Lawmaker Oleksandr Onyshchenko, an ex-member of former President Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of Regions charged with embezzlement, has been criticized as lacking credibility.

And it is true that Onyshchenko’s sweeping accusations against President Petro Poroshenko and his inner circle are being used both by Yanukovych’s former supporters and the Kremlin to destabilize Ukraine.

Yet 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.

Onyshchenko has already published some evidence, which has to be thoroughly analyzed and checked for authenticity, and has allegedly given U.S. authorities much more proof.

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.

Whether or not Poroshenko and his allies spearhead this mind-boggling thievery has yet to be determined by both U.S. and Ukrainian law enforcement agencies.

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.

Hopefully, Ukraine will someday have a president with sufficient integrity to be immune to such accusations.