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The employees of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) are conducting searches in the office of Ukraine's National Energy and Utilities Regulation Commission (NEURC), according to an UNIAN correspondent, referring to sources in the country's energy market.
The NEURC's press service said they were not allowed to comment on the situation, while the NABU press service assured they would be able to provide detail information on the search in an hour.
Meanwhile, according to Ukrayinska Pravda, the searches are being conducted in the case of overcharging tariffs under the "Rotterdam plus" coal formula.
As UNIAN reported earlier, in April 2016, NEURC approved the market methodology for calculating the wholesale price of electricity, based on the European coal price index.
Read alsoEnergy regulator members suspected of collusion in approving "Rotterdam plus" formulaAccording to the head of the NEURC, Dmytro Vovk, the marginal price for coal began to be formed based on the price (API 2 index), which is determined at trading on the Rotterdam stock exchange, plus the cost of coal transportation to the domestic market (the so-called "Rotterdam plus delivery" formula). According to NEURC, the method of calculation should eliminate manual regulation of prices, ensure independence from supplies from the ATO zone, and relieve Ukraine of the problems regarding the accumulation of a sufficient amount of coal for the passage of the heating season.
At the same time, Prime Minister of Ukraine Volodymyr Groysman repeatedly demanded that the authorities determine the expediency of utilizing the formula. In mid-January, 2017, the Minister of Energy and Coal Industry, Ihor Nasalyk, said that the use of the "Rotterdam plus delivery" pricing formula for the energy coal did not remove the problem of diversifying fuel supplies to Ukraine.
On February 14, former NEURC member Andriy Gerus said that thermal generation, much of which belongs to DTEK's energy holding owned by Rinat Akhmetov, additionally earned more than UAH 10 billion due to the inclusion of the cost of coal in the electricity tariff via the said formula.
In mid-February, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said that the Prosecutor General's Office will verify the legitimacy of the "Rotterdam Plus" formula's application.