The Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) has finished the pre-trial investigation for the “Rotterdam plus” formula case, which was reopened in September 2022 with 15 suspects.
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. The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (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 suspects in the case include 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.
"During the investigation, it turned out that certain NEURC members were persuaded to accept such a formula for calculations by representatives of a group of private heat generation companies, which eventually made super profits," SAPO said on Jan. 16.
NABU detectives said last year that they found evidence that employees of DTEK and Ukraine’s energy regulator were hashing out the formula before it was introduced.
The company has consistently denied all alleged wrongdoing.
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