Portnov threatens to confiscate Poroshenko’s assets. Video

Portnov threatens to confiscate Poroshenko's assets. Video

While the authorities cannot even announce suspicions against some of the Yanukovych regime’s pillars, Portnov, on a Russian number, threatens a “revenge”

5 thousand 14 hryvnias 5 kopeks – that is the amount the state returned to the budget in a year from property confiscated for corrupt means. At the same time, as journalists from Schemes reported to the journalists of Radio Liberty’s project on the First Public channel, at home and abroad in former high-ranking officials’ possession, property worth more than 5 billion hryvnias has been seized.

One of the former “masters” of the President’s Administration will soon argue with the European Commission in court. The Deputy Head of the Administration during Viktor Yanukovych’s era, Andriy Portnov, challenges the sanctions imposed against him. The case will be heard by a Luxembourg court in May. It’s aptly titled “Portnov vs. European Commission.”

Portnov himself “poked his finger in the eye” at the same time as Viktor Yanukovych, and later became one of the first officials of the dictatorial regime who fell into the EU sanctions list with 22 persons. But last month the sanctions against him were lifted. Portnov told Schemes over the phone that this happened because they were based on forged documents.

“In the near future I will certainly prove not only the illegality of the Ukrainian authorities’ actions, but also violations of European standards by those in the European Union who used this information from the Ukrainian authorities,” he explains.

While Andriy Portnov boasts on social networks about his invulnerability and mockingly taunts Ukrainian law enforcement, domestic investigators have seized on his accounts… as much as 40 thousand hryvnias. Schemes reported this to the General Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine.

In total in Ukraine and abroad, according to the GPO, more than 5,5 billion hryvnias have been frozen. Yet Ukrainian financial intelligence recently uncovered suspicious banking transactions at home and abroad totaling 300 billion hryvnias. These findings should have formed the basis for economic investigations. But they did not, say the Center for Anti-Corruption. Although prosecutors reported hundreds of millions seized from former Energy Minister Eduard Stavytsky, Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Arbuzov, and other officials from the Yanukovych era. But high-profile seizures of accounts did not translate into confiscation for the benefit of the state, which is possible only by court verdict.

“As of today there is not a single court verdict that would provide for confiscation of property to send abroad and request its return,” says Vitalii Kas’ko, Deputy Prosecutor General of Ukraine.

Confiscation of property is possible under open cases specifically on economic articles. But there are no such cases even against 18 regime figures from Yanukovych who are currently named on the EU sanctions list. Mostly Ukrainian prosecutors investigate abuse of office.

The problem of locating and confiscating criminally acquired property is successfully solved in many countries.

Michele Ricardi, Italian committee official on money laundering and financial security, says that it is worth introducing special provisions that would allow law enforcement to confiscate property belonging to third parties. After all, most assets of criminals are hidden behind endless trusts and nominal persons.

Precisely through civil confiscation, namely via connections with the mafia, law enforcement managed to return the assets of Italian “entrepreneur” Vito Nicastro worth 1,7 billion euros. Nicastro’s energy-related firms were used to launder money for organized crime.

“For example, the suburban house of Bernardo Provenzano, who was the ‘boss of all bosses’ of the Sicilian Mafia, was arrested. Now it’s a tourist estate, and grapes are grown on confiscated lands around it. Do you understand the benefit – people have jobs, while the mafia typically destroys the social structure,” Michele Ricardi explains.

When, or if, similar stories about looted Ukrainian assets will be heard? Pedro Gomez from the University of Basel, who is engaged in legal assistance for asset recovery in Eastern Europe, says not soon. He cites as an example the assets of former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who fled the country in 1999.

“It has been 18 months since the fall of the previous regime. But understand that identifying all corrupt assets takes a lot of time. For example, Lazarenko’s case lasts for 15 years, and not all has been found yet. Good financial investigation requires time,” Pedro Gomez explains.

So far the authorities are not even able to announce suspicions against the former pillars of the Yanukovych regime – Dmytro Tabachnyk, Olena Lukash, and Serhiy Klyuyev. By June they all remain under European sanctions, but they can be removed from this list, just as Andriy Portnov was. He, by the way, is on the line from a Russian phone number threatening the current authorities with “revenge,” claiming that he will confiscate the assets of the current president. “I think Ukrainian authorities, from ministers to the president, should now carefully examine their own online banking. Which offshore accounts do they use? How do they arrange deals in offshore jurisdictions? We will certainly, when the time comes, establish which accounts, which assets of today’s Ukrainian authorities they are hiding abroad, and this will definitely be the subject of criminal prosecution,” Portnov said.

radiosvoboda.org