Ukrainian media publish full list of criminal charges against Poroshenko
The Ukrainska Pravda news website on Dec. 21 published the full text of the criminal charges made against former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation or SBI.
The official announcement of the charges of high treason and aiding a terrorist group reads that they stem from alleged criminal schemes to import coal from Russian-occupied areas of the Donbas territory – formerly Ukraine’s key coal-mining region.
The SBI alleges that Poroshenko’s actions “were damaging to Ukraine’s sovereignty and economic security, and consisted of conspiring with a foreign state or its representatives in their subversive activity against Ukraine; as well as aiding a terrorist organization.”
The bureau said it suspects Ukraine’s former president of having conspired with Viktor Medvedchuk, one of the leaders of pro-Russian political party Opposition Platform for Life, to “support the activity of the self-proclaimed Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics, with the aim of sabotaging the Ukrainian state.”
Former Energy Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn has also been implicated in this case.
Poroshenko’s political party, European Solidarity, has dismissed the charges against Poroshenko and accused Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky of using his “puppet State Investigations Bureau” to take reprisals against their leader.
European Solidarity also said President Zelensky was putting pressure on law enforcement agencies to investigate Poroshenko.
The party added that Poroshenko had gone on a diplomatic tour to Poland and Turkey on Dec. 17. That same day, the SBI said Poroshenko had ignored a summons for questioning: The bureau said that when officials tried to hand him the summons, Poroshenko got into his car and drove off.
In October, Medvedchuk was also charged with high treason and aiding terrorist organizations in a similar case involving an illegal scheme involving coal from Russian-occupied territories.
Medvedchuk’s involvement in the scheme was reportedly established by SBI detectives working in cooperation with Ukraine’s SBU security service and the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine.
Also in October, SBU chief Ivan Bakanov stated that the activities of both Poroshenko and former National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) Governor Valeria Hontareva were under investigation.
Hontareva, who resigned as NBU head in May 2017, has been the victim of a number of unexplained assaults, including an arson attack on her residence in Ukraine, which the former central banker believes to have been politically motivated. She moved to London in the UK in 2018.
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