Photo: Ukrayinska pravda
The fifth and previous President of Ukraine, and incumbent People’s Deputy, Petro Poroshenko was informed about the suspicion of treason and facilitating the activities of terrorist organizations. This was reported by the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI), a state law enforcement agency which investigates criminal proceedings involving senior officials, in particular judges and politicians.
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The officers from SBI that work in the Security Service of Ukraine [government’s main security agency], under the procedural guidance of the Prosecutor General’s Office, are investigating a criminal case involving a criminal scheme to supply coal from the temporarily occupied territories and aiding LNR and DNR terrorist organizations by a group of Ukrainian citizens totaling about 1.5 billion UAH ($57 millions).
Petro Poroshenko, who was president from 2014-2019, is suspected of facilitating the activities of the terrorist organizations LNR and DNR by acting with the prior conspiracy of a group of individuals, including representatives of the top leadership of the Russian Federation.
The proceedings are carried out according to Part 1 and Part 3 of Art. 258-5 (terrorist financing), Part 1 of Art. 111 (treason) and Part 1 of Art. 258-3 (assistance to a terrorist organization) of the Criminal Code of Ukraine.
The sanctions of the above articles provide for up to 15 years of imprisonment with or without confiscation of property.
The lawyer of the fifth president of Ukraine Illia Novikov stated that Petro Poroshenko’s suspicion of treason and aiding and abetting terrorist organizations, which he was informed by the State Bureau of Investigation, is illegal and has no legal basis, according to the press service of the European Solidarity Party.
Illia Novikov noted that this was the course of cases and the text of the document.
«You remember the situation last Friday, when some people presented themselves to the bodyguards of the fifth president as bloggers and tried to hand him a summons. The summons was written crookedly, it had no legal force. It was a summons to call for an investigative action today, 20 December,» – Illia Novikov said.
He stressed that this was done in order to disrupt Poroshenko’s trip to the Ecumenical Patriarch and the conference in Warsaw. Novikov also said that the Prosecutor General Iryna Venediktova urgently went on vacation this morning, handing over her powers to Oleksii Symonenko, who is Acting Prosecutor General.
«I call this story Olivier Gate. This is a scandal. This is truly a coup d’etat. When they talked about the coup d’etat on 1 December, it was a fake, but the coup d’etat on 20 December is a reality, « – Ilya Novikov added.
Translated by Vitalii Holich
You can read a Ukrainian language version of this story here.
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