China's CNBM asks Zelensky to protect its Ukrainian-based subsidiary from raiders

Following the meeting of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with the Ambassador of China to Ukraine, China's state corporation CNBM has sent an official letter to Zelensky, asking him to protect its Ukraine's subsidiary from raiders.

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In particular, this refers to Voskhod Solar LLC, which owns a solar power plant in Ukraine's Mykolaiv region. The company is one of 10 stations with a total capacity of 267 MW owned by China National Building Material Co., Ltd. or CNBM. The Chinese corporation is one of the largest in the world. CNBM ranked 243th on the Forbes Fortune 500 list. The corporation has also been one of the major investors into Ukraine's renewable energy sector since 2010.

According to the company's representatives, their assets fell into the sphere of interests of controversial Ukrainian oligarch Pavlo Fuks, who had been previously mentioned in the media as a participant in the purchase and recovery of a UAH 2 billion (US$74.4 million) debt from Kyiv Metro subway.

The Chinese investor says Fuks has used his contacts in courts and law enforcement agencies (in particular, in the Prosecutor General's Office, the SBU Security Service of Ukraine, and the Deposit Guarantee Fund (DGF). The oligarch, via non-transparent DGF auctions, the speedy handling of cases in courts and the creation of influential investigative groups under the Prosecutor General's Office, in fact, is seizing CNBM's property, which is the holder of an investment package exceeding $1 billion in the Ukrainian renewable energy market.

The Chinese side states that investigators and the courts are avoiding contact with representatives of the Corporation, delaying the case consideration, or, on the contrary, unexpectedly deliver the instant decisions in favor of Fuks within only two minutes, which indicates an unusually high level of corruption in the Ukrainian justice.