Andriy Pasishnik, the executive director of Naftogaz Ukraine, has left the country after he was summoned for questioning in the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. Pasishnik is facing criminal charges for interfering in the work of a public official.
Pasishnik was summoned for questioning at the bureau on March 9, but didn’t show up.
The previous night, he sent investigators a telegram saying he had had to go abroad for emergency medical treatment. He won’t return until April 1, he warned.
The bureau is investigating Pasishnik and possibly lawmaker Ihor Kononenko as well for interfering in the work of the Economy Ministry.
On Feb. 3, Economy Minister Aivaras Abromavicius announced his resignation, saying people close to President Petro Poroshenko were interfering with his work and trying to perpetuate corrupt schemes in state-owned enterprises under his ministry’s control.
Abromavicius said that Kononenko, a long-time business partner of Poroshenko, had tried to install Pasishnik as deputy economy minister without the consent of Abromavicius.
Pasishnik confirmed that he had applied for the position, but said he wasn’t backed by Kononenko.
“I didn’t expect that the anti-corruption bureau would look for a scapegoat instead of refuting the emotional statement of the economy minister,” Pasishnik said in a statement published on his Facebook page on March 9.
Kononenko, who was questioned by the bureau in February, denied interfering in the work of the Economy Ministry and said that lawmakers from the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko faction in parliament were unhappy with Abromavicius’ performance. He said the minister’s accusations were “an emotional reaction” to criticism.
The anti-corruption bureau says it suspects that Pasishnik put pressure on Abromavicius in late January and early February to get the job in his ministry, and launched a criminal investigation. If found guilty, Pasishnik faces from three to five years in prison.
Pasishnik said on Facebook that the accusations were “absurd,” as there was no point in him putting pressure on Abromavicius since the minister “didn’t make any decisions on appointments in the ministry.”
Abromavicius, who remains in his job pending the approval of his February resignation by parliament, said in leaving that he and his team didn’t want to be a cover for continued corruption in Ukraine. He also said he didn’t want to be “a puppet for power brokers” and named Kononenko, the deputy head of the pro-presidential faction in parliament, as one of those brokers.
Abromavicius claimed that Kononenko wanted to have his own man in the Economy Ministry in order to control two state-owned energy companies, Naftogaz Ukraine and UkrGazDobycha. Historically Ukraine’s state-owned enterprises have been milked financially by the politically connected insiders who control them. It’s one of the major reasons why Abromavicius and others want to sell most of the nation’s largely unprofitable – except, perhaps, for those who control them – 3,000 state-owned enterprises.
Abromavicius, a native of Lithuania, was one of the technocrat officials who came to the government from the private sector in 2014 following the EuroMaidan Revolution.
To prove his claims, Abromavicius published screenshots of a Viber chat between him and Pasishnik. In it, the two discuss the possibility of Pasishnik getting the deputy minister job. Abromavicius says there are no openings now, but Pasishnik says he’s certain he will get the job.
“I got this offer from the president’s team,” he writes. “I talked to Kononenko. He said Prime Minister (Arseniy Yatsenyuk) had approved.” Pasishnik later said that the Viber chat was “nothing more than a friendly conversation.”
