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Sweet Decay: Ukraine confectionery says Russian assets better rotten than sold rock bottom

Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, who co-owns Roshen, had received dividends of $72 mln from the confectionery in Lipetsk in 2014-2016 and poured it into the Ukrainian economy

© Alexander Ryumin/TASS

KIEV, February 19. /TASS/. The Lipetsk confectionary factory belonging to Ukraine’s Roshen Corporation in Russia, would be better "rotten" than sold for less than $200 mln, according to CEO Vyacheslav Moskalevsky.

In an interview with Ukrainian publication Liga.net published on Monday he said:

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"Right now, I think they [the assets] are worth nothing. No one will pay me $200 mln for them in Russia, but I will not sell it to anyone."

Moskalevsky added that it is better to let the company’s assets in the Russian city of Lipetsk "rot" on principle, meaning, "if I can’t have it, no one can," rather than sell them at a loss.

Since halting production on April 1, 2017, the CEO noted that so far the situation with the confectionery factory in Lipetsk had not changed.

Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, who co-owns Roshen, had received dividends of $72 mln from the confectionery in Lipetsk in 2014-2016 and poured it into the Ukrainian economy.

The chocolate maker is one of the largest confectionery manufacturers in Ukraine. The total volume of its production is 450,000 tonnes per year.

Roshen owns Ukrainian factories (in Kiev, Vinnitsa and Kremenchug), two production sites at the Lipetsk confectionery in Russia (the facilities were mothballed), the Klaipeda Confectionery in Lithuania, Bonbonetti Choco Kft in Budapest, Hungary, and the Bershadmoloko dairy plant, which provides the corporation's factories with raw milk. The company is engaged in the construction of a biscuit shop near Boryspil (outside Kiev), Ukraine.

Earlier, the International Consortium of Journalistic Investigations released a new batch of documents, which is comparable with the infamous Panama Papers. According to media reports, the investigation, dubbed the Paradise Papers, features Ukraine’s President Pyotr Poroshenko, who registered an offshore company on the British Virgin Islands so that Roshen could dodge taxes.

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