The Prosecutor General’s Office is not investigating the abuse of power case against Evhen Bakulin, the former head of state-owned oil and gas monopoly Naftogaz, the office said in written comments sent to the Kyiv Post on Oct. 10.
“No criminal cases against the
former head of Naftogaz Ukrainy have been recorded in the United Register of
Pre-Trial Investigations by the Prosecutor General’s Office, and (no cases) have
been investigated,” the office wrote.
The comments contradicted a
statement released by the Prosecutor General’s Office in September in which it
said that it had resumed the case against Bakulin after news on the closure of
the case triggered a public outcry.
Bakulin is
currently running in the Oct.
26 parliamentary
election in single-member district 106, which is located in the city of Severodonetsk
in the Luhansk Oblast, in what critics see as an attempt to get parliamentary
immunity and escape justice.
The Bakulin case is one of the investigations
targeting the corrupt practices of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s regime
launched after the EuroMaidan revolution, which overthrew him on Feb. 22.
Tetiana
Chornovol, head of the Anti-Corruption Bureau, said in September that the
closure of the case was a signal for corrupt officials that nothing had changed
since the revolution.
Bakulin headed Naftogaz in 2007
and in 2010 to 2014.
According to the investigators, in 2012 the monopoly
supplied oil products and natural gas worth 1.9 billion hryvnas to two
Simferopol-based companies reportedly affiliated with tycoon Serhiy Kurchenko
almost free of charge as the companies have underpaid 1.4 billion hryvnas for
the supplies so far.
Bakulin was arrested in March and
released on bail in April in a move that was lambasted by critics as corrupt
and illegitimate. It is not clear if he is in Ukraine or abroad.
Kyiv Post
staff writer Oleg Sukhov can be reached at [email protected].
