Ukraine’s parliament on Nov. 20 voted down a motion to strip parliamentary immunity from lawmaker Stanislav Berezkin, whom prosecutors suspect of fleecing the state savings bank of $20 million dollars.
Only 160 lawmakers voted for the removal of immunity from Berezkin, a member of a 19-member Volya Narodu faction, while a minimum of 226 votes is required for a resolution to pass.
Prosecutors suspect Berezkin of misappropriating a $20-million loan from the state-owned Oschadbank during the time he owned Creative Group, once a major Ukrainian agricultural holding company that has since gone bankrupt.
Detectives of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau claim that five years ago, executives of Creative Group companies – in cahoots with top managers of Oschadbank – forged paperwork so that the group could receive a $20 million loan from the bank, supposedly for the purchase of sunflower seeds.
However, the money was instead siphoned off abroad to offshore firms registered in Belize and Switzerland and used to buy corporate rights to companies that owned elite property, according to the NABU statement from Oct. 23.
Anti-corruption prosecutors have issued notes of suspicion to 10 people allegedly involved in the scheme, including MP Berezkin’s son Maksim, the former director of Creative Group. Berezkin himself, who is protected from prosecution by lawmaker’s immunity, was a member of parliament for the Party of Regions in 2013 while owning the agroholding and being head of its supervisory board.
Speaking in the parliament on Nov. 20, Berezkin called the allegations against him “a bad detective story full of fiction but lacking facts.”
“We are accused of moving the money out of the country,” Berezkin said. “Why does NABU conceal the fact that the money was transferred back two months later to the company’s account in Oschadbank?”
He said he had proof such a transfer was made.
Creative Group used to be a top exporter of sunflower oil from Ukraine. But by 2015, the agroholding had racked up $702 million in debts to creditors, including European banks and Ukrainian state-owned and private banks.
Berezkin sold Creative Group in 2015. An audit by its new owners showed that the company had been falsifying its accounting books and had used factious assets as collateral to secure bank loans.
After that, the agroholding was declared bankrupt, and its shareholders decided to liquidate it in 2017.
