A Ukrainian court has frozen property belonging to former President Petro Poroshenko (2014-2019) as part of a formal investigation into the former head of state’s allegations of high treason. “The court decided to seize the assets of the suspect, which belong to him under the title of property,” said the general prosecutor’s office in a statement on Thursday.
Prosecutors believe the businessman and MP was involved in funding pro-Russian separatists in the disputed Donbass region in the east of the country in 2014-2015. supported by Russia in eastern Ukraine in 2014-2015. In October, lawyers accused another controversial politician, Viktor Medvedchuk, of reaching an agreement with the Poroshenko administration to buy coal from mines in areas controlled by the separatists at the time, in order to finance them.
His allies accuse President Zelenskiy’s spirit of vengeance
Last month, prosecutors asked a Ukrainian court to arrest Poroshenko with the possibility of a bail set at 1 billion hryvnia (32 million euros). The request has not been decided. The oligarch, one of the richest men in the country, has been abroad since the end of December and plans to return on January 17. He did not react to the decision to seize his property.
For his allies, this decision results from the desire for revenge of the current Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. “A weak president (…) uses prosecutions in his hand, investigations in his hand and an instrumentalised justice to punish the opponents”, declared Volodymyr Ariev, a member of European Solidarity, the political party of Poroshenko after the decision of the court . “This illegal decision worsens the political crisis in the country,” said Iryna Gerashchenko, another member of her party, on Facebook.