuses.
The article cites Kobolev’s counterargument that “the size of his bonus was determined not by him, but by the supervisory board. It goes against all the rules of corporate governance when the head of a company determines his own remuneration,” as well as the opinion of Claire Spottiswood, a former British gas regulator and former chair of Naftogaz’s supervisory board, who said that the board unanimously approved the bonus after receiving legal advice. In a statement she signed along with two other former supervisory board members, Spottiswood said that “it was a brave act of leadership on Kobolev’s part to take on an astoundingly successful case” that many thought was unwinnable. She also claims that she “never gave an interview to the NABU.”
Mark Savchuk, head of the civilian body that oversees the agency’s anti-corruption work, also criticized the NABU, telling the Kyiv Post newspaper, “The Ukrainian company received $4.6 billion, so no damage was done. These additional funds were then invested in Naftogaz’s infrastructure or paid to the state in the form of dividends. To say that the person who achieved this did it in a corrupt way is strange. In my opinion, the law enforcement agencies are making a mistake”.
Although, as the authors of the article acknowledge, Kobolev’s award “may be morally questionable,” they also appeal to the fact that “during his time at Naftogaz, he transformed the company from a failure into one that provided 15 percent of all Ukrainian state revenue,” and that “after the war began, he used his knowledge of the Russian gas industry to push for tougher sanctions against Moscow, as acknowledged in a letter written in his defense by John Herbst, the former US Ambassador to Ukraine.”
In addition, according to The Guardian, Kobolev is “not the only businessman caught up in this conflict. The second court case cited in the article is the case of Yevhen Dykhne, who, according to the authors, “was sentenced to five years in prison for leasing premises at Boryspil airport to private businesses, such as stores and cafes, without using the state competitive selection process, which would have taken two years.”
The article notes that Yevhen Dykhne himself “did not receive any personal benefit, but the court ruled that only the state has the right to lease the property and calculated that Dykhne’s actions resulted in a loss to the state of 15.7 million hryvnia.” Dykhne himself calls his verdict “worthy of Kafka.
The third high-profile trial mentioned in the article was the case of former Minister of Infrastructure Andrei Pivovarsky, who, according to the authors, “is accused of depriving the state of $30 million by deciding in 2015 that only half of the port fees at the Yuzhny seaport on the Black Sea should go to the Ukrainian Sea Ports Authority.
At the same time, the article quotes Pivovarsky himself as saying that the other half should go to private companies on the condition that they would reinvest the money received in maintenance and that his goal was to make the port more efficient.
The Guardian also notes that Pivovarsky was in charge of deregulating the Ukrainian economy at the time, and according to him, he notified the Justice Ministry about the reforms. He is not accused of receiving private benefits, but the NABU insists that only a state-owned company has the right to collect port fees.
The newspaper also quotes Pivovarsky’s recent Facebook post: “Only now I realized the price of my sincere desire to change the country for the better. I apologize to my wife and children for what they have gone through with me.”
Finally, The Guardian notes that the NABU “did not respond to a request for comment for this article.”
However, it notes that “critics (of the anti-corruption bodies – ed.) admit that some businessmen walk a fine line between showing initiative and abuse of office. But they warn that Ukrainian prosecutors distort the essence of financial crimes”.
“If someone doesn’t figure it all out, Ukraine may find that it gloriously won the war, and then find that it lost the world,” the authors of the article state.
On May 18, the Supreme Court of Ukraine started considering the appeal of the ex-general director of Boryspil Dykhne against the court’s sentence of five years in prison.
Over 4,000 participants joined the discussion on the future of Ukraine during the architectural and construction BUSINESS FORUM “Reconstruction of the country. Change strategy for the architects, developers and builders” organized by the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine together with the Media Group DMNTR | “House and Interior”.
“Since the Russian Federation full-scale invasion started, more than 50 million square meters of housing, which is about 9% of the entire housing stock, more than 1.2 thousand hospitals, more than 3 thousand educational institutions, thousands of kilometres of roads, hundreds of bridges, enterprises, infrastructure facilities have been destroyed or damaged. The homes of at least 1.3 million Ukrainian families have been damaged or destroyed, over 5 million Ukrainians have been forced to flee the country. We cannot know how long the war will go on but there is the task now to restore. And it has already started. To build better, al processes must be systematic, fast and transparent,” the President of CBU Lev Partskhaladze said, during the opening of the forum.
Over 9 hours of the main program discussion and 3 hours of the discussion within the framework of the Community Recovery Forum took place non-stop at several venues.
In the first panel of the main hall “Investments. Institutions. Reconstruction and integration of Ukraine into the global business context”, the state instruments and programmes for attracting international aid, which had already been implemented, were discussed.
In particular, the Head of Implementation of the State Agency for Restoration of Ukraine Vadym Nozdria described the agency functions and offices supporting at the local level, which help the communities to draw up the restoration projects and look for the donor financing based on priorities.
The co-founder of the RISE Ukraine Coalition, CEO at Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) Oleksii Dorohan spoke about the launch of the digital ecosystem DREAM and informed about filling it with potential projects.
“The restoration projects should be entered into the Sectoral System to receive state funding. 5 thousand projects have already been submitted through the system, and when the government decides, which projects it will finance from the Fund for Elimination of the Consequences of Armed Aggression, the decisions will be made based on the digital analysis and comparison of projects not on paper,” Dorohan said.
There was a heated debate regarding the most pressing issue, which is the IDPs housing provision and destroyed housing reconstruction. The most effective and democratic tool is a mortgage, that is why the options for making the state affordable mortgage program eOselya more effective were discussed.
“1 thousand loans worth 1,3 billion UAH have already been issued. It is not much but it is the beginning,” the Deputy Minister of Economy Oleksandr Hryban said.
The Head of the Transformation Office and official of the Ministry for Restoration of Ukraine Maksim Bakhmatov emphasized that only a small part of the aid would come as a grant and the most part would be loans or private investments. And the state, communities and business joint task is to guarantee transparent selection, implementation and financing procedures.
Lev Partskhaladze informed that CBU, the only representative of Ukraine, together with the European Construction Industry Federation (FIEC), which unites 32 countries, and others had developed a general draft of recommendations for the future reconstruction of Ukraine. It contains clauses regarding open and transparent procurements, requirements for the equipment and materials, etc.
“In particular, there are recommendations on payment security, setting appropriate standards, training for communities, contractors, architects and many others, allowing us to rebuild better than before and as quickly as possible,” he said.
At the architectural block, the participants focused on the reconstruction philosophy, energy efficiency and inclusiveness in particular. Already developed projects, which could speed up the reconstruction, were shown. The consultant of the GIZ Project “Promotion of Energy Efficiency and Implementation of the EU Directive about the Energy Efficiency in Ukraine” Svitlana Berzina focused on inevitable implementation of green standards, both in relation to building materials and projects in general.
Andrii Pashenko showed the educational institution typical projects. The Head of Construction Centre Project Office of the Steel Manufacturing Group METINVEST Tetiana Skrypka presented the “Steel Dream” project, houses with a metal frame of different heights and purposes.
During the discussion, the Co-founder and Principal Architect at Archimatika company Dmytro Vasyliev emphasized that the urban planning decisions of rural urbanism need to be rethought during the liberated territories restoration.
The topic of urban planning policy was the main one during the third panel discussion. The analytics presented by LUN (primary and secondary housing) and CBRE Ukraine (commercial real estate) showed a positive trend towards general market recovery and investment interest in Ukraine in particular. But the panel moderator, Founder and Head of Advanter Group Andrii Dligach, emphasized that the main issues had not been resolved yet, either at the state level or at the community level. Where exactly and who should we build the houses and industrial facilities for? Should we restore infrastructure with public/loan funds or private investments? How should we stimulate people to return and invest in business development of various formats, etc.?
In particular, the panellists, including active business representatives, emphasized that it is business that is able and has the opportunity to attract foreign investments (both direct and in form of funds). And the expectations of safety and legal protection conditions from the state institutions have not changed.
In addition, as a part of the BUSINESS FORUM, the Community Recovery Forum, which brought together the government officials, local self-government associations, regional military administrations, mayors and village heads, as well as the industry experts, was held.
During the discussion, the Chairman of the Secretariat of the Ukrainian Association of District and Regional Councils Yuriy Andriichuk pointed out the instruments that would stimulate investment in the east of the country are urgently needed. “We consider the 75 km border zone in the East and North should be a priority. Our territories should not be liberated only but there should be the life, and people should return,” he said. The expert drew attention to the fact that it is necessary to attract such tools as concessions and international insurance programs in addition to loans and grants.
“We have already compiled issues of 1,800 settlements in the gray zone. The insurance companies, which will provide the opportunities to create jobs, are needed for an investor to come there,” he said.
During the forum, the President of the Confederation of Builders of Ukraine Lev Partskhaladze and Head of the Association of Small Cities of Ukraine Pavlo Kozyrev signed the Memorandum of Cooperation on joint actions aimed at increasing the capacity of local self-governments of Ukrainian communities to restore the communities and territories affected by Russia’s military aggression. The cooperation provides advisory, informational, expert and analytical, as well as other support, organization and implementation of joint events, projects and programs using the digital platform “SUPERMARKET OF SOLUTIONS FOR COMMUNITIES” as an effective tool to interact with local self-government officials.
In total, more than 40 speakers took part in the forum discussions and several hundred viewers joined the online broadcast.
During the forum, architectural bureaus, manufacturers and suppliers of products and technologies presented their projects, products and technologies at the exhibition venues. There was also an exhibition of the works of All-Ukrainian competitions Ukrainian Urban Awards and Interior of the Year. At the same time, master classes of architects, urbanists, designers and developers were held on additional venues in a non-stop format from 12:00 to 21:00.
The organizers transferred 500,000 hryvnias to the Fund of the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky UNITED24, destination: Reconstruction of Ukraine.
Lev Partskhaladze emphasized that the BUSINESS FORUM primarily aimed at the consolidation of efforts of all those who will be involved in the reconstruction of Ukraine.
“That is why it is important to bring together government officials, business, communities, international community, etc. on one platform. I am sure that the reconstruction of Ukraine should be implemented quickly, efficiently and transparently due to the synergy and active participation of the professional public and local communities,” he concluded.
General sponsor: Metinvest
General Partner: ARCHICLUB
Finance Partner: Bank Globus
Strategic Partner: LUN, Forbes
Partners of the event: SAGA Development, TOPIAR, TOMA GROUP, Kolorit, Farba Service, Світ Меблів, Sensar Development, Міністерство дверей, KMD- facade solutions, BUDOVA, ADVANTAGE AUSTRIA Ukraine, Креатор-Буд, Інтергал-Буд, UGLA, MANEZH, Beloded Landscaping, Galleria Porcellanato, Інститут екологічного управління та збалансованого природокористування – проєкт GIZ Energy Efficiency and Climate Projects, СПС-БУД, Нове Століття, Royal House, ГК «Моноліт», Reynaers Aluminium Belgium, АГРОМАТ, ТОВ Данко, GalantPole, hansgrohe Ukraine, KyivBuild, ПБФ ГРУП, Оскар Груп, Ribas Hotels Group, Harmet Modular Houses, Caspian Servise, Natuzzi, Bosphorus Development
General Media Partner: Interfax-Ukraine
Media Partners: Build Portal, ProfBuild, Commercial Property, Хмарочос, АФНУ Україна, Асоціація малих міст України, Асоціація Інженерів-Консультантів України, UkraineInvest, HD Technopolygon, Українські Новини, ROYAL Design MAIN, Property Times, Soft Loft, Інформатор, StroyObzor, Marketer, Economist.com.ua, Портал нерухомості Budynok, Vidbudova, Mind. UA, Український центр сталевого будівництва, Zagorodna.com, Аспекти Будівництва, Home Ideas Supply, Comments.ua, Aspekty.Media, Київ | Вайб твоєї столиці, HIS.ua, LIGA ZAKON, Ukrainian Association of Government Relations Professionals and Lobbyists, Coatings-UA.com
CE “Municipal Guard” (Kiev) on May 15 again announced a tender for the purchase of voluntary vehicle insurance (hull insurance).
According to a message in the system of electronic public procurement Prozorro, the total expected cost of purchasing services is 1.563 million UAH.
The deadline for submitting bids is May 23.
As reported, a similar tender with an expected value of UAH 1.028 million was announced on April 21, 2023.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won 49.5% of the votes, while Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the opposition, got almost 45%, according to the results of counting about 50% of the votes in the Turkish presidential elections, Anadolu Agency reports.
According to the count, 55-year-old Sinan Ogan of the ATA (Ancestral Alliance) has so far received 5.3% of the vote.
At the same time, only 6.7% of overseas ballots have been counted. Of these, 56.3% of the votes were cast for Erdogan and 40.1% for Kılıçdaroğlu.
Polling stations across the country closed at 5:00 p.m. local time, as planned.
Source: https://secim.aa.com.tr/
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky met Sunday night in Paris with French President Emmanuel Macron.
“Paris. With each visit, Ukraine’s defense and offensive capabilities increase. The connection with Europe is growing stronger, and the pressure on Russia is increasing. I meet with my friend Emmanuel. We will discuss the most important points of bilateral relations,” he wrote in his Telegram channel.
