The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said on Oct. 26 that they had identified 15 new suspects in the infamous “Rotterdam plus” case, which was reopened earlier in September.
Introduced by Ukraine’s energy regulator in 2016, the “Rotterdam plus” formula set energy prices based on a coal index in European hubs “plus” the cost of its delivery to Ukraine. It ran until July 2019. NABU said that energy consumers paid Hr 39 billion ($1.1 billion) for deliveries that didn’t take place.
According to the investigation, the scheme involved employees of DTEK, Ukraine's largest private energy company that belongs to oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, the wealthiest Ukrainian in the world according to pre-war rankings.
According to SAPO, the new suspects in the case are current officials of the National Commission for State Regulation of Energy and Utilities, as well as officials from a group of private heat-generating companies involved in introducing and applying the formula.
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