Dmytro Vovk, the former Ukraine’s energy regulator head,  welcomed the Kyiv Commercial court ruling that upheld the earlier decision by state Anti-Monopoly to close the probe into ‘Rotterdam +’ electricity pricing formula used by government in  2016-2017.

‘The verdict is yet another argument that proves how pointless was the National Anticorruption Bureau investigation. Those fellows have tried to make up  evidence for 5 years. And to no effect’ said the former energy official in his interview for ‘Ukraina 24’.

Dmytro Vovk stressed that both Anti-Monopoly Committeeand Kyiv Commercial Court failed to find any evidence of alleged energy price-fixing scheme.

‘Let me remind it to everyone…how active media campaign was [against] ‘Rotterdam+’. They would call you out, one after another [saying] once we remove this formula the tariffs for households and business will drop whereas now, despite the formed expectations, tariffs have increased for both business and households’, argued the ex-official.

Ukraine’s energy regulator brought in so-called ‘Rotterdam+’ electricity-pricing ‘formula’ in 2016 –  its rates based the wholesale price of electricity by Ukrainian thermal power plants on coal prices set in the Rotterdam port plus delivery costs to Ukraine.

The 2016-2017  policy faced criticism and allegations of price-fixing that, according to earlier reports, caused losses for ferroalloy factories in  Nikopol and Zaporizhya owned by Ihor Kolomoyskiy.

In 2017, National Anticorruption Bureau opened the investigation into alleged price manipulations and ‘abuse of the office’ by the energy regulator top officials – the agency claimed the damage totaled about 19 billion hryvnas.