Media: Former environment minister Zlochevsky returns to Ukraine

Former Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources Mykola Zlochevsky, a beneficiary of oil and gas company Burisma, has returned to Ukraine, the online newspaper Ekonomichna Pravda has reported referring to a source in the market.

“[He] came to Kyiv the other day and has already held several meetings,” the source said.

Zlochevsky was Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources in the government of ex-Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov from July 2010 to April 2012.

Late in 2014, Zlochevsky left Ukraine. It became known in early 2015 that the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) had put him on the wanted list on suspicion of illegal enrichment. Zlochevsky was suspected of committing crime under Part 3 of Article 368-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine (illegal enrichment).

As the Ukrainian media reported, Zlochevsky’s company sold gas to the companies of the incumbent president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, and his entourage. In December 2016, TSN correspondent Olha Vasylevska reported that Zlochevsky had met with Member of Parliament from the Petro Poroshenko Bloc parliamentary faction Ihor Kononenko in Vienna, Austria. However, this fact was denied by Kononenko.

In September 2016, Burisma’s press service said that Kyiv’s Pechersky District Court had ruled that the PGO should remove Zlochevsky from the wanted list.

In January 2017, Burisma announced the closure of all procedural and judicial actions against Zlochevsky and the Burisma Group’s operation companies in Ukraine.

Burisma Holdings has a controlling stake in LLC KUB-Gas, as well as owns Ukrainian producing companies: Energy & Service Company Esko-Pivnich, LLC Pari, the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company, and Aldea. Its license portfolio includes gas fields in the Dnieper-Donets Basin, the Pannonian (Carpathian) Basin, the Azov and Kuban Basin. Burisma Holdings owns 20 licenses for hydrocarbon production. Natural gas accounts for 99 percent of its output. Burisma’s beneficiary is Zlochevsky.