EBRD Accountability Mechanism starts a compliance assessment of MHP projects, 10 November 2021

Two projects of Myronivskyi Hliboprodukt (MHP), a Ukrainian industrial agribusiness company, financed by the EBRD will be assessed for a compliance review by the bank’s Independent Project Accountability Mechanism (IPAM)...By 26 January 2022 the EBRD’s mechanism will conduct a preliminary evaluation whether the project may have caused harm to affected local people and if there is an indication that the bank may have breached its standards.

The move towards compliance investigation comes three and a half years after local people from Olyanytsya, Zaozerne and Kleban, three villages in the Vinnytsya region of Ukraine, submitted complaints to the accountability mechanisms of the two banks (EBRD and IFC). Between October 2018 and August 2021 the two mechanisms co-facilitated a confidential mediation process between representatives of local complainants and MHP.

Despite the extensive time and energy that impacted villagers dedicated to the process, the mediation did not result in effective remedy for affected people. The compliance review can bring some form of justice to them by investigating major questions raised in the complaint...