You're reading: ​Poroshenko: ‘There was no offshore scandal’

On June 3, President Petro Poroshenko gave a rare press conference to mark the two years since he won the presidency.

Poroshenko opened by announcing that, just hours earlier, he signed the $1 billion loan guarantee agreement with the U.S., the third loan guarantee provided by the U.S. to Ukraine since 2014.

He also took credit for legislation designed to overhaul Ukraine’s corrupt and distrusted courts, passed on June 2 by parliament.

Here are the key moments of the two-hour press conference:

On offshore scandal

Two questions in, Poroshenko asked his spokesman Svyatoslav Tsegolko, who was designating the order of the questions, to give a word to Dmytro Gnap of Slidstvo.info, one of the journalists who in early April uncovered that Poroshenko secretly established a law firm in the British Virgin Islands to hold his Ukrainian confectionery empire, Roshen.

Poroshenko’s lawyers official explanation was that moving Roshen to a country with British law was a requirement to pass it to a blind trust operated by Rothschild Foundation.

Gnap asked why a non-offshore country wasn’t used for the operation. Poroshenko said that in that case, the company would be taxed twice, in Ukraine and abroad.

The president complimented journalists on their work, but denied all the allegations they made in the investigation, including the main one: that he planned to sell Roshen without paying taxes in Ukraine.

“There was no such thing as an offshore scandal,” Poroshenko said.

He also questioned the credibility of a Cyprus-based lawyer that was cited in the investigation.

“It turned out that this lawyer is Russian by origin and supports (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” Poroshenko said.

On visa-free regime

Reuters reported on June 1, citing its sources in the European Union, that the visa liberalization will be suspended for Ukraine, Turkey, Georgia and Kosovo because of fears of uncontrolled immigration.

Poroshenko tossed away such allegations but admitted that a delay of few months could happen.

“We are pushing for European Commission to consider it in summer. But unfortunately, there is a possibility that it will happen in September,” the president said.

He said he believed that the European refugee crisis shouldn’t influence the decision on Ukraine.

“There were no new developments in the refugee crisis in the past two months,” he said. “Ukraine fulfilled all the demands from a long list, and the last assessment commission wrote an excellent report.”

On Savchenko

Poroshenko shared details of the release of Nadiya Savchenko, the Ukrainian military pilot who spent nearly two years in captivity in Russia before being pardoned by Putin and exchanged for two Russian special service agents on May 25.

Poroshenko denied that there were any secret conditions presented by President Putin that he agreed to. He said that he talked with Putin three times over the phone about Savchenko’s release.

He said that the date of the exchange was pushed back twice. Once it happened because, Poroshenko said, “someone from the Russian side was on vacation.” The initial date was May 18.

“It wasn’t an easy decision for me to pardon the two Russian agents for the exchange,” Poroshenko said. “These two were killing our guys, while Nadiya (Savchenko) was completely innocent.”

Poroshenko said that he rejected the initial offer of Russia to send Savchenko to Ukraine without pardoning, as a prisoner meant to serve her term in Ukraine.

“This was unacceptable because we don’t recognize this decision of the Russian court,” Poroshenko said.

On successes

Poroshenko had two recent achievements to report: the signing the $1 billion loan guarantee with the U.S. and the constitutional amendments and a bill on the judicial system passed by parliament on June 2.

Poroshenko said that during the June 3 meeting to sign the aid deal tat U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt praised the appointment of Yuriy Lutsenko, ex-head of Poroshenko’s faction in parliament, as prosecutor general, as depoliticization of the office.

A U.S. Embassy statement on the matter, released simultaneously, said that the ambassador was satisfied with the partnership that they started to build with Lutsenko.

The constitutional amendments and the judicial bill target Ukraine’s ineffective courts by making the selection of the judges more transparent and limiting their immunity.

Poroshenko said that he spent the past several weeks in negotiations with faction leaders to persuade them to support the vote. The bill was passed with 335 votes.

“I think this is one of the most important decisions of my presidency,” he said.

He denied the allegations that some lawmakers formerly associated with ex-President Viktor Yanukovych supported the vote in exchange for immunity from the possible investigations.

On Donbas elections

While the Minsk peace agreement of February 2015 demands that an election takes place in the occupied territories in Ukraine’s eastern region Donbas to select the local representatives in Ukraine’s parliament, Poroshenko said that such an election can’t take place now.

He cited the recent escalation in Donbas, where 37 Ukrainian servicemen were killed in May only.

“There was zero progress (in Donbas) in the past couple week,” Poroshenko said.

“The only election that can take place now is a rigged election held by the occupants,” he added.

But there is a hope for a real election after the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe sends an armed police mission to oversee the ceasefire in Donbas.

Poroshenko said that he offered to send an armed mission six months ago, and was turned down.

But now, he said, the diplomatic group known as Normandy Format that includes Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, agreed on the need for an armed OSCE mission. The question is now discussed in the OSCE headquarters in Vienna.

On oligarchs

Since the beginning of 2016, Ukrainian journalists several times spotted controversial oligarchs like Rinat Akhmetov and Ihor Kolomoisky entering President’s Administration building late at night. Earlier the president’s office refused to reveal the reason of the meetings, saying this information wasn’t public.

But when asked again about the meetings, Poroshenko was slightly more open.

He admitted that he met with Akhmetov in the administration twice. The last time, Poroshenko said, Akhmetov arrived to invite him to a football game of Shakhtar Donetsk, the club that belongs to the steel and energy magnate. Poroshenko said he accepted the invitation, but didn’t go to the game.

“I met with Akhmetov twice, but he’s been to my administration many more times, meeting with other people,” Poroshenko said enigmatically.