Ukraine sends request to US to have Manafort questioned
The Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine (GPU) is preparing new requests to question American political technologist Paul Manafort, who was a consultant of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and whose name features in the “black ledger” of the Party of Regions with respect to funds and their use, said Serhiy Horbatyuk, leader of the GPU’s special investigations department, as reported by Radio Liberty.
“Yes, of course, we are preparing requests, we will send a request for questioning, and the provision of documents,” he said.
Horbatyuk added that the criminal case in the US on Manafort’s laundering of funds earned in Ukraine during Yanukovych’s rule falls within the context of the PGU’s investigation.
According to him, Ukraine has already sent the US Ministry of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigations several petitions for international legal assistance since December 2014.
Amongst other things, they concerned cases on spending in the Ministry of Justice’s system, and Manafort’s role in this: former Justice Minister Oleksandr Lavrynovych, his deputy and the ministry’s chief accountant at the time are charged with spending more than a million to involve the American firm Skadden, which the Ukrainian government hired in 2011 to assess the progress of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s case.
“We sent a request to question the firm’s representative, Paul Manafort,” Horbatyuk said.
According to him, the US has not yet responded to Ukraine’s request to question Manafort or to provide Kyiv with materials which could be of use in the investigation he features in.
On 30 September, Manafort and his business partner Rick Gates were charged on 12 points, including conspiracy against the US, money laundering and falsification of information. The New York Times reported that they gave themselves up to the federal authorities. Manafort and Gates were placed under house arrest on the same day. However, they denied all 12 points of the charges.
According to the investigation, between 2006 and 2015, Manafort and Gates worked as unregistered foreign agents in the Ukrainian government, in Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions, and then after 2014 in the Opposition Bloc, which was formed through a merger of several Ukrainian parties. They are also charged with laundering money through foreign companies and the accounts of foreign partners. They did not notify the official US organs of their activity in Ukraine or their offshore bank accounts, and avoided paying taxes.