You're reading: Lutsenko: Kramatorsk’s District Court ruling prevented Yanukovych from unfreezing $1.5 billion in arrested assets

Chief of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office (PGO) Yuriy Lutsenko has said that if Kramatorsk’s District Court in April 2017 had not ruled on special confiscation of $1.5 billion worth of assets belonging to disgraced former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and his cronies the money could have been withdrawn.

“Let me tell you directly, that even these $1.5 billion as a minimum three times could have disappeared, some or all of it,” Lutsenko said during a hearing at the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine’s national security and defense committee in Kyiv on Jan.17.

He said there were many attempts to get a verdict, according to which it would have been possible to withdraw the assets.

“If we had not conducted the special confiscation in April 2017 and dawdled to this day I am convinced that most of the assets would have been freed from arrest by one or another institution,” he said, adding that the ruling of the court is located in a secret room at the PGO.

The PGO chief said criminals are attempting to get their hands on the confiscated assets, including “by means of espionage, to receive a document, maybe not an authentic one, in order to realize their plans.”

Lutsenko said the PGO has not opened a criminal case into leaking classified information against the Kyiv-based e-zine Ukrainska Pravda and the Al Jazeera news network, which published what they purported to be a copy of the court ruling in order not to ‘legalize’ it.