The head of the collective with additional liability Zhytomyrsksky Confectionary Factory “ZHL” Ihor Boyko at the start of 2017 filed suit in the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague against Ukraine.
“We filed the suit at the beginning on 2017. The arbiters have already been selected and preparations for court hearings are underway,” Boyko told the Kyiv-based Interfax-Ukraine news agency.
He said the procedure for preparing for the court session would be lengthy. Ukraine thus far has not presented its lawyers. The approval process is being conducted via Ukraine’s Justice Ministry, which is very difficult to communicate with, Boyko said.
“Ukraine has expropriated my business. We filed a motion for compensation and restitution of losses. My entire business in Ukraine and abroad suffered as a result. My firms abroad, including in Switzerland – official ones – issued credits for equipment, raw materials and credits to the Zhytomyrsky factory. Now they have problems and we do not control the enterprise,” the businessman said.
Head of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk earlier assessed the value of the factory at Hr 2 billion.
As earlier reported, in December 2015 Boyko first officially declared that his confectionary plant had been raided by [Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine deputy] Serhiy Pashinsky, Serhiy Tishchenko, Pavlo Petrenko, [Interior Minister of Ukraine] Arsen Avakov “with the active participation” of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. According to Boyko, as a result the enterprise was removed from the Unified State register and taken over by force.
The confectionary factory in Zhytomyr was founded in 1944 and produces more than 250 different candies. It was one of the top three Ukrainian candy producers and occupied first place among Ukrainian confectionary exports, shipping to 36 countries. The production volume of the factory is 80,000 tons of production a year, with 28 production lines.
