Case description
SAPO charges the former acting chair of the management board of United Mining and Chemical Company JSC (hereinafter — UMCC) Ruslan Zhurylo and his deputy, Yurii Pertsev in the resale of raw materials of the enterprise at low prices. According to investigators, the defendants thus caused more than $13 million in damage to the state.
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 detectives 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's actions are qualified under Article 27(3), and Article 28(2), Article 364(2) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, and the actions of Yurii Pertsev are qualified under Article 27(2), and Article 28(2), Article 364(2) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
Pertsev is now outside of Ukraine, and Zhurylo has been mobilized since 2023. The court proceedings against the latter were suspended until his dismissal from military service due to the impossibility of his participation in court sessions. Ruslan Zhurylo is also the defendant in Energoatom’s €6.4 million embezzlement case.
At the time of the commission of the acts incriminated to the defendants, the UMCC was a state-owned enterprise. In 2021, the auction for the sale of the company was disrupted, and in 2024, the UMCC was privatized.
The UMCC 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 $13 million.
In May 2020, NABU and SAPO prevented the misappropriation of 20,000 tonnes of UMCC raw materials worth UAH 80 million by imposing a seizure on them. Earlier, the company's then-management had informed the NABU that a ship was to be loaded with raw materials at the Odesa port for a foreign company without prior payment.
UMCC also came under law enforcement scrutiny in the case of former Head of the State Property Fund Dmytro Sennychenko. Detectives discovered that in October 2020, Sennychenko appointed a “controlled” head of UMCC, who then signed contracts to supply titanium-containing raw materials to companies affiliated with Sennychenko’s own advisor. The sale at undervalued prices could have caused over UAH 118 million in losses to the state.
