Corruption in Ukraine

Sorry this isn't much of a post.  We both have the flu at our house and publishing anything takes a great deal of effort.  The text is from the news feed, followed by the article.

Exiled lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko on Dec. 6 released the first of a series of audio recordings he claims prove President Petro Poroshenko and his inner circle are corrupt.

The recording was released by the strana.ua online newspaper. In the recording, Onyshchenko and lawmaker Oles Dovhiy, whom the fugitive member of parliament described as representing Poroshenko, discuss the possibility of Onyshchenko, a suspect in an embezzlement case, reaching a plea bargain with Ukrainian authorities. Onyshchenko told strana.ua that the plea bargain would be reached in exchange for him writing off Poroshenko’s alleged $50 million debt to him.

Onyshchenko has said he had been an intermediary in Poroshenko’s alleged efforts to bribe lawmakers and to organize a smear campaign against ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk before Yatsenyuk quit in April. He has also accused Poroshenko of extorting money from businesses and politicians, raiding companies and trying to monopolize the media by negotiating to buy television channels.

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/onyshchenko-releases-first-recording-poroshenkos-alleged-graft.html

A lot of what Onyshchenko is saying is not new and has been said by many more credible sources, including ex-prosecutor generals Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko, lawmakers Sergii Leshchenko and Viktor Chumak and others.

His detailed portrayal of the brazen way in which members of parliament are bribed and state companies are fleeced is astonishing. What makes it more credible is that these practices were well-known before, and that Onyshchenko effectively admitted to taking part in these corruption schemes.

In fact, it is not the critics and accusers who are destabilizing Ukraine and lending Russian dictator Vladimir Putin a hand. It is Ukraine’s amazingly thievish and out-of-touch bureaucracy, which is slowly killing the nation by stealing whatever crumbs are left of the country’s wealth and thus giving fodder to criticism.

If true, Onyshchenko’s accusations could be the beginning of Poroshenko’s downfall, similar to those of his predecessors Leonid Kuchma in the wake of the scandal over the murder of journalist Georgy Gongadze and Viktor Yanukovych following his decision to drop an association deal with the European Union.

https://www.kyivpost.com/article/opinion/editorial/onyshchenkogate.html

Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a fugitive lawmaker from the People’s Will faction, has accused President Petro Poroshenko and his inner circle of massive corruption and released what he says is evidence to back his claims.

Though the vast scale of Ukrainian corruption was common knowledge, Onyshchenko’s sweeping allegations add minute detail to the overall picture and specify the exact amounts allegedly paid by the president to bribe lawmakers, as well as those allegedly extorted from state companies by Poroshenko and his right-hand man, lawmaker Ihor Kononenko.

The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has opened a criminal case to investigate Onyshchenko’s claims, while some lawmakers have called for the creation of a special commission. Poroshenko’s critics argue that the scandal could potentially lead to his impeachment and have compared it to the scandal around tapes allegedly implicating then-President Leonid Kuchma in the murder of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000

https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/onyshchenko-makes-sweeping-claims-poroshenko-graft.html

Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Bureau obtains evidence as to ownership of the Parliamentarian Segey Faermark in Ukrainian subsidiary of Belgian giant Jan De Nul

http://eutoday.net/news/nabu