Centrenergo PJSC (control stock owned by the state) is suing Bihus.Info journalist Svitlana Slipchenko. The company demands that the project’s investigation into the effort to overhaul the Trypillya TPP be taken down from their YouTube channel, the corresponding news story be removed from the website, and that the media outlet pay them ₴1 million as compensation for moral damage, Svitlana Slipchenko reported in a video posted by Bihus.Info on YouTube.
According to the journalist, the lawsuit was sparked by the media outlet’s December investigation about decarbonization and the unique opportunity to modernize a Trypillya TPP power unit with involvment from European partners by switching from coal to biofuels. The investigation found that the talks to that effect were being obstructed, probably due to the opposition by the Ukrainian “coal lobby”.
“The lawsuit in and of itself is not surprising at all. Unfortunately, this is a stable practice: intimidating [journalists] with lawsuits, trying to distract them from work, getting on their nerves and forcing them to waste time on legal red tape. The unexpected and toxic part was in the lawsuit: one of the largest state-owned energy companies is suing to demand the takedown of a video from our YouTube, of a news story from our website, and also… Centrenergo is demanding a million hryvnias in moral damages from us,” Slipchenko said.
The journalist quoted the company as claiming that the sum is justified because the Bihus.Info channel currently has over a million subscribers.
Centrenergo claimed in the lawsuit that the investigation criticising them, which has been viewed over 115 thousand times, discredits the company in the eyes of potential donors and international partners and may prevent them from receiving ingernational funding or attracting qualified staff to rebuild the destroyed infrastructure.
Slipchenko stressed that the state-owned company’s reputation problems were not caused by the work of journalists but by long-running corruption scandals, purchases of Russian coal through companies in Ihor Kolomoyskyi’s orbit, billions of hryvnias lost, and recent findings by the law enforcement bodies. In particular, in February, the SBU exposed a scheme to embezzle the 150 million hryvnias allocated for the restoration of the Trypillya TPP after Russian shelling.
“That is, just as law enforcers are investigating how 150 million hryvnias were [stolen] during the reconstruction of the Trypillya TPP, Centrenergo insists that it is not the dubious schemes that threaten the plant’s reconstruction but criticism from journalists? When a state-owned company comes with a demand to take down all criticism and shake the obviously unaffordable sum of one million hryvnias out of journalists, this looks like a banal attempt at pressure,” the journalist emphasised.
She added that the lawsuit was filed on behalf of a public joint-stock company where 80% of the shares are owned by the state, meaning that this decision went through a lengthy bureaucratic approval procedure within the company’s management.
In view of the scandals in the energy sector (e.g. the Midas case) and statements by the state’s top officials about the need for a reshuffle in the industry, Serhiy Isadchenko was recently appointed as Centrenergo’s new executive.
“Will he stick to the management traditions set by his predecessor? Remains to be seen. I can only hope that the new director will build a new reputation for the company, not by silencing journalists with million-dollar lawsuits and demands to take everything down, but by transparent management and efficient work of the state-owned company,” Svitlana Slipchenko concluded.
Bihus.Info‘s legal team is already working on defending the journalist in court.
