About 3,000 employees of UkrLandFarming and Avangard agricultural holdings, and the activists held a rally outside the Verkhovna Rada and the President's Office HQs, calling to protect the company from unlawful harassment by law enforcement agencies.
The farmers demand for sack Director of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) Artem Sytnyk, convicted of corruption by court, according to UNIAN.
During her address from the rally stage, UkrLandFarming Operations Director Halyna Kovtok expressed her hope for appropriate attention to the demands of 27,000 farmers, whom the company provides jobs with in rural areas and pays UAH 3.5 billion (US$140.8 million) of salaries annually, would be heard.
"We won't be silent. We will defend our company so that we can be heard in the Verkhovna Rada and the President's Office. We have built everything that we have with our own hands. And we protect our own. Therefore, 'Hands off Avangard', 'Hands off UkrLandFarming!'" - she said.
According to Head of the Zarya branch of the Western Agricultural Production company (part of UkrLandFarming) Volodymyr Danylevskiy, law the enforcement raids leave the company employees anxious and threaten disruption of the work process.
"This concerns me as a manager, as well as employees who want to work and earn, not to talk to NABU detectives. We stand here not to lose jobs. Poland is waiting for young people who know how to work. And now everything is being done to send them from Ukraine and shut our jobs down. We and the sowing campaign were actually paralyzed and threatened, as well as people and their prosperity", - he said.
In turn, the Ukrainian MP with the European Solidarity faction Oleksiy Honcharenko promised from stage that the demands of the farmers would be heard and Sytnyk would not remain in the office.
"The corrupt official who was put in the register of corrupt officials became the head of the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine. How is it possible? And he's discrediting the institution that must fight top corruption –not with a top company that shapes up Ukraine's GDP, increases exports, and feeds the whole country and a half of the world. We will carry your demands to the Verkhovna Rada because they must react to the fact that you have come to fight for your rights," - he said.
Later, the rally moved to the President's Office to hand over an appeal to President Volodymyr Zelensky with the signatures of about 30,000 employees and other people. The appeal calls on the president to intervene and halt the destruction of an enterprise that's important for the Ukrainian economy, remove corrupt officials, and save jobs. In addition, the farmers ask to appoint a responsible official who would gather state representatives and company owners at the negotiating table for a constructive dialogue.
The protesters left several thousand lighted candles with their names on them outside the President's Office and said that the rally was only a precautionary step, if their demands won’t be heard, much more people gonna come to the streets.
The businessman Oleg Bakhmatyuk, the owner and ex-shareholder of UkrLandFarming and Avangard group of companies, called the raids on his company in the case of embezzlement of a stabilization loan from VAB Bank, illegal. He also named the cases, that were opened against him and the company, the personal revenge of NABU chief Artem Sytnyk. Sytnyk was found guilty of corruption by the court over the elite vacation at someone else's expense, and was put in the register of corrupt officials, therefore he could lose his job. The adviser to Bakhmatyuk's sister was the main witness for prosecution.
UkrLandFarming is the largest Ukrainian agro-industrial holding, which manages the country's largest bank of fertile black soil, namely 500,000 hectares, which is engaged in the cultivation of crops and seeds, sugar production, animal husbandry and distribution of agricultural machinery. It includes the Avangard agricultural group, whose companies specialize in the production of chicken eggs (with a design capacity of 1.6 billion eggs per year) and egg products, which are exported to about 40 countries.