22.07.2016
Illegal searches are yet again made today in some of the companies included in the sphere of interests of Smart-Holding.
Representatives of the Security Service of Ukraine under the guise of some questionable court decisions entered the offices of the companies saying that their goal was to study the question of the alleged "involvement of the Group's companies into financing of terrorism." Offices of Smart Maritime Group (Kherson), subsidiaries of Regal Petroleum in Ukraine (Yakhnyki village, Poltava region) as well as the companies that are the majority shareholder of Unex Bank have become the target of the security forces. Demonstrative searches in the offices of other enterprises of the Group are likely to be prepared. Smart-Holding officially declares that neither the management company nor any of its subsidiaries or its beneficiary, one of the leaders of the Opposition Bloc Vadym Novynskyi, have anything to do with these trumped up charges. Surprising is the fact that the state authorities cannot find a more efficient application for special services' efforts just turning them into an instrument of banal undisguised reprisals against political opponents. And this is at the time when the country is in a state of undeclared war, when Ukraine is experiencing an unprecedented wave of crimes, when an ordinary citizen has completely lost a sense of own security, when only high profile murders become subject to investigations, when businesses are suffering from unprecedented pressure from the law enforcement agencies. Verbally declaring commitment to the European course and to creation of the most favourable climate for attraction of foreign investors, the authorities at the same time send law-enforcement officials to Ukrainian office of the international company Regal Petroleum. Thus, not only direct commercial damage is caused to the company, whose shareholders are British entities and whose shares are traded on the London Stock Exchange, but also an irreparable blow is made to the investment image of the country as a whole. We are convinced that today's events are another attempt by the authorities to intimidate political opponents. These actions, styled after the best-known dictatorships, are leading the country into the abyss of statelessness and economic ruin.