SIMFEROPOL, December 8. /TASS/. The Crimean authorities have halted a deal illegally registered by a Ukrainian court retroactively to sell an unfinished nuclear power plant on the Black Sea peninsula for a song, Crimean Head Sergey Aksyonov said on Tuesday.
The deal for the nuclear power plant in the town of Shchyolkino was struck ten years ago and the NPP was slated for sale for 1 million hryvnias. Considering the exchange rate effective in 2005, when the Ukrainian currency was trading at a fixed exchange rate, 1 million hryvnias were equivalent to $200,000. Now, considering the hryvnia’s devaluation, this sum is five times smaller and equals just $42,000.
Crimean Head Aksyonov told a meeting of the republican government on Tuesday that Crimea had imposed a total ban on registering deals on the Black Sea peninsula under decisions by Ukrainian courts.
According to Aksyonov, the State Registration Service has started receiving packages of documents on decisions by courts on the Ukrainian territory and deals certified by Ukraine’s notary services.
"It is necessary to stop all registration. I request the Prosecutor’s Office to join this work, pass instructions and find legislative norms. No document under decisions by Ukrainian courts and Ukrainian notaries must be accepted," Aksyonov said.
"It turns out that the atomic station in Shchyolkino was sold in 2005 for 1 million hryvnias. Everything was done retroactively. This is a completely fraudulent scheme," the Crimean head said.
"We have talked with the heads of law-enforcement structures to tell them to institute criminal proceedings against officials who allow formalizing such ownership," Aksyonov said.
Such deals can be effected only through Russian judicial bodies, the Crimean head said.