Shareholders in PJSC Kharkiv tractor plant say that the accusations brought by the SBU Security Service of Ukraine against the plant's management are groundless. They say the charges were made in order to seize the plant's bank accounts and announced plans to protect their rights in courts, including international ones.
The shareholders said in a statement issued on June 6 morning that the SBU’s accusations against the plant’s director general, that he had allegedly prepared foundry equipment for dismantling in order to ship it to Russia, are groundless.
“As PJSC Kharkiv tractor plant is in private ownership and is not on the list of strategically important enterprises (Cabinet resolution No. 83 dated March 4, 2015). It does not fulfill defense orders, but produces civil equipment. Its business activity is guided solely by its shareholder interests,” the statement said.
The enterprise uses its assets in line with economic expediency and market rules, the shareholders said.
According to the statement, the plant was built in Soviet times and was designed to manufacture 50,000 tractors per year. However, the ratio of production capacity use at its foundry shop is not more than 5 percent. The low workload and obsolete and obsolescent equipment makes it uncompetitive for it to produce metalware.
“One of the solutions is to outsource that part of the production process with the possibility of scrapping completely worn production facilities. It is surprising that standard measures to ensure economic recovery have become a reason for opening a criminal case on trumped-up charges of ‘sabotage,'” the statement said.
The shareholders say another reason for the charges was the scanning of technical documentation, which let the SBU conclude that the plant allegedly planned to transfer this documentation to the aggressor state, Russia.
“Firstly, the plant, indeed, scanned all paper documentation as per schedule to ensure its better safety. Secondly, scanned documents concerned the production of tractors without classified status… What is more, all the blueprints and other classified documents were transferred to Kharkiv Morozov Design Bureau in March 2010 after the Industrial Policy Ministry issued resolution No. 10/1-2-1705, dated 13.11.2009, on the closure of the classified department at Kharkiv tractor plant due to its irrelevance. Accordingly, the charges of ‘sabotage’ mentioned in the SBU’s accusations are baseless,” the statement said.
The shareholders note that due to the criminal cases, which entailed the seizure of property and all bank accounts, the plant’s work is paralyzed. All the workers have been sent on leave and there is a three-month delay in the payment of wages to 2,500 employees. Also the same time, the company cannot pay all taxes, despite the availability of funds in its accounts. It has discontinued shipments of finished products, components, spare parts and materials from nearly a hundred Ukrainian enterprises.
Shareholders have announced the plant “has hired one of the world’s most competent and reputable auditors – an international audit firm from the Big Four [PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG],” the statement reads.
In addition, the company claims that “due to inability to meet financial obligations, Kharkiv tractor plant is forced to turn to the procedure of pre-trial readjustment as the only possible way out of an artificially created crisis.”
Shareholders say that “the manner the abovementioned activity [against it] is being performed… suggests a deliberate destabilization of the plant’s work with a view to its subsequent seizure.” “And we intend to go in all courts, including international ones, to punish those responsible,” the statement said.
“We will initiate the creation of an ad hoc investigative commission of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine. It will name SBU representatives who pressured the plant, and it could learn whose commercial interests SBU agents acted in the interests of,” the shareholders said.
In addition, the plant’s owners intend to apply to courts in keeping with practice of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on facts of public “groundless accusations against the general director of Kharkiv tractor plant,” because they believe that the statements and actions by the SBU towards him have grossly violated his rights as a person and a citizen of the state of Ukraine.
