The Italian government plans to hold a conference on April 26 with the participation of Italian companies on the reconstruction of Ukraine, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said.
“Today, together with the G7 foreign ministers, I announced that the government will organize a conference for the resumption of Ukraine on April 26 with the participation of Italian companies. Our commitment to peace and freedom for the Ukrainian people continues,” Tajani wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) allowed Tikrait LLC (Kiev) to privatize Zhovtnevyi distillery (Karlovka, Poltava region), which is part of state enterprise Ukrspirt, for 85 million and 1 UAH.
The relevant decision of March 2, 2023 is reported on the AMCU website on Friday.
According to the Unified State Register of legal entities and natural persons-entrepreneurs, the ultimate beneficiary of “Tikrait” with a share capital of 25 thousand UAH is Alexander Nazarenko. The company is engaged in activities in the field of law, consulting on business matters and activities in the field of real estate agencies. Earlier the company had no experience in privatization of alcohol assets in Ukraine.
According to the State Property Fund (SPF), the auction for the privatization of Zhovtnevyi distillery was held on December 7, 2022. The main activity of the company is the production of organic chemicals.
SPF specified that the asset consists of 93 buildings and structures with a total area of 13.5 thousand square meters. m. It includes production and administrative buildings, a distillery, granaries, cooling towers, a carpenter’s workshop, a sawmill, a chalk-and-oil station, a treacle station, alcohol storages, hangars, pumping stations, livestock farms, 23 vehicles and 506 pieces of equipment. The distillery is equipped with all necessary technological equipment and communications.
The company has seven land plots in Karlivka with a total area of 90.2 hectares, which belong to the state enterprise on the right of permanent use.
According to the SPF, Ukrspirt received UAH 58 million in revenue in 2020, UAH 162 million in 2021, and UAH 158 million in the first nine months of 2022.
As reported, the Office of the Prosecutor General in August 2021 announced the suspicion of the acting director of Zhovtnevyi distillery in evasion of excise tax in the manufacture of diluent and disinfectants in August 2020 for a total of about 182 million UAH.
The State Property Fund plans in 2023 to complete the full privatization of the alcohol industry, for which it will hold online auctions for the sale of 26 distilleries across the country.
In general, for 2.5 years, Ukraine has already held 39 successful auctions for the sale of distilleries, which added more than 2 billion UAH to the country’s budget. In particular, between September and December 2022, the SPF held 12 such auctions. The winning bidders offered more than 849 million hryvnias for these objects, which exceeded their aggregate starting price by three times. Thus, distilleries became one of the most popular destinations for investment in state property last year.
The number of participants of the non-banking financial market in February 2023 decreased by 53 to 1384, according to the website of the National Bank of Ukraine.
The number of banks in February remained unchanged at 67.
The register includes one insurer with a special status. At the same time, 13 financial companies, one insurer, two pawnshops, one credit union, one leasing company and three insurance brokers have been excluded from the register voluntarily, and the other 30 financial companies, one pawnshop and one leasing company – voluntarily.
As of February 28, the non-banking market had 115 non-life insurers (116 in January) and 12 life insurers (the number has not changed), one insurer with special status, 176 pawnshops (179), 159 credit unions (16), 95 leasing companies (97), 701 financial companies (744), 58 insurance brokers (61) and 67 collection companies (the number has not changed).
In addition, 25 banking groups (number has not changed) and 22 non-banking financial groups (23) are recognized as operating in the market.
In the payment market operate 37 payment systems (38), created by residents, including state, and 16 international payment systems, created by non-residents (the number has not changed). In addition, companies providing financial payment services operate in the market, including three banks issuing electronic money (the number did not change). Other entities operating in the payment market include 41 commercial agents (40) and 35 technological operators of payment services (the number has not changed).
In February, the National Bank received 345 requests from market participants for registration and licensing actions. The number of inquiries on financial companies, pawnshops and lessors amounted to 160. The number of inquiries on credit institutions (banks and credit unions) – 89, insurers – 74, payment institutions – 22.
The National Reserve “Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra” terminates the lease agreement with the Svyato-Uspensky Monastery of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarchate) from March 29, 2023.
“Between the national reserve “Kiev-Pechersk Lavra” and the Svyato-Uspenska Kiev-Pechersk Lavra (male monastery) of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church concluded an agreement №2 from July 19, 2013 on the free use of religious organization of religious buildings and other property, which is state property,” – said in a letter of the acting director of the reserve, which is published on the website of the monastery.
The letter says that the interdepartmental working group for the preparation of proposals and recommendations for the organization of certain tasks related to the activities of religious organizations in Ukraine, during its work, found a violation of the contract on the use of state property by the monastery.
In this regard, given the findings of the interdepartmental working group and the letter of the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy, the reserve warns about the termination of the contract with the March 29, 2023.
“In order to carry out the procedure for acceptance and transfer of state property to the monastery must take measures to release the buildings and structures (property), which are state property and are on the balance of the reserve, at the address: Kiev, Lavra Street, 11, Kiev, Lavra Street, 15 until 29.03.2023,” – the letter says.
Wind gusts of 15-20 m/s are expected on Sunday night, March 12, in Kyiv and Kyiv region, the press services of the Kyiv City State Administration and Kyiv Regional Military Administration report, citing information from the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center.
“Hazard level I, yellow. Such weather conditions can lead to complications in the work of the energy sector, utilities and disruption of traffic on certain sections of roads and streets. During strong gusts of wind, keep windows tightly closed. On the street, stay away from trees, billboards and power lines,” the statement said.
The presidential decree on sanctions against Parimatch LLC and a number of other companies of Parimatch holding led to the almost complete termination of its activities in Ukraine, the CEO of Parimatch holding Maxim Lyashko said at a press conference in Kiev on Saturday.
“Overnight banks started disabling the ability to withdraw client funds. About 250 million UAH of clients’ funds have been blocked, they are in the company’s current accounts,” he said, expressing confidence that players will be able to access their funds.
CEO of LLC “Parimatch”, which in Ukraine owns a license for betting and online casinos, Natalia Gilevich said that we are talking about several tens of thousands of customers.
Lyashko added that banks began to break off relations with the company in the last two or three weeks, and state banks were the first to do so.
According to him, the presidential decree on sanctions has not yet been officially published, which means it has not entered into force, so theoretically clients should be able to withdraw funds, but in fact they are blocked.
The CEO of Parimatch also noted that the company, under the terms of the license, continues to maintain the system, and players can continue to bet, but when the decree officially comes into force, the company will stop the work of the system.
Lyashko pointed out that the sanctions affected the main B2C companies in the holding, for which the Ukrainian market represented “the lion’s share. According to him, there is also a B2B direction in the holding. (In January of this year, the holding announced the launch of a new company, GR8 Tech, which will work on the B2B market and is the successor to Parimatch Tech – IF-U).
Speaking about the impact of the Ukrainian sanctions on the holding company’s operations on other markets, the CEO of Parimatch stressed that the reputational blow caused would be almost impossible to repair, but the Ukrainian sanctions do not apply to other markets and there is no broad practice of other jurisdictions adopting sanctions following Ukraine.
Lyashko once again noted that the company does not have any documents and a generally clear understanding of why sanctions were imposed on it. “The wording that all these companies have to do with Russian assets is categorically untrue,” the CEO said, recalling that relations with the Russian market were finally severed a year ago.
As for taxes, he said that last year the company paid 280 mln hryvnia in taxes due to its transition to a 2% simplified tax, whereas after the company abolished that option it paid over 400 mln hryvnia in January-February this year, and expected to pay 250-280 mln hryvnia in March and a comparable profit.
The representatives of the company said that according to the materials of the SBU the Economic Security Bureau is investigating the tax payments by “30-something” gambling market companies, among which there is “Parimatch”, but there are no decisions on it at the moment.
When asked whether any demands were made of the holding company or whether the sanctions were an attempt to clear the market, Lyashko said that “they may be inclined to something or clear it for someone”, but there was no evidence, so the company would not comment on this and would seek to lift the sanctions.
As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree on March 10, which enacted the same day the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (NSDC) to impose sanctions against 120 individuals and 287 legal entities. Among them are Ukrainian LLC “Parimatch”, Financial Company “Leo”, “PokermatchUA”, “Your Betting Company” and “Play Fan Investment”.
From the Parimatch holding, the new sanctions also affected Parimatch United Investments Limited (UK) Fullgear Investments Ltd, Auspicia Limited (both Cyprus), Suncast Furure N.V. (Curacao, Netherlands), and Parimatch Foundation Limited (Cyprus), as well as a whole group of individuals abroad.
Of the five companies in the register that received a license from the Gambling and Lottery Regulatory Commission (KRAIL) for betting activities, the decree affected three: Parimatch, Your Betting Company and Play Fan Investment. The latter two already had their licenses revoked by the CRAIL earlier – in September and December 2022, respectively. The two remaining companies in the registry are bookmaker company “Favbet” and “Vbet Ukraine”.
