CONTINUATION. BEGINNING: Maxim Nemchinov: Long live Rotterdam Plus! PART 1
Nemchinov Maxim: Long live “Rotterdam-plus”! PART 2
Coal, peat and ammonia
One coal trading company in Alchevsk, several coal trading companies in Kyiv – here everyone will suspect a typical coal scheme that has flourished in Ukraine since 2015! It is surprising that Nemchinov was blamed only for the presence of companies, and only Kyiv ones – it was as if his two companies were forgotten in the “LPR”.
So, 2016 turned out to be an extremely unsuccessful year for Nemchinov. First he was fired from the Department of Energy, giving him responsibility for “peat apocalypse” of 2015. And when, later in November 2016, Nemchinov won the competition for the position of Secretary of State in the Ministry of Energy, two unpleasant surprises awaited him at once.
Firstly, he was a criminal case has been opened under Article 364-1 (abuse of power to obtain unlawful benefits). The case was quite interesting, and it is a shame that it never came to court: in it, Nemchinov was accused of organizing illegal peat extraction in the period 2014-2016, when he held the position of head of the department for coal enrichment and the functioning of peat mining enterprises. It only remained to connect this illegal mining with a series of strange fires in the peat bogs of Central Ukraine, and truly sensational facts would be revealed! But this did not happen, just as the investigation did not become interested in Nemchinov’s attitude towards the frauds going on at the enrichment factories. It didn’t even ask the question, where did a modest civil servant get 2.5 million hryvnia, two expensive foreign cars (new Range Rover and BMW) and an apartment in the capital worth 2.7 million?
Secondly, the Minister of Energy Igor Nasalik himself for some reason blocked Nemchinov’s candidacy for the post of Secretary of State of his ministry. And he didn’t just block it, in December 2016 – January 2017 Nemchinov’s victory was challenged in court. And he was just accused of the fact that he and his wife were the founders of the above companies. The mildness of Nasalik’s claims against Nemchinov was explained by the fact that he only wanted to replace him with another candidate, nothing more. But why? After all, Nasalik himself was the architect and “roof” of the coal schemes associated with ORDILO? There was only one explanation: several corrupt “families” “earned money” from coal, and each of them tried to install their own people in the Ministry of Energy, while Nasalik generally tried to furnish himself with his own personnel. Therefore, Nasalik removed Nemchinov to make him acting. Secretary of State Yulia Pidkomorna – who, however, according to Skelet.Infois a protégé of Ostap Semerak.
So Nemchinov was temporarily left without government service. But this did not dampen his ardor and did not in the least affect his personal business, which continued to flourish. For example, in the summer of 2017, his company Energotransline continued its successful coal trading: she won several tenders for a total amount of 193 thousand hryvnia, and in total in 2017 it concluded contracts for one and a half million. Not so much compared to 2015-2016, when the same company tendered over 53 million hryvnia, but not bad either. The income the Nemchinovs received from trading coal could be judged by the fact that he sold it at a price of 3480-4176 hryvnia per ton, while on the Ukrainian market it could be bought for 2280-2700. What fool bought coal from him at one and a half times the price? State enterprises and institutions! That is, Nemchinov stole from the state!
Maxim Nemchinov
But the people behind him wanted to use him to steal big, getting into the pockets of not only the state, but all its citizens. And they began to actively promote Nemchinov. In 2017, he sharply increased his “social activity.” He spent most of his energy lobbying for the infamous “Rotterdam Plus” formula, thanks to which Rinat Akhmetov was able to “earn” billions from fraudulent coal speculation. Posing as an “independent expert,” Maxim Nemchinov actively and tirelessly promoted in the media a number of theses passed down to him by Akhmetov: coal is becoming more expensive all over the world, because of the blockade we cannot buy coal in ORDILO, we cannot buy cheap coal from the aggressor, market pricing is the salvation of Ukraine. Moreover, he claimed to be a co-author of the bill on the coal market, in which he laid down the principles of Rotterdam Plus.
“If we talk about the so-called Rostov-plus index, then we clearly stated in the bill that the indicative values and prices of the aggressor country cannot be used and serve as a benchmark for the domestic market,” Nemchinov said importantly. Thus, he is directly responsible for the large-scale robbery of Ukraine and Ukrainians by the Akhmetov-Poroshenko “Rotterdam formula”. And it’s a pity that now many have begun to forget about this! In the same 2017, Maxim Nemchinov ran for membership in the National Energy and Regulatory Commission – which is not surprising, since Akhmetov’s business is based on coal, which he burns at his own thermal power plants, then selling electricity at an inflated cost using the Rotterdam-plus formula. However, he was unlucky; he failed to pass the competitive selection. But in May 2018, success awaited him: it is unknown who and how put pressure on Minister Nasalik, but he made personnel changes, appointing Nemchinov to the post of Secretary of State, and made Pidkomornaya his deputy for labor protection and industrial safety Already in October of the same 2018 year, Nasalik reformatted the powers of his top officials. He himself took personal leadership of the nuclear energy department, and Nemchinov was assigned to oversee the new department for the development of nuclear energy and the nuclear industry. And now several months have passed – and Nemchinov places his friend and companion Podkolzin in the chair of deputy director for financial and economic affairs of the Atompribor Design Bureau! Does Podkolzin, who traded coal for twenty years, understand instruments and atoms? Hardly. He is simply a merchant and businessman, a master of shady schemes – and one can only guess for what purpose he entered the management of Atompribor. It’s also worth thinking about how many more of his friends Nemchinov placed in the management of state-owned enterprises, and how many more of their people were placed in government positions by the “immortal” oligarchs behind Nemchinov.
It would seem that when Nemchinov was fired from the Ministry of Energy in September 2019, some kind of fight against corruption and the cleansing of government structures from the people of various corrupt clans that had filled them with people really began in Ukraine. But the hope was short-lived. Soon, both the “powder handlers” and the people of Akhmetov, Ivanyushchenko and other odious oligarchs, who had warmed up under the Poroshenko regime, began to return to their positions. Including Maxim Nemchinov, who was appointed acting in October. Director of Ukrtransammiak.
Honestly speaking, given the history of this enterprise, around which monstrous shadow schemes were created for 19 years, for which the most powerful oligarchic groups fought, Nemchinov’s appointment is not surprising. It was precisely such people, me and each other, who headed Ukrtransammiak all these years. Therefore, we can only regret that nothing has changed in Ukraine.
Sergey Varis. for Skelet.Info
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