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The work of the Ukrainian-Emirati Coordinating Council will contribute to the further development and deepening of bilateral relations between the two states, Head of the Ukrainian Presidents Office Andriy Yermak stated during an online meeting of the Ukrainian-Emirati Coordinating Council.

"I am pleased that during the pandemic we still managed to hold extremely effective and meaningful negotiations. I am even more pleased that we are holding the first constituent meeting of the Coordination Council less than two weeks after the visit. This is a confirmation of the great importance of our cooperation. I am confident that the work of this Council will become the basis for the implementation of the agreements already reached and will open new horizons of bilateral relations," Yermak said, the presidents press service reports.

He reminded that during the talks the leadership of the two countries identified the main areas of cooperation as food security, investment, military and technical cooperation, cooperation in the field of lending, IT and cybersecurity.

"In general, we expect an increase in the presence of Emirati companies in Ukraine. We believe that we have all the necessary conditions for this: state guarantees for large investors, transparent legislation, large enterprises ready for privatization," Yermak noted.

According to him, in particular, this concerns attracting investment from the UAE in sea and river ports, roads, railways and aviation. He also assured that Ukraine is ready to continue to be a guarantor of food security in the Emirates.

Head of the Emirati party at the Ukrainian-Emirati Coordination Council Mariam Al-Muhairi also noted the rapid start of the Councils work after the historic visit of the President of Ukraine to the UAE and wished everyone successful and fruitful work.

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Yermak: We expect increase in presence of UAE companies in Ukraine - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

Ukraine is interested in implementing promising investment projects in the maritime sector in cooperation with American business.

Infrastructure Minister Kryklii said this during a webinar dedicated to the Maritime Infrastructure Modernization Program in Ukraine, which took place under the auspices of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, the press service of the Infrastructure Ministry reports.

"We are open to investors and the implementation of promising investment projects in the maritime industry in cooperation with American business and are happy to invite you to invest in Ukraine," he said.

The infrastructure minister informed about the successful experience of implementing the first concession projects in the ports of Olvia and Kherson. According to him, the ministry is planning to implement next concessions in the industry.

"We are currently in the process of preparing concession projects in the seaports of Berdiansk, Izmail and Mariupol. We are also preparing a project of the concession for a passenger terminal in the Odesa Sea Port, the concession of a railway and ferry complex and a container terminal in the Black Sea port, he said.

The event was attended by U.S. Charg d'Affaires in Ukraine Kristina Kvien, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State for Trade Policy David de Falco, SPILNO Project Office Chair Taras Boychuk, Director of the Infrastructure Support Team Iryna Koshel, and representatives of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine, EBRD, US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC), U.S. Export-Import Bank, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, ADM Ukraine LLC, AVELLUM, Baker & McKenzie, Aon Ukraine, CHS Ukraine LLC and other companies.

The participants in the event also discussed the possible participation of American business representatives in the implementation of promising public-private partnership projects in the road sector.

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Ukraine interested in joint projects with U.S. business in maritime sector - Kryklii - Ukrinform. Ukraine and world news

LONDON (Reuters) - Ukraines top prosecutor said on Friday investigations into Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings Ltd, a matter closely tied to a scandal that led to former U.S. President Donald Trumps first impeachment, have been closed with no plans to reopen them.

FILE PHOTO: Prosecutor General of Ukraine Iryna Venediktova reacts during a parliamentary session in Kiev, Ukraine March 17, 2020. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE WAS PROVIDED BY A THIRD PARTY./File Photo

Ukrainian prosecutors in recent years had looked into the actions of Burisma, a company on whose board U.S. President Joe Bidens son Hunter had served from 2014 to 2019, and its founder Mykola Zlochevsky.

Everything that prosecutors could do, they have done, Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova said in an interview with Reuters by video link from Kyiv. This is why I dont see any possibilities (or) necessity to come back to these cases.

Venediktova also said U.S. authorities had made no requests of her office since Biden took office last month.

The U.S. House of Representatives impeached Trump in December 2019 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress over his request in a July 2019 phone call to Ukraines president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, for an investigation into Biden and his son Hunter. The U.S. Senate voted in February 2020 to keep Trump in office.

Trump made unsubstantiated corruption allegations against both Bidens. U.S. Democrats accused Trump, a Republican, of soliciting foreign interference in an American election by trying to get a vulnerable ally to smear a domestic political rival, using American aid as leverage. Biden defeated Trump in the November U.S. election.

As vice president under President Barack Obama, Biden oversaw U.S. policy toward Ukraine and sought the removal of the countrys top prosecutor at the time, who the United States and Western European countries had viewed as corrupt or ineffective. Trump and his allies made unsubstantiated claims that Biden did so because the prosecutor had been looking into Burisma while his son served on the board.

Zlochevsky, a former Ukraine ecology minister, is now living abroad.

One Burisma probe had related to suspected tax violations. Burisma said in 2017 investigations into the company and Zlochevsky had been closed after it paid an additional 180 million hryvnias ($6.46 million) in taxes.

Venediktova, in her post for just under a year, said she wants to take a different approach in her job than predecessors she described as being too political.

Asked about Ukraines fight against corruption, Venediktova dismissed concerns that the independence of the national anti-corruption bureau, known as NABU, had been undermined after the government drafted new legislation on its status that the bureau said would harm its ability to fight high-level graft.

NABU is now an independent body and will be an independent body in future, Venediktova said.

Corruption has been a longstanding issue for Ukraine, and any threat to the independence of NABU, set up with the backing of Western donors, could further derail the flow of foreign aid at a time when its economy has been hammered by lockdowns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The International Monetary Fund has told Ukraine it needs to adopt more reforms to unlock further funds from its $5 billion IMF programme.

Venediktova also said she is hopeful that legal cases surrounding PrivatBank would come to a conclusion before the end of the year. The central bank declared PrivatBank insolvent in 2016 and said its poor lending practices blew a $5.5 billion hole in its finances before it was taken into state hands. The lenders former owners dispute this and have fought to reverse the nationalisation.

($1 = 27.8492 hryvnias)

Reporting by Karin Strohecker in London and Matthias Williams in Kyiv; Additional reporting by Mark Hosenball in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham

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Ukraine prosecutor says there are no plans to revisit Burisma probes - Reuters

The Sectoral Sanctions are effective for a period of five years and include, in particular, the following restrictions:

Because the Sectoral Sanctions have been applied for the first time in Ukraine since the approval of the Sanctions Law in 2014, we anticipate further official clarifications and a new enforcement practice from the Ukrainian authorities clarifying the exact scope of the application of the Sectoral Sanctions.

We recommend that Ukrainian residents and foreign companies doing business in Ukraine carefully assess any dealings involving Nicaragua for their compliance with the Ukrainian sanctions restrictions.

1.Resolution of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine No. 1167-IX dated 2 February 2021 On Approval of the Decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine dated 1 February 2021 On Imposing Sectoral Special Economic and Other Restrictive Measures (Sanctions) against the Republic of Nicaragua' effective from 4 February 2021.

2. Law of Ukraine On Sanctions No. 1644-VII dated 14 August 2014 (Sanctions Law).

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Ukraine: The Parliament imposes its first-ever sectoral sanctions - GlobalComplianceNews

On 12 November 2020, the Ukrainian Parliament published a draft payment services law (available in Ukrainian), that was prepared with the Ukrainian central bank (NBU). Among other things, the draft law would implement a regulatory framework for open banking similar to the EUs PSD2 (Directive 2015/2366). PSD2 requires banks to share data from their clients payment accounts free of charge with third party providers (TPPs) without any underlying commercial agreement thereby allowing TPPs to offer new payment services to consumers.

Paul Rohan, in his book PSD2 in Plain English has suggested that in practical terms, open banking requires banks to build and publish an Application Programming Interface (API). An API permits a piece of software to read data from the system of the API publisher (in this case, a bank). Therefore, to comply with PSD2, a bank will publish an API, similar to publishing a website, and disclose relevant payment account data to all eligible TPPs.

Is the API economy an entirely new phenomenon in Ukraine?

Publication of APIs was not invented by the authors of PSD2; they were in use before the adoption of PSD2. For instance, many Ukrainian banks publish their own APIs to enable collaboration with the API developers community. In fact, according to one of the largest Ukrainian banks, it was the first bank globally to make a public API available for developers in September 2009, that is used today by approximately 5,000 API developers and clients in both Ukraine and abroad. Moreover, a number of banks publish a partner API, which is available to partner companies to facilitate commercial projects. In Paul Rohans view, a partner API is a stepping stone for a bank to offer a public API.

But the key difference between then and now is that before PSD2, the sharing of account data (i.e., publishing APIs) was not mandatory. In Ukraine, this particular aspect of PSD2 was the subject of much debate and controversy between the NBU and market participants. It was not clear until the publication of the draft law last November whether this requirement would be included in the text as opposed to a discretionary option.

It now looks like the Ukraine is to join those countries wanting to boost their digital economies by way of regulatory intervention Article 54 of the draft law makes it mandatory for banks to share data with TPPs. As result, the Ukraine will join those jurisdictions pursuing the regulatory intervention path. In particular, it may be allocated to a subgroup of countries (e.g., Albania and Northern Macedonia) that implement PSD2 under their existing association agreements with the EU and its Member States. Another group of jurisdictions have non-regulatory initiatives coordinated by market participants without the intervention of the state (e.g. USA, Nigeria etc.). The chart below shows the dynamics in this space, however, as this is a dynamic scenario new jurisdictions may appear on this map as we speak.

Standardization of APIs

It is curious that Paul Rohan compares APIs with an electricity wall socket, which is an interface with an electricity supply, with predictable patterns of opening in the wall sockets, so producers of electric appliances know what to expect. Likewise, APIs are useful in this context because it is not straightforward to pull data from a third party system (i.e., from banks numerous information systems). A standard API can make the operation of a TPP easier in the sense that it need not worry about how to access data, but rather focus on building the service it offers to the consumer. In other words, API developers should know what to expect, in terms of API features, when developing software and avoid reinventing the wheel each time they want to obtain data from a particular bank.

PSD2 itself did not address this issue. Rather, it instructed the European Banking Authority to develop the requirements for common and secure open standards of communication (RTSs), i.e., only technical framework conditions with no interface standard. To help fill this gap of a common standard, a number of market initiatives have emerged in EU, including a group of European banks and payment service providers, the Berlin Group, whose API framework is called NextGenPSD2. Similarly, the draft Ukrainian law envisages that the NBU will adopt data security and communication requirements concerning end users, banks and TPPs when accessing consumers accounts. Apparently, the question of an API standard is about to emerge.

The NBU have indicated that (i) the open banking launch may be feasible in Ukraine in 2022 and (ii) that it would launch a market stakeholders working group shortly to consult on the issue of API standardization. It seems that one of the options to move this initiative forward might be to leverage existing market experience of tech savvy banks in developing an API economy.

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Is Ukraine about to join the open banking race? - Lexology