Case description
Ruslan Zhurylo, acting chair of the company's board, and his deputy Yurii Pertsev are the accused in the case. The NABU claims that they caused the state more than USD 12 million in losses by reselling raw materials at reduced prices.
The detectives focused on the period from December 2014 to April 2016. At that time, Ruslan Zhurylo was effectively in charge of the United Mining and Chemical Company, engaged in the extraction of various raw materials. The company is one of the ten largest titanium and zirconium ore producers in the world. The State Property Fund has been trying to privatize the UMCC for a long time, but so far it has not happened.
The NABU found that the defendants in the case sold raw materials extracted at the UMCC (ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and disten-salimanite concentrates) abroad through controlled intermediary companies at reduced prices. These companies sold them at market price to end users in different regions of the world. Since the intermediaries were residents of Austria and the United Kingdom, the profits from the sale remained abroad.
Ruslan Zhurylo is charged with organizing abuse of office, which caused grave consequences, committed by a group of people by prior conspiracy. Yurii Pertsev is an accomplice in this case and is currently outside Ukraine.
The United Mining and Chemical Company is involved in several other corruption investigations. In particular, in addition to this episode, the NABU reported on investigations into the abuses by Zhurylo and Pertsev in 2016–2017. The possible losses for the UMCC as a result of selling raw materials at reduced prices could have amounted to more than USD 13 million.
In May 2020, the NABU-SAPO prevented the embezzlement of 20,000 tons of UMCC raw materials worth UAH 80 million by seizing them. Prior to that, the company's former management informed the National Bureau that a ship was planned to be loaded with raw materials in the port of Odesa in favor of a foreign company without advance payment.
The UMCC also came to the attention of law enforcement agencies in the case of Dmytro Sennychenko, former head of the State Property Fund. The detectives found that in October 2020, Sennychenko appointed a puppet head of the UMCC, and the latter signed contracts for the supply of titanium-containing raw materials to companies controlled by the advisor to the head of the SPFU. The sale at reduced prices could have caused more than UAH 118 million in losses for the state.
