President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will visit France on Friday, April 16, where he is to meet with President Emmanuel Macron, Le Figaro reported. It is noted that the visit is associated with an increase in tension in Ukraine due to the military buildup of the Russian Federation on its borders. The presidents of the two countries will meet during a working lunch at the Elysee Palace.
As reported, Zelensky may meet with French President Emmanuel Macron to discuss escalation in Donbas and reforms in Ukraine.
“The main purpose of the visit is to meet with Macron tête-à-tête,” French Ambassador to Ukraine Etienne de Poncins said in an interview with KyivPost.
National bank of Ukraine’s official rates as of 14/04/21
Source: National Bank of Ukraine
Official rates of banking metals from national bank as of April 14
One troy ounce=31.10 grams
The Ocean Shipyard (Mykolaiv) has begun work on the creation of a new design for the dry dock gate, which will reliably seal the dock and allow the regular use of the dry dock.
According to a company press release, the new gate consists of eight sections, each weighing about 100 tonnes. In general, more than 800 tonnes of steel will be used for its creation.
The Ocean dry dock is 355 meters long, 60 meters wide, 17.1 m deep. It is one of the largest in Europe and so far the only one available in Ukraine. The area of the front dock is 35,000 square meters. The dry dock is equipped with two gantry cranes with a lifting capacity of 320 tonnes each and four erecting cranes a lifting capacity of 80 tonnes each.
The press service said that the restoration of the dry dock will enable the Ocean shipyard to return to the heavy-duty shipbuilding market, as well as to repair ships up to 300 meters in length.
The completion of the restoration of the dry dock gate is planned in the fourth quarter of 2021.
Mykolaiv Shipyard Ocean LLC (before April 2011 Wadan Yards Okean, before December 2008 Damen Shipyard’s Okean, before February 2001 – Shipyard Ocean).
The shipyard was established in 1951. It is one of the three largest shipbuilding enterprises in Ukraine. The main activities are shipbuilding and ship repair. The plant has two technological lines for the construction of medium and large-tonnage vessels. The large-tonnage line is used for building tankers and container ships, while the medium-tonnage lines are used to build barges, pontoons and tugs.
Since 2019, the Ocean Shipyard not only completes shipbuilding and ship repair orders, but also manufactures metal structures for infrastructure projects. Among them are the bridge on Volodymyrska Hirka and the Shuliavsky overpass in Kyiv.
The owner of the plant is businessman from Mykolaiv Vasyl Kapatsyna.
The Ministry for Development of Economy, Trade and Agriculture of Ukraine has approved the hygiene requirements for the production and circulation of mineral and spring waters that meet the requirements of EU legislation on their exploitation and marketing, the ministry said in a press release on Tuesday. According to the report, order No. 741 was signed by Minister Ihor Petrashko on April 13.
The document also defines the methods of processing mineral and mine waters and the requirements for the equipment used in their production.
The order, in particular, regulates the labeling of mineral waters and, among other things, prohibits the use of the indication on the labelling attributing prophylactic or medicinal properties to water. These requirements shall not apply to waters which are medicinal products, as well as to waters consumed by people at source or natural exit to the surface.
According to the Economy Ministry, the order meets the requirements of Directive 2009/54/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 June 2009 on the exploitation and marketing of natural mineral waters and will enter into force three months after the date of its official publication.
According to an explanatory note to the document, the implementation of the order will create uniform requirements for the production and circulation of natural mineral and spring waters, will have a positive impact on the health of the population and on the market environment in the circulation of this product.
“The order will introduce European requirements for natural mineral waters, remove barriers to investment in the production of such waters in Ukraine and create conditions for fair competition in the market,” Deputy Minister Serhiy Hluschenko said.
The Ukrainian government has allowed the Ministry of Justice to engage a legal advisor to defend the state in an Oleh Zhukovsky’s $300 million lawsuit filed on January 4 this year against the National Bank of Ukraine with the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida. According to an explanatory note to the document, the National Bank received a statement of claim on February 5 this year, after which it turned to the Ministry of Justice for help. On March 11, an interdepartmental working group was created to protect the interests of the state in this case, which considered it necessary to involve the advisor.
According to the lawsuit, Zhukovsky is seeking to recover $102.2 million of the principal amount of the debt and the interest, penalties and fines on deposits in Brokbusinessbank, invested by companies ZUKK Trading Limited, Intertransgroup LLC and ex-MP from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc Mykola Kovzel and his assistant Vitaliy Didylivsky in 2012-2013. They transferred the rights to compensation for losses to Zhukovsky, who engaged Shutts & Bower in the lawsuit.
It claims that the officials of the National Bank were “accomplices” of the scheme for allegedly withdrawing money from Brokbusinessbank by business man Serhiy Kurchenko, and after a part of the funds in the amount of $172 million was returned as a result of special confiscation in 2017, they sent them to pay interest on eurobonds of Ukraine to American mutual funds including Franklin Templeton Investments, T. Rowe Price and TCW.
According to the lawsuit, criminal cases of embezzlement related to the case are being investigated in Ukraine and the United States, which corroborates the plaintiff’s charges. In addition to Brokbusinessbank and Kurchenko, who bought it in 2013 without the permission of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine and his Real Bank, the plaintiff also accuses ex-Governor of the National Bank Serhiy Arbuzov, who allegedly assisted them and Ihor Sorkin, who replaced him, as well as Viktor Yanukovych, who was then President of Ukraine. The list of those involved also included Valeriya Gontareva, who became governor of the NBU after the escape of Yanukovych, under whom the deposits in Brokbusinessbank could not be returned.
In addition, the list of those involved contains ex-owners of PrivatBank Ihor Kolomoisky and Hennadiy Boholiubov, their American partners Mordechai Korf and Uriel Laber, companies from the Optima group, as well as Ukrnafta and PrivatBank. The lawsuit alleges that the ex-owners of PrivatBank were involved in laundering Kurchenko’s money and buying real estate in the United States using this money.
