The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC) has put German building materials manufacturer Knauf on the list of international war sponsors due to its continued business activities in the Russian Federation. “Only for 2022, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of building materials Knauf will pay about $117 million to the budget of the terrorist country rf. In addition, the German company actively promotes mobilization in russia, sending its employees to the war against Ukraine,” – stated in the message NAPC.
According to its data, Knauf is the largest German investor in the construction sector of the Russian Federation – there the company is represented by a dozen subsidiaries, and also has 20 factories, six training and 29 resource centers in the system of secondary vocational education. In addition, on the territory of one of the production facilities Knauf in Tatarstan organized the Russian production of UAV Shahed-136, the report notes.
As noted by the NAPC, according to the German media, the Russian managers of the Knauf plant in Krasnogorsk near Moscow coordinated with the authorities lists of mobilization.
In addition, the management of Knauf is closely connected by diplomatic relations with representatives of the political regime of the Russian Federation, points out the NAPC. Thus, the co-owner of the company Nikolaus Wilhelm Knauf 23 years until March 2022 had the status of Honorary Consul of the Russian Federation with representation in Nuremberg. Despite the fact that Knauf left this post after the start of the full-scale invasion, the company stated its intention to continue working in the Russian Federation.
Knauf also takes part in construction exhibitions in RF, and has organized its own Russian-made construction technology festival.
“Specialists from Knauf continue to build cities to the aggressor country. This contrasts particularly cynically with the thousands of destroyed residential houses in Ukraine by the aggressor’s army, which is financed, among other things, from Knauf’s taxes,” the NAPC notes.
Knauf, NAPC, National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption
The National Anti-Corruption Agency (NACC) has renewed the status of five Greek carrier companies in the list of “International Sponsors of War” on the basis of the companies’ failure to fulfill the conditions agreed during negotiations on their removal from the list, the press service of the NACC reported.
We are talking about five Greek companies, Dynacom Tankers Management (DTM); Delta Tankers LTD; Thenamaris Ships Management Inc.; Minerva Marine; TMC Tankers LTD, which have not publicly condemned Russian aggression.
“Recently, the Ukrainian and Greek sides started negotiations where they offered the companies to fulfill the following conditions: to stop the practices of switching off transponders, overloading from board to board, to publicly condemn Russian aggression. The issue of switching off transponders and transshipment from board to board was addressed in the 11th EU sanctions package. However, these five Greek carrier companies did not fulfill the requirement to publicly condemn Russian aggression within the specified timeframe. Therefore, the NAACP has renewed their status on the list of “International sponsors of war”, – reported the press service of the NAACP.
Five Greek companies were included in the list of “sponsors of war” in the summer of 2022. Based on the data of the application for monitoring of naval traffic Marine Traffic detectives calculated that Greek shipowners took out of rf one third of the volume of oil that was sent for export last spring – 19 million tons for $ 16 billion.
According to NAPC, of this volume in March-May 2022, 31 tankers of 3.4 million tons were transported by TMS Tankers Ltd, 28 tankers (2.68 million tons) by Minerva Maritime (Minerva Marine Inc.), 22 tankers (1.43 million tons) by Thenamaris Ships Management Inc, 11 tankers (1.3 million tons) by Delta Tankers Ltd, 12 tankers (1.04 million tons) by Dynacom Tankers Management Ltd.
The NAPC recalled that the list of “International Sponsors of War” on the portal “War and Sanctions” is a powerful reputational tool to achieve integrity in the supply chain in the international dimension, the exit of international business from the Russian Federation and, accordingly, to reduce the financial and technological ability of the terrorist country to kill Ukrainians. One of the platform’s “leverage” is cooperation with the World-Check database, which is used by banks and insurance companies to assess risks.
The National Agency for the Prevention of Corruption (NAPC), after reviewing the finalized version of draft law No. 5655 on the reform of urban planning activities, assessed it as inconsistent with the anti-corruption strategy and recommends finalizing the draft law.
“According to the anticorruption strategy for 2021-2025 the priority spheres for introduction of anticorruption measures are determined, in particular construction, land relations and infrastructure. The problems in this area are determined, among others, by the imperfection of the existing instruments of control and lack of transparency in the construction processes. After reviewing the finalized version of the draft law, it was found that the proposed wording does not solve the problems identified and is therefore not consistent with the anti-corruption strategy,” – said deputy chairman of the NACP Andriy Vishnevetskiy in a letter to the specialized committee of the Verkhovna Rada, the agency “Interfax-Ukraine” got acquainted with.
Thus, the comments and recommendations of the NAPC among other things noted that the bill number 5655 does not provide a mechanism for remedying violations of the law identified through the implementation of supervision, there are no sanctions for the objects of supervision in the case of violations and it is not indicated how these violations must be resolved. There is also no procedure for cancellation of the right of construction obtained on the basis of submitted documents that contradict the urban planning legislation. That is why it is suggested to provide for a procedure of termination of the right for construction and annulment of permits in case of violation revealed by the supervisory authority.
The draft law No. 5655 suggests supplementing the law “On regulation of town planning activity” with new Article 383 and stipulating that a construction object constructed or under construction in violation of restrictions of land use cannot be considered as unauthorized construction if such restrictions are not stated in the town planning conditions and restrictions and/or are not included into the State Land Cadastre.
“The above circumstances practically legalize construction in violation of restrictions on land use. Regarding the availability of information about the restrictions of land use in the State Land Cadastre it should be noted that the information entered in the State Land Cadastre is incomplete, is in a state of creation and may not contain data about a particular plot of land,” reads the comments.
In this case NAPK recommends to provide as a reason for refusal to grant urban conditions and restrictions (UZK) inconsistency of data and information in order to obtain UZK to the requirements of urban planning documents, and during the development of projects and examination to establish compliance with the requirements of urban planning documents at the local level. In addition, NAPC filed a number of other proposals.
