Народний депутат від фракції «Слуга народу» Олександр Куницький пересувається на електрокарі Nissan Leaf, який отримав в оренду від приватної фірми «Автоентерпрайз» у десять разів дешевше, ніж ця послуга доступна для інших клієнтів компанії. При цьому, журналістське розслідування встановило, що Куницький неодноразово використовував депутатський мандат, вчиняючи дії в інтересах цього приватного бізнесу – розсилав депутатські звернення для розв’язання його проблем з силовиками, розмістив свої депутатські приймальні за адресами офісів групи компанії «Автоентерпрайз» та намагався встановити зарядну станцію цієї мережі прямо у дворі будівель Верховної Ради. Про це йдеться в розслідуванні програми «Схеми: корупція в деталях» (проєкт Радіо Свобода та телеканалу UA:Перший).

У декларації народний депутат зазначив, що користується електрокаром Nissan Leaf, який він орендує у приватного підприємства «Автоентерпрайз», але не вказав вартість оренди.

«Схеми» розшукали деталі договору оренди між ним та ПП «Автоентерпрайз», засвідченого нотаріально. 4 листопада 2019 року, він, вже будучи депутатом, орендував автомобіль за 2,5 тисячі гривень на місяць. 

На сайті компанії зазначено, що оренда точно такого електрокару 2013 року випуску коштує 30 доларів на день, якщо орендувати довше ніж на 20 днів, тобто, це близько 900 доларів на місяць (приблизно 25 000 гривень). Відтак депутат від «Слуги народу» отримав авто у користування приблизно у 10 разів дешевше ціни, за яку ця послуга доступна усім громадянам.

У коментарі «Схемам» офіційний керівник групи компаній «Автоентерпрайз» і помічник депутата Куницького Дмитро Ніконов не заперечував такої вартості послуги для парламентаря і запропонував журналістам оренду авто за такою ж ціною – за 2,5 тисячі гривень на місяць – щоб ті «не шукали зраду».

Надання народному депутату пільг від приватного бізнесу може бути розцінене як отримання подарунку або неправомірна вимога, розповіли журналістам у Національному агентстві з питань запобігання корупції. 

«Теоретично тут можна говорити про отримання певних пільг або переваг, які б не отримала інша особа за аналогічних умов, – припускає очільник департаменту НАЗК Олександр Шульга. – І якщо такий факт дійсно має місце і його можна довести, то тут ми можемо говорити про отримання подарунку або неправомірної вигоди».

Журналісти звернулись до Олександра Куницького за коментарем з приводу цього факту, але на час публікації він не відреагував.

«Автоентерпрайз» об’єднана у пул компаній, який складається з близько десятка фірм, головними напрямками діяльності яких є виробництво та експлуатація електрозарядних станцій, імпорт автомобілей з-за кордону та надання послуги «екотаксі». Усі компанії пов’язані між собою спільними директорами та засновниками. Основним власником тут виступає харківський бізнесмен Дмитро Ніконов – який тепер працює помічником депутата Олександра Куницького на громадських засадах. 

Сам Куницький серед власників групи компаній «Автоентерпрайз» ніколи і не фігурував, хоча до походу в Раду не приховував стосунок до цього бізнесу та роками публічно виступав від його імені, – йдеться в розслідуванні. 

«Тому з’ясувати чи отримує він якийсь дохід від діяльності бізнесу групи «Автоентерпрайз», і якщо так – то в якій формі – готівки чи на банківські рахунки, у вигляді постійного доходу, чи нерегулярної фінансової винагороди, могли б правоохоронці. Але одна деталь про фінансові стосунки Куницького із бізнесом, який він просуває – таки красномовна. Це автівка, яка дістається депутату Куницькому вдесятеро дешевше, ніж іншим клієнтам компанії», – йдеться в матеріалі.

Ставши депутатом, Куницький, як виявили журналісти «Схем», неодноразово діяв в інтересах групи «Автоентерпрайз», використовуючи для цього депутатські інструменти.

«Схеми» виявили, що на другий місяць депутатства Олександр Куницький звернувся до тодішнього генпрокурора Руслана Рябошапки з проханням «вжити заходів» щодо слідчих ДБР, які розслідують змову митників з компанією з орбіти «Автоентерпрайз» (ТОВ «Екомобілі») з метою заниження митних платежів до бюджету.

А також відправляв інше депутатське звернення на ім’я тодішнього директора ДБР Романа Труби – не вказуючи, що сам дотичний до цього бізнесу. Куницький поскаржився на слідчих Офісу великих платників податків ДФС, які розслідують ухилення від сплати податків групою компаній «Автоентерпрайз». 

Наступного дня після звернення депутата ДБР справді відкрило кримінальне провадження проти податківців за статтею «протидія законній господарській діяльності».

Офіційний керівник і власник групи компаній «Автоентерпрайз», Дмитро Ніконов у коментарі «Схемам» повідомив: «Я про це звернення (Куницького до ГПУ та ДБР – ред.) не знаю. Це тільки його ініціатива. Я людина не злопам’ятна, я на них «забив», так. А він, може, запам’ятав цю ситуацію. Ну і взагалі, якщо депутату стає відомо про якесь… у нього є, припустимо, дані, записи розмов і так далі, то він повинен якось діяти…».

Сукупність фактів, віднайдених журналістами, може вказувати на зловживання владою, пояснюють експерти.

«Це сукупно з усіма фактами, скоріш за все, зловживання владою народного депутата. Це кримінальна стаття, це корупційне кримінальне правопорушення, в даному випадку це підслідність НАБУ. На наш погляд, тут є підстави говорити про зловживання своєю владою, що є корупційним кримінальним правопорушенням», – аналізує діяльність Куницького юрист «Центру протидії корупції» Андрій Савін.

В Конституції України та законі «Про статус народного депутата» зазначено, що влада та бізнес мають бути розділені.

Заборона для представників влади займатись бізнесом та просувати його інтереси за допомогою владних повноважень лежить в основі антикорупційного законодавства у всіх розвинених демократіях.

 
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With many U.S. schools weeks away from the planned start of a new academic year, Vice President Mike Pence is traveling Wednesday to the state of North Carolina to push the Trump administration’s preference for in-person classes, while leaders in that state and others advocate giving local districts more options due to the coronavirus pandemic.Pence’s office said he would be visiting a private school outside of Raleigh that resumed in-person classes last week with about 300 students, and that he would take part in a roundtable discussion about the school’s safety plan.”Opening up our schools again is the best thing for our kids,” Pence said last week during a visit to Indiana.  “It’s also the best thing for working families.”Some of the largest school systems in the nation, including those in Los Angeles, Atlanta and Houston, have already announced they will begin the academic year with only online classes.According to an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll conducted earlier this month, 8% of Americans back schools opening as usual, while 46% said they should open with major adjustments and 31% responded that in-person classes should not be held at all.Some 55% of respondents said they were very or extremely concerned about their child falling behind academically.The American Federation of Teachers, a union representing 1.7 million school employees, said Tuesday it would support any local chapter that decides to go on strike in objection to a district’s school reopening plan.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is advising school districts to monitor local levels of coronavirus spread to help determine what is appropriate.In places where the spread is minimal to moderate, the agency recommends social distancing, increased cleaning and that students and staff wear masks.  In areas where the spread of the virus is substantial, the CDC says leaders should consider closing schools.For schools that do have students learning in classrooms, the guidelines suggest additional strategies, such as the idea of “cohorting” or grouping together students who only interact with each other instead of mixing throughout the school.   That could involve a class of students who stay in a room while different teachers rotate to teach different subjects, or a system where certain groups only attend in-person classes on certain days of the week.North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced July 14 that school systems may choose to offer only online learning, while outlining safety protocols for those districts that opt to have students in classrooms.  Those measures include limiting the number of students allowed in the building, requiring frequent hand-washing, banning large group activities, and advising that hallways and doors be designated for use in one direction only.
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Національний банк України встановив на 30 липня курс 27 гривень 69 копійок за долар, це не відрізняється від офіційного курсу на сьогодні.

На українському міжбанківському валютному ринку гривня щодо долара посилилася – з ранкового рівня 27 гривень 71–73 копійки до рівня 27 гривень 63–65 копійок станом на 16:00, свідчать дані Finance.ua.

«Торги по долару вже на мінімальній активності. Відбуваються операції по лотах до 200 тисяч доларів. Пропозиція перевищує попит. Нацбанк викуповував долар по 27,63 гривні.Придбав близько 20 мільйонів», – вказали експерти сайту «Мінфін» станом на 16:00.

У широкому коридорі 26,5–27 гривень за долар національна валюта перебувала понад два місяці – від кінця квітня до початку липня. Зроблена 1 липня заява ексголови НБУ Якова Смолія про відставку через політичний тиск на нього спричинила зростання котирувань до 27 гривень 20 копійок за долар і навіть вище.

Після призначення головою НБУ Кирила Шевченка девальвація національної валюти прискорилася. Впродовж кількох останніх сесій регулятор показав учасникам ринку нові орієнтири – НБУ продав минулого тижня понад 300 мільйонів доларів за курсом дещо нижче від 28 гривень за долар. Нижній параметр нового коридору міжбанківський ринок знаходить переважно без активної участі Нацбанку.
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In 1972 US President Richard Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China, ending years of estrangement between the two countries and lifting the bamboo curtain China had been hidden behind since Mao Zedong launched his Cultural Revolution in 1966.“The week that changed the world,” was how Nixon dubbed his bold trip, which was pulled off after months of secret negotiations conducted by his then-National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger. Reminiscing later about the visit, Nixon said: “We were embarking on a voyage of philosophical discovery as uncertain, and in some ways as perilous as the voyages of geographical discovery of an earlier time.”The U.S. leader had shocked the world a few months before the trip by announcing his intention of undertaking one, a plan that surprised many in the White House, too, including Alexander Haig, one of Nixon’s advisers. Haig was taken aback when Kissinger left the Oval Office one day and told him, “Al, this fellow wants to open relations with China.” Haig responded: “Not a cold war warrior like Nixon.” To which Kissinger retorted, “I think he has lost control of his senses.”FILE – President Richard M. Nixon with Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, and States Secretary of State Alexander Haig, walking in rose garden of the White House in Washington, June 6, 1973.Forty-eight years on, America and China are embarking on another perilous voyage, filled possibly with even greater uncertainty than encountered in the 1970s. The coronavirus pandemic has triggered, say analysts, the start of an historic decoupling of the world’s two leading economies, America and China. It has given added impetus to an increasingly shared narrative in the US and in other Western democracies that China cannot be trusted, the result of a series of aggressive policy moves by Beijing, say Western officials. They cite a growing military assertiveness by China with Asian neighbors, a crackdown on the former British colony of Hong Kong, predatory lending practices seemingly aimed at catching countries in a manipulative debt trap, and weaponizing commerce.Western powers fear Beijing is out to re-shape the liberal world order, subscribing to a growing view that not only does the Chinese Communist Party want to ensure its continued rule at home but to make China the number one global power.   “In both the United States and Europe, the severity of the health and economic crisis driven by the pandemic has raised the stakes for policy on China and — especially in the UK, Germany, France and the wider EU — is tipping the balance towards those who advocate for a harder line on China,” says Leslie Vinjamuri of Britain’s Chatham House.Nixon’s visionSo is the West turning away from Nixon’s vision of China, closing an opening he created and now set on the path of reversing what he achieved? The answer is no. In many ways Western leaders are grappling now with the same dilemmas and challenges he faced, and like Nixon they are not coming up with any easy answers. For all of Nixon’s soaring rhetoric during the trip about what rapprochement would mean for America and China in the future, he was focused mainly, in fact, on near-term policy goals. In a speech in Shanghai he talked enthusiastically about “what we will do in the years ahead to build a bridge across 16,000 miles and 22 years of hostilities which have divided us in the past.”But the number one priority of the opening with China was to frighten the Soviet Union, which had fallen out Beijing. “By opening relations with China we would catch Russia’s attention and get more leverage on them through playing this obvious, China card,” Winston Lord, a staffer on Nixon’s national security team, later noted.In hindsight, Nixon did not have much to lose and a lot to gain by opening up relations with China. His credentials as a Cold War warrior helped to quiet right-wing dissent inside the Republican Party to his outreach. Conservative leader Barry Goldwater was persuaded by Nixon to support the trip on grounds that a rapprochement with China would terrify Soviet Russia. That indeed it did, say historians of Nixon’s diplomacy and Russian officials of the time. When Nixon announced he would visit the PRC, the news hit the Kremlin “like a bolt from the blue,” according to Georgii Arbatov, an adviser to then-Russian leader Leonid Brezhnev. Arbatov added: “My colleagues said, ‘America will be China’s ally when Nixon visits Beijing, anything could happen. Where will it end?’” The Russians were so alarmed that within days of Nixon’s announcement, they invited him to Moscow and restarted stalled nuclear arms talks.VietnamAside from frightening Russia, Nixon had another near-term policy aim. He was looking for a way to exit the war in Vietnam and was fearful that growing Chinese involvement in neighboring Laos might escalate the conflict. “Kissinger and Nixon wanted to get help in resolving the Vietnam War. By dealing with Russia and with China we hoped to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate seriously. At a maximum, we tried to get Russia and China to slow down the provision of aid to North Vietnam somewhat. More realistically and at a minimum, we sought to persuade Russia and China to encourage Hanoi to make a deal with the United States,” Lord later said.In this Thursday, May 3, 1973 photo, Henry Kissinger, President Nixon’s foreign affairs adviser, briefs newsmen on Nixon’s annual State the World report to Congress at the White House in Washington.Nixon failed in that aim.  “In the end, the graceful exit never came. China continued its flow of arms, material, (and some Chinese soldiers) in support of North Vietnam’s final conquest of South Vietnam and America’s humiliating retreat,” scholar Joseph Bosco wrote in a 2015 article for the Harvard Law School’s National Security Journal.The West’s gambleFor the longer-term Nixon harbored grave doubts, both before and years after the opening with China, about the possibility of co-existence with Communist China. In a Foreign Affairs magazine article in October 1967, he proposed a strategy combining deterrence and dissuasion, saying, in the short run “this means a policy of firm restraint, of no reward, of a creative counter-pressure designed to persuade Peking that its interests can be served only by accepting the basic rules of international civility.”He warned: “Conceding to China a ‘sphere of influence’ embracing much of the Asian mainland and extending even to the island nations beyond . . . would not be acceptable to the United States or to its Asian allies.” And he struggled with a similar dilemma faced by Western leaders: How to balance containing Communist China without isolating it? He feared dangerous consequences of “leaving China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. There is no place on this small planet for a billion of its potentially most able people to live in angry isolation.”But in the article he emphasized: “The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change. The way to do this is to persuade China that it must change: that it cannot satisfy its imperial ambitions, and that its own national interest requires a turning away from foreign adventuring.”In the years after the opening with China, he was more hopeful but wary, recognizing the risks but thinking it had been worth the gamble. But by 2000 his mood had darkened considerably, echoing his thinking in the 1960s. He confided in an interview with New York Times columnist William Safire, one of his former speech-writers, that, “He was not as hopeful as he had once been: ‘We may have created a Frankenstein.’” 
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The number of COVID-19 cases Vietnam reported seems small — 30 cases since the weekend — but it hinted at weightier issues and came with a massive response to match. Thousands evacuated a beach town, some stranded in the chaos, flights were canceled, a foreign national was arrested, and hospitals have been locked down. The cases that emerged in Danang city marked an abrupt end to Vietnam’s 100-day streak with no local transmissions of the coronavirus, a period of relative calm as people returned to work feeling sheltered from the pandemic that is raging outside the borders. The new cases leave Vietnam to puzzle over how the virus may have been lurking in the community and how it infected locals, most of whom had not been traveling. The cases also beg the question of whether, even with a perfect pandemic response, it is really possible to quash the virus out of existence. Here are three takeaways from the small COVID-19 resurgence in Vietnam. First, there is a crack in every set of armor. Vietnam has been the envy of many other nations, having responded swiftly to the disease outbreak and reported zero deaths from it. However, it is always possible for a germ to slip through the cracks. The government introduced robust protocols early in the year as it isolated patients, canceled international flights, contact traced, and ordered social distancing. The protocols are subject to individual fallibility, though. A private citizen can forget her mask. A hospital worker can miss a spot when cleaning. A traveler can get around borders or other checkpoints.  “You just need one chain, one screw loose, and the whole machine will be affected,” Vu Duc Dam, Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam, said. In addition to individual actions, the protocols themselves are not meant to be bulletproof. Unless 100% of the population is tested, the virus can continue to spread undetected until someone shows symptoms, which is what happened in Danang.  This dynamic suggests that, as governments set goals in the pandemic, they are not likely to obliterate COVID-19 in the near future, nor expect every citizen to be vigilant 24 hours a day. Instead they can suppress the spread enough so that hospitals aren’t overrun, and people can go back to daily life at lower risk.  Second, there is still a lot of mystery around the virus and everything it affects. In the case of Vietnam, it is following clues down multiple paths to trace the latest infections of a virus it thought had been suppressed. Authorities didn’t say if the recent arrest of a foreigner is linked to the outbreak but ordered an investigation into illegal foreign travel as a possible source of infection.  That is in addition to the mystery of the virus itself. Around the world, coronavirus news has evolved as health officials gather data and learn more about it, such as the utility of masks and the chance of transmission not just from infected surfaces but from air particles. Third, the recovery won’t be linear or even. Vietnam, which has one of the few economies forecast to grow in 2020, ordered a national lockdown in April, which was gradually lifted within weeks. After that, children went back to school, adults went back to work, and tourists took domestic holidays as the economy moved in the direction of reopening. However, Danang is back in lockdown this week and the rest of the Southeast Asian nation is readopting safety measures. As in places from northern Spain to California, the uneven path out of the pandemic means clusters of infections will likely force localities to close, open, and perhaps close again.  
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Vietnamese officials are rushing to control a sudden new outbreak of COVID-19 after reporting one of the world’s most successful control efforts earlier in the year. Authorities in the Southeast Asian country sealed off the central coast tourist city Danang Sunday after two people tested positive for the deadly atypical pneumonia, domestic media reports say. The new spike in and near Danang had grown to 30 cases as of early Wednesday, mostly traced to a local hospital.   People elsewhere in the economically booming country of 97 million worry that the Danang infections will spread outward and spark another nationwide shutdown like the one ordered for about a month through late April. “It could be another outbreak, and it’s really sort of scared the Vietnamese, because they thought they’d gotten through it all, but as the rest of the world discovered, this thing spreads much quicker than you think,” said Adam McCarty, chief economist with Mekong Economics in Hanoi.   While Vietnam’s latest figures still hardly match the hundreds of daily cases still being reported in much of the world, the country prides itself on throttling the disease earlier in the year with no deaths to date. Vietnam had gone without transmission for 99 days through Saturday and its domestic economy roared back to life by May. Halts to flights and strict quarantine rules have kept the overall caseload to 446 including the latest outbreak. As of Tuesday, 369 people had recovered.In this file photo taken on March 3, 2020 a worker wearing a protective suit prepares to disinfect a Vietnam Airlines plane amid concerns of the spread of the coronavirus at Noi Bai International Airport in Hanoi.The 1.1 million-population city of Danang quit taking domestic tourists for 14 days,  halted many gatherings and shuttered non-essential services such as bars and amusement parks, domestic news website VnExpress International reported. Flights, buses, taxis, and trains to and from Da Nang are suspended too, business consultancy Dezan Shira & Associates says on its website. Thousands of tourists there now must remain.   “We’re hoping it doesn’t spread out, because if it does, they’ll do another lockdown, and it’s going to impact business hard,” said Jack Nguyen, partner in the business advisory firm Mazars in Ho Chi Minh City. “I don’t think the country can sustain another lockdown.”   Quang Nam, a province bordering Danang, planned starting Wednesday to close bars, internet shops, cinemas and other spots to stop any disease spread there, the news website reported. “Danang is done,” Nguyen said. “There are no tourists coming in or out.”   Vietnam’s GDP is forecast to grow 3% to 4% this year with factory work running again after the earlier shutdowns. Domestic travel roared back as people were encouraged to fly domestically and join tours. The cases in Danang disappointed tourism operators after the post-shutdown boom, said Phuong Hong, a hotel chain employee in Ho Chi Minh City. Her nationwide chain’s two Danang properties are closed again and handing out refunds for guests booked through August.   But people overall feel confident because officials have shown they know how to stop the virus spread, she said. Travelers who returned from Danang to Ho Chi Minh City before the city closure are getting their health checked and isolating themselves, Phuong has found. Face mask prices have tripled over the past week, she noted. “We have the experience for the first time already, so let’s see how it works for this trend,” Phuong said. “Maybe some cases will become more, not only Danang but also another city, I don’t know yet so far, but we are more calmed down.”   At one travel agency, more than 20,000 patrons had canceled their holidays around Vietnam as of July 26, the news website said.   If the virus jumps past Danang, the country will probably order shutdowns of specific cities with the eventual goal of total disease eradication, McCarty said.  “They’re really organized now, so they know what to do,” he said. 
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