In connection with the launch of the land market in Ukraine, which will start working on July 1, the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, the Ministry of Justice and the State Tax Service will publish clarifications on a number of important issues related to the sale of land, Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal said.
“Next week, the land market will start working in Ukraine. From July 1, Ukrainians will be able to exercise their legal right and independently dispose of land plots. In this regard, this week I instructed the Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, the Ministry of Justice and the State Tax Service to issue clarifications on the launch of the land market, the work of notaries and maximally assist in resolving issues that Ukrainians may have,” Shmyhal wrote on Facebook on Sunday.
He noted that the government has also made changes to the procedure for maintaining the State Register of Rights to Real Estate, which will ensure the correct sale procedure and the correct disclosure of all information in the register.
AGRARIAN MINISTRY, JUSTICE MINISTRY, LAND MARKET, TAX SERVICE
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.
The State Customs Service on July 16 was registered in the unified state register of legal entities, individual entrepreneurs and public organizations of the Ministry of Justice. “When you enter the register and you are happy. Today Maksym Nefyodov [the head of the State Customs Service appointed as a result of a tender] has registered the State Customs Service,” Finance Minister Oksana Markarova said on Facebook.
As reported, on July 13 Nefyodov completed his work as deputy minister of economic development and trade and from July 15 began to serve as head of the customs service.
The government of Ukraine in December 2018 decided to divide the State Fiscal Service into the State Customs Service and the State Tax Service. The State Tax Service was registered earlier, and the creation of the State Customs Service was delayed because of contesting the tender for the head of the department in court.
