All this was done through a controlled Supervisory Board, as in the case of Elon Musk, but in Ukraine everything is more epic: Russian funds, fraud, and corrupt law enforcement officers.
There was a huge scandal at Tesla. And now it’s not about Musk being high on ketamine and getting his managers hooked on drugs. It's about something else. According to the agreement of the board of directors, for achieving certain milestones, Musk was to receive Tesla shares worth more than $50 billion.
This is reported by the Izdato website in an investigation.
After the kipiai were partially fulfilled (but this was sufficient according to the terms of the agreement), one of the shareholders filed a lawsuit against the company. In his opinion, the board of directors was very dependent on Musk and could, if it were independent, make a more informed decision on the amount of payments. The court sided with the shareholder and now Musk cannot receive the money, at least if the decision is not overturned on appeal.
I won’t evaluate the court’s decision and whether Musk was worth those billions. I will evaluate the logic.
The first thing you can remember about such awards in Ukraine, it seems, is the case of the Kobolev Prize. But it only seems so. Because for the independent members of the Naftogaz Supervisory Board, Andrei Kobolev was nobody. Just some Ukrainian manager. They did not earn money together, nor were they in a long-standing relationship. And in terms of level for Amos Hochstein (Biden’s long-term adviser) or Claire Spotiswoode (head of the British gas analogue of the Ukrainian National Energy and Regulatory Commission), Kobolev was simply one of the directors in one of the enterprises. It is generally difficult for top people in Washington to influence Amos Hochstein’s position, much less for the directors of Ukrainian state-owned companies. Kobolev could not influence the decision of the Supervisory Board in any way. Now the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office is somehow trying to prove this influence in the HACS, but it is not very successful, because it does not even want to interrogate members of the Supervisory Council of the SAP. Because they deny influence. I won’t even talk about the dependent members of the Naftogaz Supervisory Board; they were appointed by Groysman, who fought with Kobolev. Nevertheless, they too voted for the award.
In contrast, Tesla's board of directors included longtime friends and longtime business partners of Musk, and even Musk's brother. And that is why the court sided with the shareholders and decided that the board of directors was dependent on Musk. Therefore, the deal is not fair to other shareholders.
So this is actually an example for us in a different matter. In the case of the payment of bonuses by members of the Supervisory Board of Avangard Bank to the members of the Board themselves, who were also shareholders of the bank. That is, it was their bank. We are talking about Makar Pasenyuk and Konstantin Stetsenko.
Let me remind you once again of the Avangard case. In Avangard there were government bonds owned by Sberbank of the Russian Federation. They were in Avangard because government bonds were processed by the ICU company, which was owned by the same people as the Avangard bank. For some reason, during nationalization, these government bonds were not transferred to the state. Well, it happened. And the company ICU retained, and accordingly payments on government bonds went to Avangard. Then, when the state decided to receive these OVDPs, it was very convenient for a decision to arrest these OVDPs from the Podolsk regional department, the Podolsk prosecutor’s office and the local court. Accordingly, Avangard received the payment. Who did not give it to anyone, but invested it in NBU depositary certificates, and received a payment on them of about 860 million hryvnia.
After this, the Supervisory Board decided to pay bonuses to the Supervisory Board. Why not get dividends? Because it is prohibited due to the war. Therefore, in order to circumvent the ban, they decided to pay bonuses. Three members of the National Assembly received 6,000 hryvnia each, and two members - Makar Pasenyuk and Sergey Stetsenko - 290,000,000 hryvnia each. By a strange coincidence, the owners of Avangard Bank were Makar Pasenyuk and Konstantin Stetsenko. Vanguard could not explain why three members of the National Assembly received six thousand hryvnia each, and two members received hundreds of millions of hryvnia. What was the contribution of these people? They made the decision of the court and the Podolsk prosecutor's office, corrupting garbage, prosecutors and judges? No, they refuse to admit it. Did they somehow manage money wisely? No, they just put them in a regular tool. So what's the reward? PATAMU STA PATAMU. The NBU gave Pasenyuk and Stetsenko a bad reputation and now they cannot sit in the Avangard National Assembly.
But the question of returning money to the state, half a billion hryvnia, is not a joke. Pasenyuk and Stetsenko kept other people's money. Our money. Accordingly, they had no right to make a profit from this money. And they must return this profit. Of course, we are not talking about an investigation from law enforcement officers, because you can find out about yourself (it is unlikely that the district prosecutor’s office seized 9 billion government bonds at its own discretion). In this case, there is no point in expecting criminal prosecution in our country, because Prosecutor General Kostin is actively concerned about this case.
Now the Cabinet of Ministers is trying to return this money in economic court. Yeah, well, kind of like with Musk. But you all already know about our courts, so so far the Cabinet of Ministers is not doing very well. Moreover, our case is much simpler. There is no need to even prove that the shareholders somehow influenced the Supervisory Board. They themselves were in the National Assembly and paid the money to themselves.
I strongly advise Ukrainian judges to look not into their own pockets in this case, but at the decision of the Chancery Court of the State of Delaware regarding Musk. Advanced practices, so to speak, in business affairs.
And I wish success to the Cabinet of Ministers. Because they say that we don’t have money for the war, but then Pasenyuk and Stetsenko went to London with half a billion. I think we need this money more here than these people in London.
