Facing default this July on a $1.5 billion loan from China

Facing default this July on a $1.5 billion loan from China, the management of Ukraine’s State Food and Grain Corporation has denounced that the British-American manager overpaid salaries during four months when he ran the state company last winter. On Monday, State Security Service agents served Simon Cherniavsky with papers from the State Fiscal Police charging him with embezzling the hryvnia equivalent of $321,000 in salaries paid to 18 outside staffers bought in to clean up the scandal-ridden state company. Cherniavsky, who engineered the 2017-2018 $1.1 billion restructuring of Mriya Agro Holding, resigned from the Grain Corporation last April, following the resignations of Prime Minister Honcharuk and Economy Minister Milovanov.