Ukraine’s Naftogaz Asks Slovakia to Help Stop ‘Corrupt’ Judge

(Bloomberg) -- Ukraine’s state-owned energy company asked the president of neighboring Slovakia to help halt what it said were illegal efforts to defraud it out of millions of dollars.

JSC Naftogaz Ukrainy wrote to President Zuzana Caputova seeking “any reasonable support in combating serious instances of corruption,” according to a letter seen by Bloomberg and later confirmed by company spokeswoman, Aliona Osmolovska.

The matter dates back to a 21 million-euro ($23 million) arbitration case that Naftogaz lost seven years ago. The request comes with Ukraine itself suffering from years of endemic graft that’s toppled governments and held up billions of dollars of financial aid.

Naftogaz Chief Executive Officer Andriy Kobolyev disputes a 2017 ruling by a court in Bratislava allowing a new holder of the claim to recover the funds by seizing natural gas supplied to Naftogaz through Slovakia’s pipeline network. He says the court also awarded excessive compensation claims and that the police opened an investigation but later dropped it.

Pavol Adamciak, a spokesman for the court, couldn’t immediately comment.

Corruption in Slovakia is under the spotlight after the murder last year of an investigative reporter who’d written about links between white-collar crime and politicians. Documents leaked recently to media showed how the influential businessmen charged with ordering the killing was able to manipulate court decisions.

Caputova, a former activist lawyer who won elections in March in the ex-communist European Union member, has urged the judiciary to purge corrupt judges and restore credibility. Slovakia ranks worst among EU member-states for public trust in the judicial system.

To contact the reporters on this story: Radoslav Tomek in Bratislava at rtomek@bloomberg.net;Daryna Krasnolutska in Kiev at dkrasnolutsk@bloomberg.net;Volodymyr Verbyany in Kyiv at vverbyany1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley, Michael Winfrey

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