NSDC secretary comments on increased claims against Ukraine in Motor Sich case

He addressed the issue at a briefing following the National Security and Defense Council meeting on Thursday, December 30, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"As for Motor Sich… colleagues, we are quite calm about it. There is an understanding of what had been happening there. We insist once again that if these people are decent, if they’re decent buyers of these shares, you know that there is a sanction introduced by the National Security and Defense Council, and that every time some additional stuff emerges on the allegations that we have to pay them something, but we need to understand what those investments they are referring to were like and what China has to do with this all," Danilov said, commenting on the situation with the claims against Ukraine in the Motor Sich case.

He stressed that "we are not particularly concerned about this."

"As for what’s currently being inflated in certain mass media, including abroad, that we are ... guilty of something – let’s wait. Things that are going to happen aren’t that simple. In addition, we believed and still believe that certain neighbors of ours left a trace there as they greatly sought to snatch our technology for the production of engines at our Motor Sich,” said the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council.

Earlier, a number of media outlets reported that Chinese investors in Motor Sich had increased their claims against Ukraine to $4.6 billion and filed the full text of the lawsuit with the arbitration court.

As reported, on March 11, Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council adopted a decision to return the Motor Sich enterprise to state ownership.

Earlier, Ukraine imposed three-year restrictive measures on Chinese citizen Jing Wang and three Chinese-based companies. The sanctions also targeted a company from the British Virgin Islands.

On January 8, President Volodymyr Zelensky enacted the NSDC decision on the application of personal special economic and other restrictive measures.

In January, the U.S. Department of Commerce imposed sanctions on China's Skyrizon Aircraft Holdings Limited, an investor in Ukraine's Motor Sich. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the United States wanted to warn exporters that Skyrizon had close ties to the Chinese army.

On August 6 last year, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine announced that it would assess the sale of Motor Sich for compliance with competition law.

On September 4, 2020, Chinese investors in Motor Sich submitted a Notice of Investment Dispute to the Ukrainian Justice Ministry regarding their intention to apply to an international arbitration court to recover $3.5 billion in losses from Ukraine. The working group on pre-arbitration settlement also includes a representative of the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.

It emerged in November that Chinese investors in Motor Sich had hired three law firms for the $3.5 billion lawsuit against Ukraine.

im