You're reading: Prosecutor closes Rotterdam+ case for third time

Vitaliy Ponomarenko, a prosecutor from the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO), has closed the case of the Rotterdam+ coal pricing scheme for the third time, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) announced on April 9.

NABU detectives have been investigating the Rotterdam+ coal pricing formula that allegedly cost Ukrainian consumers $1.4 billion over three years.

Under the formula, consumers were made to pay extra for their electricity to cover the supposed cost of the delivery of coal from Rotterdam, even though no coal was ever actually delivered from there. According to NABU, Ukraine’s largest energy company, DTEK, illegally colluded with Ukraine’s energy officials to get the formula approved. The company denied wrongdoing.

The investigation was approaching its final stages when SAPO suspended it again. Now detectives cannot bring the case to court.

The NABU will appeal against this decision and ask Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova to replace Ponomarenko with a different prosecutor given that Ponomarenko is “biased.”

According to the NABU, only the court can decide on the future of the Rotterdam+ case.

This is not the first time that Ponomarenko disrupted the investigation of one of Ukraine’s biggest alleged corruption schemes.

In August, he partly suspended the case because he believed that it was impossible to establish the size of the losses induced by the Rotterdam+ pricing formula and that there was a lack of evidence against the six suspects, who included employees of DTEK.

NABU detectives had told the Kyiv Post that there is sufficient evidence to go to court, despite government expert witnesses refusing to provide testimony.

In October, the High Anti-Corruption Court renewed the investigation but Venediktova declined to replace Ponomarenko as prosecutor.

In January, he closed the case again but the court reopened it.

Read more: Why authorities are trying to kill key Rotterdam+ investigation

“The High Anti-Corruption Court has asked Zelensky’s Prosecutor General to replace Ponomarenko three times. Venediktova has ignored the decisions of the court, the inquiries of NABU, and dozens of publications in the media,” said Vitaly Shabunin, head of the Anti-Corruption Action Center’s executive board, in response to NABU’s announcement on April 9.

Former chief of the National Energy and Utilities Regulatory Commission and a suspect in NABU’s investigation, Dmytro Vovk, disagrees with Shabunin. He said that the Anti-Corruption Court has refused to replace Ponomarenko because it couldn’t prove that he is biased.

According to Vovk, the case was closed again because it has no elements of a crime and lacks evidence.