Ukraine's ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who is serving a seven-year term in jail, has urged the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) to investigate corrupt and money-laundering transactions by the Viktor Yanukovych regime, according to Tymoshenko's Web site.
"Yulia Tymoshenko referred a statement to the FATF and to the prosecutor’s offices in European countries, asking them to probe massive corrupt transactions with budgetary resources, practiced by top Ukrainian officials, and their transfer to fraudulent firms and then to the bank accounts of the same Ukrainian officials," Tymoshenko’s defense lawyer Serhiy Vlasenko told the press on Wednesday.
Tymoshenko cited the privatization of Ukrtelecom, the acquisition of the so-called Boiko rigs [sea gas drilling platforms, which, according to the opposition, have been illegally privatized by Energy and Coal-Industry Minister Yuriy Boiko] and other high-profile deals estimated at billions of dollars, he said.
Ukraine had been on the FATF black list between 2002 and 2004, and it was entered on it again in 2010 as a country that is not combating money laundering well enough. Ukraine was taken off the black list on October 29, 2011.
