Just 2.5 months after he left office, former President Petro Poroshenko’s summer is taking a turn for the worse.
On Aug. 5, the State Investigations Bureau initiated its 12th criminal investigation against the former president. This time, it is related to his weeklong Christmas vacation on a private island in the Maldives on Jan. 2-8, 2018.
Poroshenko reportedly paid $500,000 for the trip on a private jet and hotel stay for his family of 10 under false names, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty’s investigative team Schemes reported in January 2018.
The former president allegedly used the name “Mr. Petro Incognito (Ukraine)” for the guest list of the nearly $50,000-a-night Cheval Blanc Randheli resort. At the time, the average monthly salary in Ukraine was $248, according to the State Statistic Service, and soldiers continued to die in the war with Russia.
Investigators from the State Investigations Bureau will now seek to determine whether Poroshenko illegally crossed the state border of Ukraine and used deliberately forged documents.
Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party said in a statement that, whenever Poroshenko crossed the Ukrainian border, he did so in compliance with the law.
“Fake documents exist only in their sick imagination,” the party said of Poroshenko’s accuser and the investigators.
Latest case
Like most of the other 11 investigations, this one was initiated by Andriy Portnov, former deputy chief of staff under ousted ex-President Viktor Yanukovych.
Read More: After leaving office, Poroshenko faces criminal investigations
Portnov alleges that the investigation will help to reveal even larger-scale evidence of theft by Poroshenko and his allies and identify previously unknown assets.
“We look forward to witnessing active investigative actions, interrogations and court decisions,” Portnov wrote on Facebook.
A spokesperson for Poroshenko could not be reached for comment. The former president denied all the previous allegations against him in a recent interview with the Ukrainska Pravda news site.
All the investigations emanating from Portnov are politically motivated, he said. Even some of the former president’s critics agree with that assessment.
Panama
An experienced lawyer, Portnov has openly stated that his goal is to see Poroshenko behind bars. He regularly publishes new information about the investigations against the former president on his social media accounts and his Telegram messenger channel.
Officially, he should not have access to the kind of information he publishes.
On Aug. 6, Portnov made another scandalous announcement on Facebook, publishing what he claimed were the first results of an investigation into Poroshenko’s financial activities in Panama, a well-known tax haven in Central America.
According to him, the Special Prosecutor of the Republic of Panama had opened a criminal case investigating “crimes against the economic order in the form of laundering criminal proceeds.” A month earlier, Portnov initiated the case with his own written affidavit, he said.
Portnov also published a document from Panama’s accusatorial penal system. It did not name Poroshenko, but was addressed to Ukraine and indicated that an investigation had been opened. The Kyiv Post could not independently authenticate the document.
Portnov alleged Poroshenko and his ‘inner circle’ used Panama to conceal criminal proceeds, assets, and property; to evade taxes in Ukraine; and to launder funds stolen from the Ukrainian state.
“We know for sure that (Poroshenko’s) financial and commercial offshore transactions took place on the most tragic days marked by the deaths of Ukrainians,” he wrote on Facebook.
The European Solidarity party stated that Poroshenko has no companies in Panama. It also noted that Panamanian law criminalizes lying under oath —”specifically for those like Portnov,” it said in statement.
Portnov declined to comment to the Kyiv Post.
