Ministerial Office and Gas Subsoil: How Companies Linked to Fugitive Zlochevskyi Obtained Special Permits to Develop Deposits

Public office, the gas business, and subsoil permits. While Mykola Zlochevskyi headed the Ministry of Ecology and Natural Resources, the company Esko-Pivnich received a permit to develop the Rakytnianske deposit in Kharkiv region, and Pari received a permit for the Semyhynivske deposit in Lviv region. A later report by IPVG links these companies to Zlochevskyi, but the question of who actually controlled them at the time the permits were issued requires verification from archival documents.

It is necessary to clarify:

Who exactly signed the decisions to grant the permits, on what grounds the businesses obtained extraction rights, and who ultimately became the beneficial owner. We will analyze the permitting documents, the companies’ ownership history, and the actions of officials. We plan to appeal to NABU and SAP with specific documents and questions, not with general statements.

A separate issue is why the state lost the opportunity to have its claims examined on the merits. In the Semyhynivske deposit case the prosecutor’s suit was not accepted because of a missed deadline for going to court, so the legality of the permit was never established.

We will check not only the permit recipients but also the officials who should have timely defended the state interest. Next will come specific deposits, dates, decisions, and questions for documentary verification of the origin of assets and the responsibility of officials.

Mykola Zlochevskyi during Yanukovych’s era headed the environmental protection ministry in 2010–2012 years, and after leaving the ministerial position in April 2012 he became deputy secretary of the NSDC; he left that post in February 2014.

The dates permits were issued to these companies coincide with those periods, and the companies’ corporate links require verification not by the current register but at the time of each decision.

The question of this investigation is simple: did the state permitting system operate in the state’s interest, or did a particular business receive advantages through access to power? The answer should be in the documents: permitting files, decisions, signatures, corporate archives, and payments.

Not general suspicions, but specific permits

Kharkiv region

Lviv region

The IPVG report contains information about the beneficiary links of Esko-Pivnich and Pari to Zlochevskyi as of a later corporate snapshot in 2016. This is an important piece of evidence for building an ownership history, but it does not substitute for documents about control in 2011–2012 years.

It is necessary to establish who filed the application, who checked the grounds, who approved the decision, who signed the order, and who actually received the economic benefit.

In the Semyhynivske deposit case the Supreme Court on 13 May 2025 left in force procedural decisions that prevented consideration of the prosecutor’s claim due to the missed deadline. A substantive judicial assessment of the asserted claims did not occur. The court noted that the prosecutor could have obtained the relevant information at least since March 2021 and that a request was made only on 7 August 2024.

This raises a separate line of responsibility. If the state considered the permit illegal, why did its representatives not ensure timely consideration of the claims? Who controlled the deadlines, who made the decisions, and was a check conducted after the procedural loss?

NABU and SAP must verify the circumstances of permit issuance during Zlochevskyi’s public service. A separate request to the SBI will concern possible improper performance of official duties in prosecutorial response; final jurisdiction will depend on the established facts, the subject, and the qualification.

The subject of the verification must be specific:

The question “where did the money come from?” is not dismissed by referring to the existence of a successful gas business. It requires investigating how the asset itself arose, who financed its purchase, and whether official position was used as an instrument to obtain advantage.

Criminal qualification requires evidence of a specific composition: for abuse of power mere coincidence of official dates is not enough; for legalization of funds it is necessary to establish their criminal origin; and tax claims require their own evidentiary basis. The law applicable at the time of the act should be applied, taking into account retroactive application of a milder law and statutes of limitations.