Ukraine now spends as much as six percent of its estimated gross domestic product on defense and security, partly thanks to an asset forfeiture law that allowed the state to recover public money stolen during the rule of Viktor Yanukovych, President Petro Poroshenko claimed on May 20.
During a working trip to Khmelnytsky Oblast, Poroshenko added that the confiscated assets were spent to ensure decent material and financial support for the army, as well as on new civilian infrastructure projects.
“Despite external aggression (by Russia), Ukraine keeps implementing reforms and changing,” Poroshenko claimed. “All of that is being implemented partially due to the return of assets stolen from Ukrainian people by the Yanukovych clique.”
Poroshenko’s government has been criticized for failing to take basic steps towards returning the roughly $40 billion stolen by Yanukovych and his associates before their deposal by the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
Last year, a scandal erupted after $1.7 billion that was allegedly stolen by Yanukovych and his associated was frozen and removed from Oschadbank in a procedure that appeared to violate Ukrainian law.
Yanukovych fled to Russia in late February in the final days of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which was triggered in late 2013 after his decision to abort signing the Association Agreement with European Union under heavy Russian pressure.
The law on asset forfeiture in Ukraine was passed in November 2015 as part of a legislation package required as an indispensable prerequisite for introducing visa-free regime between Ukraine and the European Union.
In early October 2017, Ukraine’s prosecutor general Yuriy Lutskenko claimed that as many as $1.7 billion of stolen assets had been confiscated from various sources belonging to Yanukovych’s entourage.
Meanwhile, in the fiscal year 2018, Ukrainian state budget allocated as much as Hr 165.3 billion ($4.9 billion) to security and defense. According to the budget act passed on Dec. 7, at least Hr 2.4 billion of the defense spending was contributed from confiscated assets under the forfeiture legislation.
