You're reading: Law enforcers raid Vesti group as part of Klymenko case

The Prosecutor General’s Office and the National Police on July 14 searched the offices of Ukraine’s Vesti media group as part of an embezzlement case against ex-Tax and Revenue Minister Oleksandr Klymenko.

The law enforcers launched its large-scale raid, complete with armored vehicles, on Vesti group’s office at Kyiv’s Gulliver shopping mall. The Vesti group includes the Vesti newspaper, Vesti radio and other assets.

Klymenko, who fled to Russia in 2014, is accused of transferring money stolen from the Ukrainian budget to offshore firms registered in Cyprus and the British Virgin Islands, and channeling them from the offshore companies to the accounts of a firm called UNISON and Vesti group, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said on Facebook.

Avakov claimed that over $788 million had been transferred to UNISON, Vesti group and two other companies from 2011 to 2014.

In May, the Prosecutor General’s Office arrested 26 ex-tax officials as part of the Klymenko case in a highly-publicized stunt involving bringing arrested officials to Kyiv by helicopter. They are accused of managing a network of money laundering centers all over Ukraine.

The Vesti newspaper’s editor-in-chief Oksana Omelchenko interpreted the searches as prosecutors’ revenge for a Vesti investigation into Chief Military Prosecutor Anatoly Matios’ income and expenses.

“Government pressure is not new to us, but we haven’t seen such a major special operation yet,” she said.

In February, Ukraine’s National Radio and Television Broadcasting Council stripped Radio Vesti of its licenses in Kyiv and Kharkiv over alleged violations of Ukrainian law, and most of the radio station’s staff quit. Radio Vesti interpreted the move as political pressure.

Igor Guzhva, the founder and former chief editor of the Vesti newspaper and currently the chief editor of the strana.ua news site, was arrested in June in an extortion case and released on bail. He claims his arrest was political persecution for strana.ua’s criticism of the authorities.

In 2014 Ukrainian authorities also opened a tax evasion and money laundering case against Guzhva and Vesti.

Vesti is owned by little-known offshore firms that are allegedly linked to Klymenko or other allies of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, although the group denies it. The newspaper has been accused of giving coverage favorable to Russia and Yanukovych associates.