The disclosure of the so-called shadow costs of the Party of Regions will not help the investigation, and the police should have been investigating it for two years now, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko has said.
“I know that not only NABU (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau) has such documents. These documents come from law-enforcement agencies. I’m disappointed that instead of investigating these documents for two years, we are using them as some suitcases with dirty laundry. I am convinced that those who use it should be brought to justice,” Poroshenko said at a press conference in Kyiv on June 3.
At the same time, he stressed that the disclosure of these documents will not help the investigation. The president also pointed out that the ultimate purpose of the investigation is bringing the perpetrators to justice.
Poroshenko is convinced that ex-deputy head of the SBU Security Service of Ukraine Viktor Trepak, as a staff officer of the SBU, having received the so-called “shadow cost” of the Party of Regions, had to open criminal proceedings.
“He behaved as a politician, not as a career officer of the security services,” the president said.
At the same time, the head of state said: “I am convinced that as an SBU staff officer, having received these documents, he should have opened a criminal case. If he had received them [the documents] but had not opened the criminal case – I hope that this is not the case, otherwise I would be very disappointed… if someone dumped this documents off and he ran into the NABU, that is his right. “
According to Poroshenko, General Trepak has not been dismissed from the SBU, he is a career officer.
The Dzerkalo Tyzhnia weekly on May 28 published an interview with the former first deputy head of the Security Service of Ukraine, Viktor Trepak, who states he has passed to the NABU the documents that confirm the illegal payments by the Party of Regions of cash to a number of former and incumbent high-ranking officials. According to him, the matter concerns the so called second set of books of the Regions Party with payments for a total of about $2 billion.
